For many business owners, managing a crisis in silence is the default response. Companies generally prefer to deal with the fallout behind the scenes, following a simple mantra: resolve the issue and keep up the appearance that everything is “business as usual”.

However, this time, KitKat took a different approach. Instead of keeping it low-key, the brand took the incident public, transforming it into a campaign to engage the audience.

In just a few days, the incident gained worldwide traction on social media and news outlets. Audiences shifted from passive observers to active participants. This potential reputational threat ultimately became a record-breaking campaign with over 100 million views.

This is a prime example of how brands today have shifted from mere crisis management to using unexpected challenges as a way to engage audiences in real time.

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What actually happened?

The story began in late March 2026, when a truck carrying over 413,000 KitKat bars — roughly 12 tonnes — disappeared in transit between central Italy and Poland.

The timing was critical. This “unlucky” incident took place only a week before Easter and right as KitKat was debuting as an official Formula 1 partner.

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Take their “unique” official statement, for example. It was not your standard, boring corporate press release — it was written with a playful wink. At first, the internet was convinced it was an elaborate marketing stunt or an early April Fool’s joke, but KitKat soon confirmed: this was no prank.

In their statement, KitKat verified the theft and assured the public of product safety, but they did not stop there. By adding that the culprits had exceptional taste, they shifted the tone entirely. It was no longer a PR disaster to be fixed, it was a compelling story waiting to be told.

Working with VML, KitKat launched the Stolen KitKat Tracker, a digital tool where consumers could verify their chocolate’s origins using an eight-digit pack code.

The campaign triggered a massive cultural moment. #KitKatHeist became a trending topic, sparking millions of memes and inviting other major brands to join the conversation.

Rethinking the brand response to disruption

This case highlights the evolution of real-time marketing: the ability to pivot a crisis into a cultural moment. In today’s battle for attention (attention economy), KitKat proves that holding the public’s interest is just as vital as managing the brand’s reputation.

A key factor in the campaign’s effectiveness was direct audience involvement. By using the tracker, consumers moved beyond merely reading about the heist to actively taking part in it — a classic element of gamification. It was a simple but effective approach: it gave people a tangible reason to pick up a KitKat, engage with the brand, and, most importantly, share their results.

Consumers shifted from passive buyers to active participants in a live, unfolding story. This engagement did more than just capture attention. It drove sales and refreshed the brand’s connection with its customers.

At the same time, curiosity fuels the campaign, as the public remains unsure of how much is fact and how much is fiction. This uncertainty sparks deeper discussion and sharing, transforming a simple incident into an interactive experience while refocusing attention on the product itself.

The spillover effect: The power of collaborative brand storytelling

KitKat’s response did more than just spark attention. It created a cultural vacuum that other brands rushed to fill.

Ryanair, Domino’s, and Pizza Hut joined the party with their own official statements, each offering mock condolences while subtly promoting themselves in the same breath.

The result was a snowballing effect: every brand that joined extended the story’s lifespan, reached a new audience, and reflected that visibility back onto KitKat. What began as a single brand’s crisis evolved into a shared cultural moment, where participation became the price of entry.

Brands amplifying each other is no accident. It works because the original incident provided a clear, low-stakes hook for others to latch onto. Since there was no real harm involved, the humour was accessible to everyone; the stakes were low enough to serve as an open invitation for play.

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Humorous crisis communication is not merely a stylistic choice; it is a conditional one. KitKat could pull it off because the incident was victimless, posed no safety risks, and involved an everyday product with no significant moral weight.

The future of the attention economy

Campaigns like this raise an important ethical question: where should brands draw the line between seizing opportunities and corporate responsibility?

KitKat’s response worked well not just because it was creative, but because of the crisis itself: it was low-stakes, harmless, and socially acceptable. Ultimately, not every disruption should become a campaign. In the world of real-time marketing, good judgment is just as important as acting quickly.

KitKat’s success proves we have moved beyond the era of one-way communication and into the era of “navigating moments”. In today’s landscape, a brand’s ability to balance instant visibility with genuine credibility is crucial to stand out.

The challenge is no longer avoiding a crisis, but knowing how to respond in a way that builds both attention and trust.

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Para penulis tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.

