Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tylor Cosgrove, Lecturer in Psychology, Adelaide University

If there are two things the internet loves talking about, it’s conspiracy theories, and who may or may not be a narcissist.

Misinformation and conspiratorial thinking are long-running concerns, while narcissism has become TikTok’s favourite armchair diagnosis.

Research shows the two concepts, though seemingly separate, may actually be closely linked.

In my new research published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, more than 600 people completed surveys, and the findings show higher scores on measures of narcissism were linked to belief in conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Importantly, this result held true regardless of how educated the participants were.

Head vs heart

Scholarly evidence shows people with lower levels of education are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. But that’s only part of the story.

We also know that historically, conspiracy theories have done well in times of uncertainty, including during war, economic downturn and widespread hardship (such as the COVID pandemic).

A prominent explanation for this is that conspiracy beliefs serve underlying psychological needs. These include providing answers when things are unclear or uncertain, providing a sense of control by identifying a powerful group to take action against, and for social reasons, such as showing others which political groups you belong to and signalling loyalty to those groups.

I wanted to find out when educated people might also “fall down the rabbit hole”, and learn more about which psychological needs lead them to do so.

The research

Over two studies, 660 adults were asked to complete a series of questionnaires to measure narcissistic traits. These included:

• having a sense of superiority or entitlement (grandiosity)

• needing to be unique (wanting to be special and stand out from others)

• and a need for “cognitive closure”: a desire for concrete answers and viewing things as black and white.

The participants then answered how much they believed in certain conspiracy theories. One example put to them was: “the assassination of John F. Kennedy was not committed by the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, but was rather a detailed, organised conspiracy to kill the President”.

They also attempted to distinguish true statements from misinformation, including “Ebola Virus Caused by US Nuclear Weapons Testing, New Study Says”.

The participants had varying levels of education, ranging from high school or less through to having a masters or doctorate. They also had a variety of political beliefs.

People who scored higher in narcissistic traits were more accepting of conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Importantly, this was true regardless of how educated the person was.

The results showed these traits might offset the differences linked to education. When these traits were above average, highly educated people were just as likely to endorse these beliefs as those without any formal education.

Why might this be?

Education often provides people with skills in evaluating evidence, critical thinking and a shared understanding of how we can find truth.

However, humans are quite good at “motivated reasoning”: using reasoning skills to come to pleasing conclusions because we want to believe something.

This type of reasoning is often linked to unfounded beliefs – those without evidence. When people feel superior to experts, want to feel special, or need a concrete answer during uncertain times, they might use their reasoning to hold certain beliefs despite a lack of evidence.

My research suggests educated people are not immune to this.

What can we do with this information?

It’s important to recognise there’s a variety of factors that determine people’s beliefs and which ones they hold most dear. These include the above personality traits and thinking styles, as well as factors like identity, how people view themselves and show support for the groups they belong to.

These findings suggest even highly educated people can be resistant to changing their mind if underlying psychological needs are threatened. It’s important to keep these in mind when discussing controversial topics. This is true whether talking with friends, family, or those with opposing political views to our own.

We should also take into consideration our own motivations and needs, and how these might influence our points of view. Doing so might help in finding common ground and improve social discourse on a larger scale.

Tylor Cosgrove does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why do educated people fall for conspiracy theories? It could be narcissism – https://theconversation.com/why-do-educated-people-fall-for-conspiracy-theories-it-could-be-narcissism-270169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arshad Ali, Researcher, University of Otago

When the former Labour-led government unveiled the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) reforms in 2022, it billed them as the biggest shakeup of New Zealand’s health system in a generation.

The sweeping overhaul promised to end chronic fragmentation and narrow postcode-based gaps in care, and to tackle long-standing health inequities.

Three years on – and with a change in government – what can we say that it delivered?

We explored this question in a soon-to-be-published analysis and found that the picture is mixed. While national co-ordination has improved crisis response and planning, everyday access to primary care – especially GP appointments – has become harder for many people.

The shift in political direction has also revealed a deeper lesson: structural reform can build capacity, but without durable political consensus and clear accountability, any gains in equity remain fragile.

What did the reforms actually change?

The reforms replaced 20 district health boards with a single national organisation, Health New Zealand, and created a Māori Health Authority to embed Treaty-based governance and commissioning.

It was a major milestone in New Zealand, recognising Māori leadership in the health system and te Tiriti partnership. The aim was straightforward. A more centralised system could plan better, respond faster in crises and deliver more consistent services across the country.

In some respects, we found the reforms have worked. Central co-ordination has strengthened winter planning, workforce pay equity, procurement, and the ability to move patients and resources across regions during periods of pressure.

During major weather events and seasonal surges, such as Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, the health system has been better able to function as a single, coordinated entity rather than a collection of disconnected local services.

Nonetheless, these improvements have not translated into better access to everyday primary care, leaving a gap that is now at the centre of public concern.

General practice has become the front line test of whether the reforms are working, and the 2024 decision to disband the Māori Health Authority has added a further stress test of the system’s resilience.

According to the 2025 Health Quality & Safety Commission survey, around one in five adults could not get care from their regular GP or nurse when they needed. This was mainly due to long waits, staff shortages or clinic closures.