After a year-long push to raise money via private capital, Cricket Australia (CA) has announced it will not sell some or all of its Big Bash League (BBL) franchises.

The news comes after Queensland Cricket told CA it would join Cricket NSW in rejecting the private ownership idea first presented by CA in mid-2025.

So, why was CA looking at private equity, why did the two powerful states reject the idea, and are there any alternatives?

Why did CA pursue private equity?

The BBL was established in 2011 and consists of eight city-based franchises: two each in Melbourne and Sydney, plus teams in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart. CA owns the league and its franchises, while the state associations manage the teams.

In its early years, the competition was a breath of fresh air for cricket fans, with games regularly attracting healthy attendances and prime-time television audiences.

Despite the BBL’s success, CA has struggled financially: it has made annual losses in five of the past ten years and reached what CA described as a low point with the loss of A$31.9 million in 2023–24, before recovering to a smaller loss of $11.3 million in 2024–25.

The governing body has had to cut significant costs in areas such as administration, pathways and community cricket.

There is obvious appeal in a massive cash injection that would boost the bottom line.

As rumours of a possible selloff swirled, CA engaged the Boston Consulting Group to develop a two-tier privatisation model:

• a 49% partial sale of six BBL clubs, and

• a full sale of one club in each of Sydney and Melbourne.

CA forecast these options would inject between A$600 million and $800 million into its coffers.

The consultants were able to draw on the experience of existing privatised cricket competitions, including the Indian Premier League, Caribbean Premier League and SA20 (South Africa).

Why did the idea fall flat?

CA needed five of the states to agree to the proposals if it was to move forward with its plans.

South Australia was in favour of a “hybrid” model (with heavy caveats on investment), while Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia were keen to pursue private investment. NSW had been the most vocal opponent, with Queensland also against the idea.

CA was hoping private investors would be in place for the 2027–28 season.

On Thursday, CA chief executive Todd Greenberg predicted private equity would eventually be brought in:

I do think at some point in our lifetimes that private capital will come in. If we’re going to compete with the rest of the world it is inevitable. Our whole project has been about balancing the risks that come with that and making sure the controls are in place for Australian cricket to bring private capital in but continue to operate the way the game has been governed and should be governed.

Is private investment a panacea?

Many professional sports leagues have turned towards private finance. A recent case in point is Rugby Australia (RA).

RA’s financial issues were not dissimilar to those facing the BBL: RA finished the 2024–25 year with a $38.5 million deficit, on top of a $13 million deficit for 2023–24 and a $13 million negative equity position.

However, RA was successful in raising private capital, but not in the normal manner of selling equity.

Rather it secured an $80 million private credit facility from Pacific Equity Partners, which it later repaid ahead of schedule thanks to the receipts from the British and Irish Lions tour.

The advantages of RA choosing debt over private equity include:

• it retained 100% of commercial revenues

• it maintained full control of the sport’s direction

• it kept the door open for future private equity deals.

Upsides and downsides

It is difficult to find a report from management consultants that does not recommend privatisation. It is a convenient strategy because professional sports can solidify their finances without serious structural reforms.

Private equity investment would have likely led to higher salaries for players, which would in turn attract more elite talent. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine a better on-field product would attract more broadcast dollars, sponsors and fans.

Yet among the rosy predictions of financial gain, there is often an under-quantification of the downsides. These include:

• a possible loss of competitive balance. Currently, CA attempts to ensure rough equality among teams. Privatisation will likely favour the big, fully privatised franchises

• likely alienation of fan bases if new owners rename or rebrand teams, which is what happened recently in England’s Hundred competition after ownership stakes were sold to IPL teams and US investors

• intangible assets such as the league’s image, reputation and fan appreciation, which are often underestimated, may be impacted by dramatic changes such as private ownership models.

This is not to argue against private investment but rather to point out there are considerable disadvantages to consider.

There are other options

CA does need money but privatisation of BBL franchises would have been risky and premature.

RA, not normally seen as a model of financial efficiency, has shown the use of debt rather than private equity can be a means of establishing financial stability without rushing into privatisation.

John Mangan 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.

With the release this week of the government’s News Bargaining Incentive, it’s worth reconsidering the origins and achievements of its predecessor, the News Media Bargaining Code.

Both have the same aim: to gain payment from the search and social media companies that profit from the use of media content, but do not effectively pay for this necessary input to their business.

So what did we learn from the first laws, and how can that be applied to this new attempt to make tech companies pay for news?

A case of market failure

The bargaining code had its origins in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC’s) Digital Platform Inquiry from December 2017 to June 2019. The inquiry was tasked with examining competition, consumer, advertising and news issues.

There were 23 recommendations, one of which was for a news media bargaining code.

The logic for the code was that search and social media companies needed news, but they could choose any media outlet. But the media had no choice but to align with the major platforms.

There was thus a market power imbalance, a classic market failure. While not all market failures need a response, this one did, given the critical role that news media plays in our democracy.

The logic for the design of the code came from access regimes which the ACCC regulated in other areas. For example, many companies export their produce, but only having one port from which to do so gives the port huge market power.

In that situation, “regulated access regimes” can be used that require the parties to negotiate on the access fees and, failing agreement, they would be set by arbitration. The fees would be set via a negotiate/arbitrate process, not the use of significant market power.

A contentious start

The news media bargaining code required designated platform companies to negotiate with media companies and, failing agreement, an arbitrator would decide the payment for media content by search and social media companies.

Naturally, there were some enhancements. Perhaps the key one was that the code required the platforms to negotiate will all eligible media companies, which were to be those primarily devoted to public interest news.

Both Google and Meta objected to the legislation. Google threatened to leave Australia, while Meta removed all news and much more from Facebook.

Both eventually backed down, but they obtained one compromise from the government: platform companies would not be designated under the code if they did a sufficient number of deals with media companies.

This actually turned out well for the media companies as the platforms did numerous deals within around six months – much faster than had they been designated.

They were not designated under the code but this was never the objective; deals were.

More than $1 billion in deals

As public policy initiatives go, the News Media Bargaining Code was a success and a world first.

Deals worth around $250 million per year to Australian media companies were done, meeting the expectations of the ACCC.

Google did deals with virtually all relevant media companies, while Meta did deals with most. Importantly, some small media companies achieved deals better that the larger companies on a per-journalist basis.

While more than $1 billion was paid to media companies over five years, a problem emerged. When Meta’s three-year deals expired, it said it would not do any further deals. Google’s largely five-year deals continued.

Meta said it did not need news on its platform and, in response to legislation in Canada that largely copied the Australian code, but under which Meta was automatically designated, Meta took all news off its Canadian platforms.

While many called for Meta to be designated under the code here, it had to be assumed that if it was, Meta would also take news off its platforms in Australia.

Read more: Facebook won’t keep paying Australian media outlets for their content. Are we about to get another news ban?

How is the new initiative different?

More than 18 months ago, the Australian government said that to address this “flaw” in the News Media Bargaining Code it would proceed with a new approach. A News Bargaining Incentive would be introduced, which would cover the platforms whether or not they carried news.

What has never been explained, in any way, is why this provision could not have been inserted into the original code. That is, the News Media Bargaining Code would apply to Google, Meta and say TikTok whether or not they carried news.

This would have provided continuity, as Google was continuing to work under the code and was providing 70% of the total payments.

Of course, Meta would have objected, but no more than it will under the News Bargaining Incentive.

Because there is no arbitration mechanism under the incentive, the government has said the platforms do not have to do deals with all media companies. Indeed, four can be enough. To require deals with everyone would mean the media companies could extract high payments knowing the platform has to do a deal with no resort to arbitration to settle a dispute.

The incentive sets financial parameters on what the deals will be worth using the News Media Bargaining Code payment as a guide. If the deals are not done, the covered platforms will need to pay a “charge” set at 50% higher than the value of the envisaged deals. This is a very different approach with some complexity and potential inequity.

That said, the government is to be congratulated for pushing on with the noble cause of protecting journalism. Consultation is occurring on the News Bargaining Incentive, and it may well be legislated by mid-year.

Australia is again leading the world by taking such action. Let us hope some amendments are made and that the incentive works well.

Rod Sims was Chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission from 2011 to 2022.

Most people know about “good” and “bad” cholesterol. But few realise there is another type called lipoprotein(a). It can raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes, even in people who do everything right.