Delays at the primary care level push more people into emergency departments, increasing pressure on hospitals. Low-income groups, especially Māori and Pacific communities, are particularly affected, reflecting the ongoing inequities the reforms aimed to address.

While some health indicators have improved after the reforms, access to primary care remains uneven, with affordability and availability continuing to determine who receives timely treatment.

These figures make GP access a key indicator of whether the system is delivering on its promises.

More specifically, this pattern exposes a key limitation of the reforms: centralisation can improve coordination, but it does not guarantee accessibility, affordability or a sustainable funding model for general practice.

In other words, the levers that shape people’s everyday experience of the system were never fully addressed.

Why GP access remains the real test

Those issues sit largely outside the structural changes of 2022 reforms, yet they shape how people experience the health system day to day.

Equity was meant to be a central defining feature of the reforms, particularly through the establishment of the Māori Health Authority.

The objective was to provide authority to Māori people in health policy-making, commissioning services, and shaping their priorities. However, the decision to disestablish the Māori Health Authority in 2024 highlighted a core challenge in New Zealand’s health reforms.

Supporters argue that a single system improves efficiency and clarity. Critics argue it shows equity was never securely embedded but remained politically contingent.

The Waitangi Tribunal found the Crown failed to meet its Treaty obligations in the way the authority was revoked.

Regardless of one’s political stance, the removal of this authority exposes a deeper problem: reforms based on contested governance, without broad political backing, are always at risk of being reversed.

Consequently, the change of government has exposed how fragile reform can be when it lacks bipartisan backing and durable accountability mechanisms. When governance arrangements shift with each election cycle, continuity suffers, and so does public trust.

None of this means the 2022 reforms were misguided. They responded to real and well-documented problems.

The pre-reform system was more fragmented, inconsistent and often confusing for patients and providers alike. Centralisation has reduced duplication and improved national oversight in ways that were difficult under the old model.

However, the past three years show that structural reform alone does not guarantee equity or access. Health systems transform slowly, and outcomes are shaped more by funding, workforce capacity, incentives and political stability than by organisational charts.

For most New Zealanders, the success of the reforms will not be judged by how well agencies align at the centre, but by whether they can see a GP when they need one, afford that visit, and avoid ending up in hospital as a result.

On that measure, the reforms remain unfinished, and their future now depends as much on politics as on policy.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Did NZ’s sweeping health reforms deliver on their promise? 3 years on, the verdict is mixed – https://theconversation.com/did-nzs-sweeping-health-reforms-deliver-on-their-promise-3-years-on-the-verdict-is-mixed-272262

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Chand, Senior Lecturer in Illustration and Animation, Adelaide University ; University of Newcastle

Adapting the much beloved and best-selling picture book series The Pout-Pout Fish is no easy feat.

Staying core to the source material, the new Australian animated movie follows surly Mr Fish (Nick Offerman) as he goes on a journey with youthful and bombastic leafy sea dragon Pip (Nina Oyama) to have a wish granted by the mysterious Shimmer (Jordan Sparks).

The film is one of emotional self-discovery. It uses a classic narrative structure that introduces obstacles, a wide variety of side characters, and moments of doubt before arriving at an optimistic outcome for the whole reef.

Expanding this slim narrative into a feature-length animated film is an ambitious undertaking that reveals both the strengths and limitations of the film’s approach to storytelling, design and emotional landscape.

World-class Aussie-mation

This production marks a significant outcome for Australian animation, with a theatrical release to over 2,000 cinemas in the United States.

The film is produced by woman-run Like a Photon Creative, the studio behind The Lost Tiger (2025), The Sloth Lane (2024) and Scarygirl (2023). Founded in Brisbane in 2014, the studio focuses on family-oriented feature films and original intellectual property, combining technically sophisticated computer-generated pipelines with narrative and character design.

The studio recently opened an office in Ireland to strengthen its international offerings. This will enable international co-production, larger-scale workflows and round-the-clock production capacity.

Since 2018, the studio has produced eight animated theatrical feature films sold in over 179 territories; two television series; 75 digital picture books; and five apps. They have pumped over A$52 million through the screen economy in Queensland.

A simple tale

The Pout-Pout Fish is a classic tale of curmudgeon meets youthful eternal optimist.

The story allows for emotional literacy into how individuals have different temperaments. It frames emotional change as something that occurs through connection, empathy and self-recognition. The supporting characters play a key role in this expansion.

From the well-meaning but misguided sea creatures who encourage Mr. Fish to “cheer up” to those who simply accept him as he is, the film subtly critiques the ways adults and peers often respond to visible sadness.

But plot and core message gets a little lost with so many different characters and multiple plot lines on the go. Conflict remains minimal, stakes are low, and the film is content to move steadily toward reassurance rather than tension.

It relies heavily on dialogue to move the plot along. This may lose some younger viewers. In a landscape increasingly interested in representing complex inner lives, The Pout Pout Fish feels conservative in its ambitions.

Older viewers will notice the film’s reluctance to push beyond familiar structures or to trust young audiences with emotional uncertainty.

Animation polish

Visually, The Pout-Pout Fish exemplifies contemporary mainstream animation polish. The underwater world is rendered in bright, saturated colours, with rounded coral formations and softly glowing environments.