This lesser-known cholesterol particle, often written as Lp(a), is gaining increasing attention from researchers and drug companies.

Lp(a) isn’t included in routine cholesterol tests and there’s currently little we can do about it. That may now be changing.

What is lipoprotein(a)?

Lipoprotein(a) is a cholesterol that carries lipoprotein – particles made of fats and proteins – in your blood. It’s structurally similar to LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol), but with an additional protein attached called apolipoprotein(a).

This extra protein component seems to make Lp(a) more likely to contribute to the build-up of fatty deposits in arteries. It may also promote blood clotting. Together, these processes increase the likelihood of cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke).

Large-scale studies and international guidelines now recognise Lp(a) as a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

What determines your Lp(a) levels?

Unlike most other cholesterol measures, Lp(a) is largely determined by genetics.

Around 70-90% of variation in Lp(a) levels is inherited. This is driven mainly by differences in the LPA gene, which controls the structure of apolipoprotein(a).

Because of this strong genetic control, Lp(a) levels are usually set early in life and remain relatively stable over time, with little influence from diet, exercise or body weight.

There are some smaller influences. Levels can vary by sex, ethnicity and hormonal changes, and may be slightly affected by factors such as menopause or kidney disease.

How does it affect your risk?

A growing body of research shows higher Lp(a) levels are associated with an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and aortic valve disease.

Importantly, the relationship appears continuous. In long-term studies, cardiovascular risk rises step by step as Lp(a) levels increase.

Lp(a) also adds to overall risk. For example, someone with high LDL cholesterol and high Lp(a) is likely to be at higher risk than someone with elevated LDL cholesterol alone.

For people with higher Lp(a) levels, cardiovascular risk rises mainly when inflammation is elevated.

This helps explain why some people develop cardiovascular disease despite otherwise favourable risk profiles.

Can you lower lipoprotein(a)?

There are currently few options to lower Lp(a).

Lifestyle changes that improve heart health, such as eating well, being physically active and not smoking, remain essential. But they have minimal effect on Lp(a) itself.

Most commonly used cholesterol-lowering medications, including statins, do not reduce Lp(a). In some cases, statins may even increase Lp(a) slightly. Despite this, statins still reduce overall cardiovascular risk and remain a cornerstone of treatment.

Some newer drugs, such as PCSK9 inhibitors, can lower Lp(a), but typically only by a modest amount of around 15–30%.

Several drug companies, including Novartis, Amgen and Eli Lilly, are racing to develop treatments that specifically lower Lp(a). These new medicines work very differently from statins. Instead of helping the body clear cholesterol from the blood, they use a “gene silencing” approach that reduces how much Lp(a) the liver makes in the first place.

This means it switches off production of cholesterol rather than trying to remove what is already there.

In early clinical trials, these drugs have lowered Lp(a) levels by 80–90%, far more than existing treatments. This is why Lp(a) is suddenly getting attention.

If upcoming trials show these large reductions also lead to fewer heart attacks and strokes, it could change how cardiovascular risk is assessed and treated, especially for people whose risk is driven largely by genetics rather than lifestyle.

Should you get tested?

Lp(a) is not included in standard cholesterol tests. A specific blood test is required.

Medicare doesn’t cover these blood tests, so if your doctor orders one you’ll have to pay out of pocket – around A$25 to $80 – plus any costs associated with the consultation.

International guidelines now recommend measuring Lp(a) at least once in adulthood, particularly for people with a family history of early heart disease or unexplained cardiovascular risk.

Because levels are largely genetically determined and stable, a single measurement is often considered sufficient for most people.

What should you focus on?

Learning you have high Lp(a) can feel frustrating, especially given the limited options to lower it directly.

But it’s important to see Lp(a) as one part of your overall cardiovascular risk.

There are still many factors you can influence to lower your overall risk, and particularly your LDL cholesterol. These include:

• LDL (bad) cholesterol
• blood pressure
• smoking
• physical activity
• diet quality
• managing conditions such as diabetes

For people with elevated Lp(a), managing these factors may be even more important.

What happens next?

Research into Lp(a) is moving quickly. If current clinical trials show targeted therapies reduce cardiovascular events, testing and treatment may become more common.

For now, awareness is an important first step.

If you are concerned about your cardiovascular risk, it may be worth discussing Lp(a) testing with your doctor, especially if you have a strong family history of heart disease.

At the same time, the broader message to maximise heart health through healthy behaviours remains unchanged. Even as new risk factors emerge, the foundations of good heart health are still the things we can control.

Lauren Ball receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Health and Wellbeing Queensland, Heart Foundation, Gallipoli Medical Research and Mater Health, Springfield City Group. She is a director of Dietitians Australia, a director of the Darling Downs and West Moreton Primary Health Network and an associate member of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Kirsten Adlard works for the National Heart Foundation of Australia and is an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. She also has a membership and holds accreditation as an exercise physiologist through Exercise and Sports Science Australia.

As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island.

We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, “It was nothing. In fact, it was less than nothing. Negative five years I dwelt with Calypso. How else could I have arrived home after only ten years? If you don’t believe me, ask her.”

Quantum particles, it turns out, are just as wily as Odysseus, as we have shown in an experiment published in Physical Review Letters. Not only can their arrival time suggest that they dwelt with other particles for a negative amount of time, but if one asks those other particles, they will corroborate the story.

Photons dwelling with atoms

Our experiment used photons – quantum particles of light – and the against-the-odds journey they must undertake to pass straight through a cloud of rubidium atoms.

These atoms have a “resonance” with the photons, meaning the energy of the photon can be transferred temporarily to the atoms as an atomic excitation. This allows the photon to “dwell” in the atomic cloud for a time before being released.

For this resonance to be effective, the photon must have a well-defined energy, matching the amount of energy required to put a rubidium atom into an excited state.

But, by a form of Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, if the energy of the photon is well defined then its timing must be uncertain: the pulse of light the photon occupies must have a long duration. This means we can’t know exactly when the photon enters the cloud, but we can know on average when it enters.

If a photon like this is fired into the cloud, the most likely outcome is that its energy will be transferred to the atoms, and then re-emitted as a photon travelling in a random direction. In such cases, the photon is scattered, and fails to arrive at its Ithaca.

Photon arrival times

But if the photon does make it straight through, a strange thing happens. Based on the average time when the photon enters the cloud, one can calculate the expected average time it would arrive at the far side of the cloud, assuming it travels at the speed of light (as photons usually do).

What one finds is that the photon actually arrives far earlier than that. In fact, it arrives so early it appears to have spent a negative amount of time inside the cloud – to exit, on average, before it enters.

This effect has been known for decades and was observed in a 1993 experiment. But physicists had mostly decided not to take this negative time seriously.

That’s because it can be explained by saying that only the very front of the long-duration pulse makes it straight through the atomic cloud, while the rest is scattered. This leads to a successful (non-scattered) photon arriving earlier than would be naively expected.

Asking the atoms

However, Aephraim Steinberg, one of the authors of that 1993 paper, was not so quick to accept this dismissal of the negative time as an artefact. In his laboratory at the University of Toronto, he wanted to find out what happened if one queried the rubidium atoms in the cloud to find out how long the photon had spent dwelling among them as an excitation. After an initial experiment with inconclusive results, he asked me, as a quantum theorist, for help in working out what to expect.

When we talk of querying the atoms, what this means in practice is continuously making a measurement on the atoms while the photon is passing through the cloud, to probe whether the photon’s energy is currently dwelling there. But there is a subtlety here: measurements in quantum physics inevitably disturb the system being measured.

If we were to make a precise measurement of whether the photon is dwelling in the atoms, at each instant of time, we would prevent the atoms from interacting with the photon. It is as if, merely by watching Calypso closely, we would stop her getting her hands on Odysseus (or vice versa). This is the well known quantum Zeno effect, which would destroy the very phenomenon we want to study.

Our experiment

The solution is to make, instead, a very imprecise (but still very accurately calibrated) measurement. That is the price paid to keep the disturbance negligible. Specifically, we fired a weak laser beam – unrelated to the single photon pulse – through the cloud of atoms, and measured small changes in the phase of the beam’s light to probe whether the atoms were excited.

Any single run of the experiment gives only a very rough indication of whether the photon dwelt in the atoms, but averaging millions of runs yields an accurate dwell time.