Computer-generated animation has increasingly developed a particular look and feel. This identifiable visual language is shaped by shared tools, pipelines and commercial pressures.

This look prioritises surface polish, volumetric lighting, cinematic depth of field and recognisable character design – often at the expense of diversity in style.

Characters have oversized and expressive eyes that prioritise children being able to read emotions quickly. Although highly effective and commercially successful, this approach can flatten stylistic diversity, encouraging homogeneity across studios.

Cultural expectations have emerged to further establish this homogeneous look, with audiences and children perhaps used to a particular feel.

The film borrows an aesthetic from a number of Disney and Pixar titles, leaning into the the underwater legacy established by Finding Nemo (2003) and Shark Tale (2004), created over 20 years ago.

Aussie accents on the silver Screen

The film uses both Australian actors and world-class voice talent.

The film includes elements of “Australian-ness”, similar to the “British-ness” on both individual and national identity permeating Aardman Studio’s stop-motion Wallace & Grommit and Shaun the Sheep.

The creators attempted to internationalise the film with side characters who have French and Latin American accents, but the general accent mish-mash becomes a little confusing with an American lead.

It feels the film is trying to bridge the gap between the domestic and international markets. Choices seem to prioritise international legibility and commercial circulation over local specificity.

This reflects a broader tendency in Australian animation to sometimes smooth out national markers to pursue exports.

From an industry perspective, the strategy can be effective. American accents reduce the perceived cultural distance for international audiences and align the film with familiar modes of US children’s animation familiar to the Disney, Pixar and Sony Animation audiences.

Like A Photon Creative is consolidating its position as a leading force in contemporary 3D animation, capable of competing confidently on the global stage while retaining creative authorship and independence.

The Pout Pout Fish is in Australian cinemas now.

Ari Chand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Pout-Pout Fish visually exemplifies contemporary animation – but something is lost in translation – https://theconversation.com/the-pout-pout-fish-visually-exemplifies-contemporary-animation-but-something-is-lost-in-translation-270886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roy Ebel, PhD Candidate in Evolutionary Biology, Museums Victoria Research Institute

Our bones did not begin deep inside the body. They started in the skin, not long after the first complex animals took shape.

Ever since, skin bones have remained a recurring motif in evolution. Yet we still know surprisingly little about them. Why do they keep reappearing in groups as varied as turtles, crocodiles, lizards, snakes and even dinosaurs? And was there a single ancestor with skin bones that gave rise to them all?

In a new study published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, we explored this question. We combined fossil evidence with modern computational tools to reconstruct 320 million years of reptile skin bone evolution.

What we found concludes a centuries-long debate: skin bones have indeed independently evolved across multiple lizard lineages. In the process, we also traced a unique evolutionary comeback in one of their most iconic groups – goannas.

When bones were superficial

The oldest skin bones in the fossil record may date back 475 million years. At that time, some of the earliest vertebrates evolved an elaborate bony exoskeleton.

This may seem counterintuitive, since vertebrates are literally defined by the fact that they have backbones. However, their bony internal skeleton didn’t evolve until 50 million years later.

Throughout evolutionary history, the skin’s ability to form bony tissue has resurfaced again and again. Fish scales are one example.

Another example is osteoderms – the skin bones of land-dwelling animals. After they left the water in the distant past, osteoderms may have helped animals adapt to terrestrial life.

Beyond that, the picture becomes less clear. Osteoderms vanished in most lineages, yet they kept reappearing, especially in reptiles. To understand how this happened, we needed to piece together a complex evolutionary puzzle.

A story told by bones

Imagine arriving at the scene of a bank robbery long after it happened. There’s no perfect witness. You speak to dozens of people – one saw the getaway car, another noticed the robber’s jacket. Someone else heard the alarm.

Each story is incomplete, and some even contradict one another. But as you collect more accounts, certain details begin to align. Eventually, a coherent picture emerges.

That is how we approached the mystery of skin bones in reptiles. Our witnesses were 643 living and extinct species. Each was related to the others in some way and offered a unique perspective. We kept investigating until their stories began to converge.

We found that most lizards first evolved osteoderms during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, more than 100 million years ago. At that time, some of the most iconic dinosaurs roamed the Earth, including the towering Brachiosaurus, the fierce Allosaurus, and the plate-backed Stegosaurus.

The climate and ecosystems were changing rapidly, creating new challenges and opportunities. Armour may have helped lizards survive predators, cope with harsh environments, or move into new habitats.

After those early bursts of osteoderm evolution, the pace slowed, and most groups have held onto their skin bones ever since.

With one major exception.

The goanna comeback

The ancestors of monitor lizards, also known in Australia as goannas, lost osteoderms entirely – likely because their active lifestyle and efficient bodies functioned better without the additional weight.

But when their descendants reached Australia about 20 million years ago, something remarkable happened: they grew them back.

We can pinpoint this re-evolution to the Miocene period, when Australia’s climate was becoming drier. Skin bones may have helped reduce water loss and likely offered protection in open, arid landscapes.