Amazingly, the result of this weak measurement of dwell time, when the photon goes straight through the cloud, exactly equals the negative time suggested by the photons’ average arrival time. Prior to our work, no-one suspected that these two times, measured in entirely different ways, would be equal.

Crucially, the negative value of the weakly measured dwell time cannot be explained by imagining that only the front of the photon’s pulse gets through, unlike the time inferred from the arrival time.

So what does this all mean? Is a time machine just around the corner?

Sadly, no. Our experiment is fully explained by standard physics.

But it does show that negative dwell time is not an artefact. However paradoxical it may seem, it has a directly measurable effect on the atomic cloud that the photon traverses. And it reminds us that there are still lands to discover on the odyssey that is quantum research.

Howard Wiseman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Queensland Government.

The media made Pauline Hanson and One Nation, but now the party holds all the power.

For 30 years, journalists have ridden a merry-go-round reporting on its stunts and inflammatory rhetoric, while grappling with how to interrogate its policies and hold the party to account.

In Episode 5 of The Making of One Nation, far-right communication researcher Kurt Sengul says the party’s used the media.

The media have a lot of power to grant outsider fringe parties with legitimacy and momentum and exposure.

Professional political parties go out of their way to avoid scandal, to avoid controversy, where far-right parties lean into it. One Nation has gone out of its way to generate media coverage.

But he says it’s been a cosy partnership.

It’s been described as a symbiotic relationship. They have something that the media wants, right? Which is the ability to attract headlines, views.

But now? One Nation isn’t so reliant on the media anymore.

It was the first political party in Australia to launch a website, an early adopter of social media, and now the first with its own animated satirical series on YouTube as well as a feature-length film.

Its YouTube channel has nearly 33 million views.

“It’s almost a perfect storm for the far-right”, Sengul says.

Algorithms favour their style of communication, that controversial polarised content. Social media now, if you can believe it, is even more conducive to the far right given that figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have really wound back policies around content moderation.

So the digital environment really favours the far-right, the traditional media environment still really favours them. And you have the far-right employing hybrid media strategies that really effectively sort of target both elements.

Listen to the interview with Sengul at The Making of One Nation podcast, available at Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode was written by Ashlynne McGhee and produced and edited by Isabella Podwinski. Sound design by Michelle Macklem.

The title of Edwina Preston’s fourth book, Sororicidal, warns us against the presence of a happy family. After all, the word refers to the killing of a sister, or the tendency to harm a sister – and in each section of this novel we come up against a different kind of harm.

It begins in early 20th century Australia and follows a dysfunctional family, and especially their daughters – one an artist, one later a conflicted mother – over several decades. It is organised chronologically in four sections, with the sisters alternating in the role of narrator, giving us very distinct perspectives on the start of their family.

Sororcidal continues threads from Preston’s earlier work. Her biography of artist Howard Arkley (2002) illuminates the world of Australian art and artists. The Inheritance of Ivorie Hammer (2012) plays with the mores and the complexities of Victorian Australia, and showcases the author’s skill in crafting characters and events. Bad Art Mother (2022), does what it says on the label, exploring the complexities of being a mother who is also an artist.

Blame the parents

Parents usually take the blame, of course, and here the parents are indeed blameworthy. They are so cold, so uninterested in their children, that they are known to the sisters – and therefore also to us – only as Mr Cussens and Mrs Cussens. It is perhaps the iciest account of a parent-child relationship I have read since Jeanette Winterson’s autobiography. Neither notice that their elder daughter, Mary, actively tries to kill little Margot – or at least, that is what Margot claims.

To make things worse, the girls are not permitted to attend school, so are deprived of everyday socialising. This is probably for the best, because the girls torment those around them: “Hiding things dear to people, removing and discarding people’s mail.” They maintain a Hate Book, full of written and sketched caricatures of those they dislike – which is everyone else. Indeed, “Even at Sunday school, where God was watching in his pall of yellow love, no one was safe from us.”

They are caught out as bullies and reported to their parents, but their father’s mild rebuke lacks any moral centre; he points out, merely, that “preying on weakness […] casts you in a bad light”. Nonetheless, the girls continue their malicious behaviour, attacking their parents, the household staff, the cook’s daughter Nessy; and of course each other.