Strikingly, goannas are the only known lizard lineage to reacquire osteoderms after losing them. This challenges Dollo’s law, which holds that once a complex trait disappears, it cannot re-evolve.

Settling a century-old debate

Early in the 20th century, researchers assumed lizards inherited osteoderms from a common ancestor.

Later that view gave way to the idea that these bone plates evolved independently between select groups. Debates about the underlying evolutionary mechanisms followed, even at the molecular level, but these discussions raced ahead without anchoring the origin of osteoderms in a clear evolutionary timeline leading to today’s reptiles.

Our study provides this foundation, and we’re proud that it’s been published in the same journal in which Charles Darwin first shared his groundbreaking ideas. In many ways, our work is a synthesis of past and present.

Fossil evidence helped us resolve a longstanding question, but only modern computing made it possible to narrow thousands of evolutionary scenarios, each informed by trait data for hundreds of species, into a single, coherent story.

The evidence is clear: osteoderms evolved multiple times, independently, across different lizard lineages over hundreds of millions of years. Now that we know this, scientists will be able to investigate the genetic and developmental mechanisms behind them.

Among lizards, goannas stand out as the only lineage known to have lost this armour, only to regain it in a remarkable evolutionary twist. This pattern fits seamlessly among other evolutionary oddities found in Australia, where marsupials reign and mammals lay eggs.

It also shows that evolution rarely follows a straight path, instead meandering through the ever-changing conditions on our planet.

Roy Ebel receives a Higher Degree Research stipend and scholarship through the Australian Government Research Training Program.

– ref. A centuries-old debate on how reptiles keep evolving skin bones is finally settled – https://theconversation.com/a-centuries-old-debate-on-how-reptiles-keep-evolving-skin-bones-is-finally-settled-268107

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ammar Maleki, Assistant Professor, Public Law and Governance, Tilburg University

Iranians have shown a willingness to pay a devastating price for political change, as protest has consistently been met by the Islamic Republic with violence and mass killing. The death toll since Iranians took to the streets on December 28 has reportedly passed 500, with more than 10,000 arrested. Incoming reports put the casualty count much higher.

A clear majority of Iranians do not want the theocracy that came to power with the 1979 revolution. They want a secular democracy. But what does public opinion tell us about what that should entail and how this change should be achieved?

Measuring public opinion in one of the world’s most repressive countries is not an easy matter. Conventional surveys conducted through (landline) phones or by face-to-face interviews tend to reflect an implausibly homogeneous Islamic and pro-regime society. By contrast, Gamaan — the Group for Analysing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran — conducts surveys anonymously through the internet.

Our research is based on representative samples of anything from tens of thousands to over 100,000 respondents. In 2020 a Gamaan survey revealed a diverse, secularising and dissident society, in which around 70% rejected the compulsory hijab. These numbers materialised in the streets in 2022, during the “woman life freedom” protests (find out more about sample characteristics, weighting information, and external benchmark tests at gamaan.org and this Wapor methodology webinar).

To improve randomisation, we collaborate with Psiphon VPN, which is widely used across Iran. By 2025, an estimated 90% of Iranian internet users relied on VPNs to access blocked platforms, including basic messaging apps such as Whatsapp.

This level of coverage enabled what we call VPN sampling, yielding large, socially diverse samples under conditions of safety and anonymity. Combined with scale, anonymity offers reliable insight into what Iranians really want. The latest survey on the 12-day war with Israel, taken in September 2025, secured more than 30,000 responses from inside the country.

Why protests, again? What is different?

Our surveys consistently show that the majority shares a consensus on what it does not want. Across provinces, rural and urban areas, age groups and gender, roughly 70–80% say they would not vote for the Islamic Republic.

In all survey waves, support for regime change as a precondition for meaningful progress has been the most popular position. This support previously spiked during the “woman life freedom” protests. We believe we are currently witnessing another spike, given the increase observed after the 12-day war.

In contrast with the context of previous protests, the regime is militarily weakened from the 12-day war, during which many senior commanders were killed. Iran is now culturally weakened, no longer able to enforce the compulsory hijab. It is also economically weakened, with a plummeting currency.

Iranians believe that protests, foreign pressure and intervention are more likely to bring about political change than elections and reforms. They were thus emboldened when, for the first time, a US president threatened intervention should protesters be killed. This came days after the abduction by the US military of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a key ally of the Islamic Republic.

What might lie ahead?

Protesters today separate the very idea of Iran from the Islamic Republic. They view the regime as an alien element, an occupying force. This has long been expressed in slogans such as “Our enemy is right here, they lie that it is America” and “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I only give my life for Iran” (supported respectively by 73% and 64% when we tested them in 2021).

The popularity of Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince in exile who represents inherited monarchical nationalism, can be understood in light of this Iran-first mentality. Pahlavi’s social base remained stable in Gamaan’s surveys between 2022 and 2025. Roughly one-third are strong supporters and another third strongly oppose him. The remaining segment somewhat agrees or disagrees, or expresses no opinion.

The current surge in pro-Pahlavi slogans suggests that his popularity is attracting segments of the latter moderate or undecided population. But our surveys found that his popularity is unevenly distributed. It is lower in provinces with higher ethnic minority populations, such as the Kurds, Azeri Turks and Baluch.

Although there is no consensus on the form or structure of an alternative political system, it is noteworthy that in 2025 there was, for the first time, a marked increase in support for monarchy. Given the significant size of those who do not voice a strong opinion on the alternative, any group that can successfully topple the Islamic Republic will have an advantage in convincing the majority to adopt its proposed model.

Iranians overwhelmingly support a “democratic political system” – with 89% in favour. Support for political liberalism, however, is weaker. In 2024, 43% agreed with having “a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”. This view is significantly higher among those without higher education – among monarchists, it is 49%.

These facts should not be lamented or mocked but understood, if the threat of a lack of liberalism is to be mitigated. While nationalism may generate the force of a revolutionary storm capable of toppling the regime, long-term stability, after the fall of the Islamic Republic, will also require an acceptance of Iran’s cultural and ideological diversity as permanent features of a truly free nation.

Ammar Maleki is the founder and director of non-profit GAMAAN. He was selected as World Association for Public Opinion Research’s national representative for Iran for the 2025–2027 term.

Pooyan Tamimi Arab receives funding from the Dutch Research Council for the project Iran’s Secular Shift (2025-2030; VI.Vidi.231F.020). He is a board member of the non-profit research institute GAMAAN.

– ref. Iran protests 2026: our surveys show Iranians agree more on regime change than what might come next – https://theconversation.com/iran-protests-2026-our-surveys-show-iranians-agree-more-on-regime-change-than-what-might-come-next-273198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Flaherty, Senior Lecturer (English and Drama), Australian National University

In her eighth novel Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell imagines the short life and tragic death of Shakespeare’s only son, aged 11, in 1596. Although it is not known how Hamnet died, O’Farrell attributes his death to the plague. She creates a visceral and affecting portrait of his swift decline and the powerlessness of those around him, particularly his mother, to save him.

A critical and commercial success, the novel’s popularity was aided by its connection with Shakespeare, whose enduring reputation as a literary genius ensures that, as the scholar John Sutherland once asserted, “where there’s a Will there’s a payday”.

The death of Hamnet is one creative trigger for this bestselling novel, but is it the main source? And was Hamnet’s death really the source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet? With the film adaptation, co-authored by O’Farrell and director Chloé Zhao, arriving in Australian cinemas this month, it is timely to consider the broader influences on O’Farrell’s novel and Shakespeare’s play.

The inspirations are not singular in either case. Shakespeare was influenced by clear creative precursors, while O’Farrell’s depiction of maternal grief is haunted by her personal experience.

A rescued wife?

O’Farrell has repeatedly stated in interviews that she had two motivations for writing Hamnet: to “rescue” Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway from negative representations in biographies of Shakespeare, and to “correct” what she perceives as the lack of acknowledgement of the significance of Hamnet’s death to Shakespeare’s art.

Her former concern manifests in her representation of Anne as a quietly wilful character, who engineers her husband’s escape from his overbearing father in Stratford to London, where his career can take flight. The novel’s third-person narrative is increasingly filtered through Anne’s perspective as the story progresses, placing her grief centre stage.

In a pointed intervention, O’Farrell names her “Agnes”. This is the name she is given in her father Richard Hathaway’s will, though the assertion that Agnes is her “true” name is problematic, due to a lack of other documentary sources and because spelling was variable at the time.

Renaming Anne is indicative of O’Farrell’s desire to offer a fresh vision, but this in itself is not a new project. Carol Anne Duffy’s poem Anne Hathaway (1999) and Germaine Greer’s speculative biography Shakespeare’s Wife (2007) are two of many earlier revisionist treatments. Katherine West Schiel’s Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway (2018) tracks the long history of this inventive impulse.

O’Farrell explicitly encourages readers to connect Hamnet and Hamlet through two historical notes at the front of the book. The first informs us that Hamlet was staged only four years after Hamnet’s death; the second cites Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt’s claim that Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable names in Stratford in the period.

These selective facts serve O’Farrell’s fiction well. But the view that Hamlet memorialises Hamnet is, as scholar James Shapiro argues, a myth. While the novel’s promise to deliver the “backstage” story of the creation of Hamlet is alluring, its imputation that Hamnet’s death was the primary inspiration for the writing of the play is countered by the historical evidence and the play itself.

Does Shakespeare’s son haunt Hamlet?

The opening of Hamnet echoes that of Hamlet. In the novel’s first scene, Hamnet explores an empty house. O’Farrell gives him an exquisitely physical existence: he jumps from the third step and hurts his knees, he notices the orange embers and spiralling smoke in the fireplace. He calls out, “Where is everyone?”

His reality is unstable, palpable and yet spectral, as though he were already dead. This impression is advanced when he spooks his grandfather, whose sight is ailing:

“Who’s there?” he cries. “Who is that?”
“It’s me.”
“Who?”
“Me.” Hamnet steps towards the narrow shaft of light slanting through the window. “Hamnet.”

The beginning of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is similarly disorienting:

BARNARDO: Who’s there?
FRANCISCO: Nay answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

We taste the fearful vigilance of the guards on the battlements of Elsinore castle. About eighteen lines later, we find out why everyone is so jumpy. The newly arrived guard asks: “What, has this thing appeared again tonight?”