Nessy appears in the story only as they move into adolescence. She and Margot build a friendship deeply embedded in naïve sexual desires. Margot is not the only one yearning for sexual encounters though: Mrs Cussens, Mary and Nessy all compete fiercely for the attention of the hot tennis coach. Inevitably, it comes to a bad end.

At this point in my reading, I had to pause for fresh air. Such malevolence, especially from Mary. Such emotional dishonesty, especially from Margot. Such an excellent portrait of the family: beautifully told, sharp and witty, showing an unnervingly precise understanding of how awful children can be, and how awful it can be to be a child.

The second section is told from Mary’s point of view. It is set a decade into the future, following Mary’s time in the United Kingdom, where she learned to paint, and learned too that the art establishment is at best patronising toward women artists.

Mary as told by Margot is malign, but Mary as told by Mary is affectionate and patient with her sister. She is content to focus not on principles and depths, but simply on what she calls “the delineation of surfaces”. Home for their unmourned mother’s funeral, she finds Margot is now religious, married to an ordinary man and the mother of a rather extraordinary child.

It is the child who becomes the catalyst for this section’s act of sororicide: to Margot’s resentment, Mary and her niece find ways to bond. I won’t explain this – no spoilers! – but only say that (again) it ends badly. Of course it does.

By section three we have reached the 1950s, and Margot has the mic again. Her daughter has grown and gone. Her husband has died, as has their father. The sisters, now orphans, are living in the rather derelict family home: as Margot observes, “death brought us together”. But each pursues her own interests, and they live largely parallel lives, though still managing to hurt each other from time to time.

Catastrophe and hope

Mary takes over the narrative in the final section, some years later. Her account of what drove perhaps the most sororicidal event of their lives is, inevitably, self-interested. But she seems to accept she has caused Margot terrible harm, and Margot has responded in kind. However catastrophic, this final act seems to lance a lifelong ulcer. A scent of hope is in the air.

For many women who, like me, grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, sisterhood was a word for mutual support in the face of the exclusion or trivialisation of women’s interests and needs. Sisterhood is what Mary and Margot constantly reject, refusing to join forces.

Although each of them comments acidly at times on the gendered nature of their society, they remain separated by constant competition – for space, time, attention, and for control of the narrative. It takes them a lifetime to find a way to support each other.

For those of us who are sisters, or who have sisters, this beautifully crafted, densely textured novel offers a warning: to be kind, to be connected, to cleave to sisterhood. The only other option, it seems, is sororicide.

Jen Webb has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Arsenal is still on the top of the English Premier League ladder, but as in previous years, the Gunners might be crumbling just when a first title since 2003–04 is within touching distance.

In early April, Arsenal had a commanding grip on the title – nine points ahead of nearest rivals Manchester City. Now it’s just three (and City has played one less game).

This isn’t the first time Arsenal has lapsed at late stages in recent years: last season they finished second behind Liverpool. In 2023–4 they finished runners-up behind Manchester City. They were second again the year before.

Arsenal fans are no doubt expecting another dose of late-season heartbreak – it’s likely players and club staff are feeling similarly jittery. However, there are psychological strategies that could help them keep fighting until the final whistle.

Oh no, not again

The team led by Mikel Arteta recently eked out a 1-0 win against Newcastle United but before that had suffered two consecutive defeats: first against Bournemouth at home and then to Manchester City.

Looking closely at these two matches, they had a similar dynamic: Arsenal conceded the first goal in the first half, scored the equaliser a few minutes later, and suffered defeat in the second half.

This looks like a symptom. If you concede a goal earlier in a match, you need to put extra energy in to find an equaliser. At halftime, players should reset but the emotional cost of chasing an equaliser may impair their shift into a winning mindset.

This is choking under pressure: when fear of losing is bigger than the willingness to win.

Arsenal’s players have a team of sport psychologists and mindset coaches at their disposal.

Here are the four key psychological tools they will probably use to improve consistency in these final rounds of the season.

1. Work out your routines

Consistency is crucial for athletes, and predictability creates the space for players to become consistent.

The basic assumption behind the concept is: if you keep doing the same things, you can expect the same results. Regardless of the level of competitive pressure, sport performance tends to become more stable when pre-performance routines are applied.

These routines can take many forms: some athletes might prefer to take a shower, or pray, visualise or meditate before a match.