As in O’Farrell’s novel, we enter a destabilised reality, in which physical sensation, here the “bitter cold”, amplifies the existential dread caused, in this case, by the repeated appearance of a ghost.

The biographical connection between Hamnet and Hamlet is clinched in the novel’s closing scene through Agnes’s response to a performance of Hamlet. Seeing her husband acting on stage as the ghost of Hamlet’s father (who is also named Hamlet), Agnes believes that Shakespeare

in writing this, in taking the role of the ghost, has changed places with his son […] he has put himself in death’s clutches, resurrecting the boy in his place.

As he exits, the ghost – Shakespeare – turns toward Agnes and “speaks his final words: ‘Remember me’.”

These words provide a poetic resolution for O’Farrell’s novel, but they are only the beginning of the tragedy for Hamlet. Readers familiar with the play may find it amusing that Agnes’s interest in the character bearing her dead son’s name evaporates before the end of Act I.

Grief is certainly a shared thread between the two stories, but if we take the drama on its own terms, “remember me”, as spoken by the Ghost, is unlikely to work as a salve for Agnes’s grief. In fact, as the next four acts bear out, the course of Hamlet’s grief for his father’s death is tortured. What torments him and results in many deaths, including his own, is not the loss of a beloved father, but regicidal corruption in the state and a personal commission to revenge “a foul and most unnatural murder”.

“Remember me” burdens Hamlet rather than frees him, making the play an ill-fitting memorial for Shakespeare’s lost son. By contrast, consider Constance’s lament in King John:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

When Shakespeare wanted to portray the grief of a parent for a lost child, he knew how.

Hamlet is unlikely to have been a tribute to little Hamnet, but there are several imaginative sources. Hamlet bears more resemblance to the 12th-century Danish legend of Amleth than it does to Shakespeare’s life: a king is murdered by his brother, who subsequently marries the king’s wife; the son acts mad to protect himself from his uncle; an eavesdropper is killed; Amleth berates his mother Gerutha.

But there were even more immediate creative precursors. A play, now lost, called Hamlet is recorded in the diary of the theatre manager Philip Henslowe as being performed in London in 1594, at least five years before Shakespeare’s. What if, rather than pouring out his heart’s grief over his son, Shakespeare was adapting a recent hit?

In addition, Shakespeare was cashing in on the popularity of a play by Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1592), in which a father revenges the murder of his son, Horatio, using a play to do so.

Reading Hamlet through the prism of biographical speculation impoverishes our understanding of the play and its relationship with stories in circulation during the Renaissance period. Shakespeare used matter other than his own experience as creative springboards for his imagination – just as O’Farrell, in crafting Hamnet, borrows some material from Shakespeare’s life and work, and much from her own.

A well of maternal grief

Reading Hamnet primarily in relation to Anne Hathaway, or Shakespeare, or his play Hamlet, is limiting. On the other hand, O’Farrell’s biography yields some illuminating links with her novel’s depiction of maternal grief.

In her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am (2017), O’Farrell writes about her experiences of pregnancy loss and her powerlessness in the face of her elder daughter’s life-threatening medical condition. In the mid-2000s, following the traumatic birth of her first child, a son, O’Farrell experienced multiple miscarriages.

She eventually conceived a daughter through IVF. This daughter lives with an immunological disorder, which leaves her vulnerable to ordinary illnesses, such as the common cold, and prone to anaphylaxis triggered by exposure to a variety of everyday substances. Consequently, O’Farrell and her family live “in a state of high alert”.

O’Farrell describes how the lack of vocabulary and rituals around miscarriage compounded her grief. She laments that children lost before they are born are “so invisible, so evanescent” that “our language doesn’t even have a word for them”. She also admonishes the “school of thought […] that expects women to get over a miscarriage as if nothing has happened, to metabolise it quickly and get on with life”.

In Hamnet, the absent presence of lost children is vividly portrayed. The novel evokes a matrix of loss that goes beyond Hamnet’s death. It references Shakespeare’s siblings who died in childhood, including his sisters Anne and the renamed “Eliza” (Joan). In the novel, one of Shakespeare’s surviving sisters is also called Eliza, a living memorial to her dead sibling.

In her own life, O’Farrell has been deprived of the opportunity to name and mourn, but she has meticulously populated Hamnet with lost children who continue to demand the attention of the living.

In O’Farrell’s memoir, death stalks the child who has lived when many before her did not. O’Farrell and her family must be always prepared for her daughter’s anaphylaxis. They must never leave the house without an emergency kit; they must weigh up the risks posed by a simple walk in the park or a play date. Then, when the world strikes, “you are reduced to a crystalline point, to a single purpose: to keep your child alive, to ensnare her in the world of the living, to hang on to her and never let her go”.

O’Farrell describes an attack in disturbing detail: hives leads to swelling of the airways, which, without emergency treatment, can be followed by cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, the victim is “clawing at their throat, hoarse with panic and fear,” and feels cold to the touch as their blood pressure drops.

There is more than a shade of this terror in the novel’s descriptions of Hamnet’s decline. As the fever takes hold, he is transported to a snowy landscape “he doesn’t recognise”, which tempts him to “surrender himself, to stretch out in this glistening, thick white blanket: what relief it would give him”.

One cannot fail to think of O’Farrell’s efforts to keep her daughter alive as Agnes watches Hamnet in his death throes, pleading with him not to go.

As a beautifully affecting portrait of grief, Hamnet achieves what Hamlet never set out to do: it inscribes the memory of children taken too soon and testifies to the necessity of mourning and remembrance. As readers, playgoers or film fans, it makes for a richer experience to weigh each work by its own merits, because it takes many different kinds of ghosts to make a story.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. It takes many ghosts to make a story: how Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet takes from – and mistakes – Shakespeare – https://theconversation.com/it-takes-many-ghosts-to-make-a-story-how-maggie-ofarrells-hamnet-takes-from-and-mistakes-shakespeare-272077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

In recent years, the way drivers interact with cars has fundamentally changed. Physical buttons have gradually disappeared from dashboards as more functions have been transferred to touchscreens.

Touchscreens in vehicle dashboards date back to the 1980s. But modern cars consolidate functions into these systems far beyond what we’ve seen before, to the point where a car feels mostly like a computer.

This may create the impression of a modern, technologically advanced vehicle. However, scientific evidence increasingly points to touchscreens compromising our safety.

In fact, ANCAP Safety, the independent car safety assessment program for Australia and New Zealand, has announced that from 2026 it will ask car manufacturers to “bring back buttons” for important driver controls, including headlights and windscreen wipers. Similar moves are underway in Europe.

ANCAP Safety will explicitly assess how vehicle design supports safe driving, and not just how well occupants are protected in the event of a crash – which means calling time on touchscreens that control everything in your car.

What human factors research says about distraction

Decades of road-safety research show human error plays a role in the vast majority of crashes. And the design of in-vehicle interfaces can contribute to how often drivers make safety errors.

Errors behind the wheel are often linked to driver distraction. But what exactly constitutes distraction, and how does it occur?

In human factors research, distraction is typically classified as visual, manual, cognitive, or a combination of these. A distracting event or stimulus may take the driver’s eyes off the road, their hands off the wheel, their mind off the driving task – or all three.

This is why texting while driving is considered particularly dangerous: it uses our visual, manual and cognitive resources at the same time. The more types of attention a task demands, the greater the level of distraction it creates.

Interactions with touchscreen menus can, in theory, produce comparable effects to texting. Adjusting a vehicle’s temperature using a sliding bar on a screen makes the driver divert visual attention from the road and allocate cognitive resources to the task.

By contrast, a physical knob allows the same adjustment to be made with minimal or no visual input. Tactile feedback and muscle memory compensate for the lack of visual information and let you complete the task while keeping eyes on the road.

How distracting are touchscreen features, really?

Perhaps the clearest and most accessible evidence to date comes from a 2020 UK study conducted by TRL, an independent transport research company.

Drivers completed simulated motorway drives while performing common in-car tasks. These included selecting music or navigating menus using touchscreen systems such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Performance was compared against baseline driving with no secondary task, as well as voice-based interaction.

When drivers interacted with touchscreens, their reaction times increased markedly.

At motorway speeds, this delay in reaction time corresponds to a measurable increase in stopping distance, meaning a driver would travel several additional car lengths before responding to a hazard.

Lane keeping and overall driving performance deteriorated too as a result of interaction with touchscreens.

The most striking aspect of this study is that touchscreen interaction was as distracting and, in some cases, even more distracting than texting while driving or having a handheld phone call.

Drivers don’t even like touchscreens

Concerns about touchscreen-heavy design are not limited to lab studies. They have also shown up clearly in overseas consumer surveys.

Data from a recent survey of 92,000 US buyers indicate that infotainment systems – the official term for that touchscreen in the centre of the dashboard – remain the most problematic feature in new cars.

The survey shows infotainment systems lead to more complaints in the first 90 days of ownership than any other vehicle system.

Most complaints relate to usability. Drivers report frustration with basic controls that have been moved to touchscreens – such as lights, windshield wipers, temperature – and now require multiple steps and visual attention to operate while driving.

Could voice recognition be the solution?

Voice recognition is often presented as a safer alternative to touchscreens because it removes the need to look away from the road. But evidence suggests it’s not completely risk free either.

A large meta-analysis of experimental studies examined how drivers perform while using in-vehicle and smartphone voice-recognition systems, combining results from 43 different studies.

Across the evidence base, voice interaction worsens driving performance compared with driving without any secondary task. It increases reaction times and negatively influences lane keeping and hazard detection.

When voice systems are compared with visual-manual systems, performance is slightly better with voice control. But even though voice recognition is less distracting than touchscreens, it’s still measurably more distracting compared to baseline driving where drivers don’t need to interact with any menus or change settings.

The comeback of buttons

The evidence is clear: controls we frequently use while driving – temperature, fan speed, windscreen demisting, volume and many others – should remain tactile.

The driver shouldn’t have to divert their visual attention from the road to control these. It’s especially problematic when such controls are buried in layered menus, so you need to tap several times just to find the function you want to change.

Touchscreens are better suited to secondary functions and settings typically adjusted before driving, such as navigation setup, media selection, and vehicle customisation.

The good news is the evidence is being translated into car safety assessment programs. From this year, ANCAP Safety and its counterpart in the European Union, Euro NCAP, will require physical controls for certain features to award the highest safety rating for new vehicles.

It’s up to manufacturers to decide whether to comply. However, some car makers, such as Volkswagen and Hyundai, have already been responding to these requirements and to pressure from consumers to bring the buttons back.

Milad Haghani receives funding from the Australian government’s Office of Road Safety.

– ref. Yes, those big touchscreens in cars are dangerous and buttons are coming back – https://theconversation.com/yes-those-big-touchscreens-in-cars-are-dangerous-and-buttons-are-coming-back-272704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Heap, Program Director for the Bachelor of Aviation, University of Southern Queensland

You arrive at the airport in plenty of time to check in. You reach the departure gate early. You board, walking down to your seat – and that’s when you discover the overhead lockers are already full.

Too much carry-on baggage can significantly delay departures, as cabin crew try to squeeze everything in – or send bags down to the hold.

As a former pilot turned aviation safety researcher, clearer rules for carry-on baggage are welcome, not least because too much cabin baggage is a real safety concern.

But as more airlines set carry-on limits, why are there different baggage rules for different airlines?

New rules for carry-on in Australia and beyond

From Monday February 2 2026, Virgin Australia will change their carry-on baggage policy for domestic flights.

Economy passengers will be limited to one standard-sized cabin bag for the overhead locker, weighing up to 8kg. A small, personal item that can fit under a seat will also be allowed.

International airlines are also adjusting their carry-on baggage rules. About a year ago, Air Canada restricted basic fare passengers to just one personal article for flights across North and Central America.

But the rules are confusing.

You could fly on the same type of plane from Sydney to Melbourne – such as a widely-used Boeing 737 – but depending on the airline and what you paid for your ticket, you’ll have completely different bag and weight restrictions.

If you fly with Qantas within Australia, your carry-on needs to be:

• one small personal item plus one standard piece of 10kg, or
• two smaller pieces, where each piece must not exceed 10kg, and the total weight of both pieces is 14kg, or
• one small piece and a garment bag, where each piece must not exceed 10kg and the total weight of both pieces is 14kg.

Budget carrier Jetstar is different again, allowing up to 7kg of carry-on luggage allowance, shared across two items.

So how do airlines actually set bag and weight limits?

Why passenger and baggage weight matters

Each aircraft has a maximum take-off weight, which can’t be exceeded to ensure it’s a safe flight. That total includes the weight of the plane, plus fuel, food and drink supplies in the galley, any cargo, the weight of the pilots and cabin crew, and the weight of the passengers and baggage.

Checked baggage is weighed at the check-in desk or bag drop. But what about carry-on bags?

If a plane is small, with fewer than seven passengers, actual passenger weights are needed. If you fly in remote parts of Australia – such as island-hopping in the Torres Strait – you have to weigh yourself, along with your bags, at the airport.

But for bigger planes on busier routes, Australian regulations allow an average passenger weight to calculate total passenger weight.

At the start of my flying career in 1998, the regulated standard weight for passengers flying in Australia was 77kg per person (excluding carry-on baggage).

But as people’s average weight has increased, the law has tried to keep up.

For planes with a maximum seating capacity of 150-299 seats, like a Boeing 737, the current standard weight of an adult male passenger is assumed to be 81.8kg, while it’s 66.7kg for adult women.

Then the standard weight for carry-on baggage is 7kg per passenger.

However, the law also allows individual airlines to seek approval for their own passenger and cabin baggage weights. That has to be approved by the regulator, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

That allows different airlines to have different rules around cabin baggage.

Billions of dollars for bags and other extras

Carry-on baggage rules used to be much more standard.

But the rise of low-cost airlines changed all that, charging for extra luggage, in-flight WiFi and food and drink as ancillary revenue: basically anything beyond the basic ticket.

The International Air Transport Association forecast ancillary revenue (including for extra baggage) will be worth US$144 billion (around A$220 billion) this year. That’s more than the value of transporting cargo around the world by air.

Today, how much you can pack usually depends on the fare or upgrades you choose.

Many passengers try to avoid ancillary fees by taking everything as carry-on. But airlines know this, so charge passengers extra for exceeding carry-on limits.

Lighten your load for a safer trip

Carry-on baggage is literal pain for cabin crew, who frequently suffer back and lifting injuries while helping passengers stow heavy bags in overhead compartments.

Beyond physical risk, crew members have to deal with the time-consuming congestion of passengers struggling with large items during boarding.

In an emergency, passengers stopping to grab bags rather than leaving them behind has been proven to slow down evacuations.

So the next time you’re getting ready to travel, remember: if you want to take off on time and be safer in an emergency, pack lighter.

Your cabin crew will thank you for it.

Natasha Heap was an airline pilot and captain, who flew from 1998 to 2012, including flying for QantasLink, Australia’s largest regional airline.

– ref. How do airlines set bag and weight limits? An ex-pilot explains new changes on the way – https://theconversation.com/how-do-airlines-set-bag-and-weight-limits-an-ex-pilot-explains-new-changes-on-the-way-267527