During games, many prefer to take a deep breath before a penalty (such as Cristiano Ronaldo) whereas others might fix their gaze on a single spot on the ball before shooting.

The key is, sport psychologists should help athletes tailor their pre-game or pre-shot routines to enhance performance.

2. Practise mindfulness

Mental distress can have a crushing impact on athletes.

When an athlete is emotionally stressed, the body tends to increase its levels of cortisol (the stress hormone), which leads to muscle rigidness. This can impact performance.

To counter this, leading stress education expert Jon Kabat-Zinn developed mindfulness-based stress reduction – a set of techniques that includes breathing meditation, deliberate focus on the present moment, and yoga-like body movements to improve emotional regulation.

When empirically tested in athletes, mindfulness meditation showed significant effectiveness to improve attentional control (the ability to focus attention on a task while avoiding distractions).

Applying mindfulness techniques alone or in combination can boost performance and may help Arsenal achieve the consistency needed in these final rounds.

3. Be positive with self-talk

Self-confidence and fear of mistakes can freeze athletes in high-stakes moments. This impacts decision-making and slows down execution.

For example, a full-back gets the ball on the defensive flank and scans for options. He can either play a penetrating pass to break the opposition’s defensive lines or pass backwards to his centre-back.

This a split-second decision – if he hesitates, the forward pass can be intercepted and the backward pass may come under pressure, leading to a costly mistake.

To tackle self-doubt, sport psychologists teach athletes to reframe their thoughts and create more effective task-oriented inner dialogues.

Research shows instructional self-talk can help athletes improve their performance.

So in the example above, what our full-back needs to do is, instead of thinking about the potential consequences of his actions, just tell himself to execute the pass.

If done properly, instructional self-talk can help Arsenal’s players choose the best options and execute them.

4. Get used to dealing with pressure

Matches are high-stakes, but training sessions tend to be focused on technical and tactical skills under lower pressure.

However, research shows embedding mild anxiety into training sessions helps athletes cope better under pressure.

Athletes who train under pressure often perform better than those who do not.

So Arsenal’s coaches should be looking to ramp up pressure in training sessions while ensuring the players can work with sport psychologists and mindset coaches.

A race in two

After the recent win against Newcastle, Arteta said:

I don’t expect after 22 years not winning it that it is going to be a path of roses and beautiful music around it. It is going to be like this and we are ready for it.

Whether they are ready for it remains to be seen. But if the Gunners are to finally taste the ultimate success in this season’s Premier League, a combination of these techniques might help them cope under pressure, avoid choking, and finally lift the trophy.

Assuming, of course, Manchester City allows it.

Alberto Filgueiras 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.

Amid major reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), unveiled last week, NDIS minister Mark Butler announced the government’s plans to commission supported independent living services for people with disability, “rather than relying on a market that isn’t working”.

Supported independent living is NDIS funding for support workers who can assist people with disability who need some level of help at home all the time.

This announcement indicates a shift away from a market-based model – in which NDIS participants choose who provide services to them, and what kinds – to a more regulated, government-vetted system.

For people with the most significant and permanent disabilities, these changes – together with cuts to social and community participation funding – may be significant. Here’s how it might work.

What is supported independent living?

Supported independent living pays for support workers to help with day-to-day activities such as showering, preparing meals and doing laundry.

Supported independent living payments are often used to fund support provided in group homes. This is where a number of NDIS participants live together and one worker provides shared support to them. Some group homes may also receive another kind of NDIS payment, called specialist disability accommodation funding, which pays for purpose-built accessible housing for people with very high needs.

More than 17,000 people with disability live in group homes in Australia. Around 30% have intellectual disability. Residents frequently have high and complex support needs, and very few other people in their lives beyond support workers.

How did we get here?

Group homes are largely a result of the de-institutionalisation movement in the late 20th century, and grandfathering of supported accommodation from state disability services to the NDIS. People with disability often didn’t have a choice of where they moved to or who they lived with.

New kinds of specialist disability accommodation, such as apartment living or independent units, have been developed in recent years through the NDIS. But data shows many people are still sharing with co-residents they don’t choose, in group living they haven’t chosen.

Stories of abuse, violence and neglect in group homes, shared by residents, are harrowing.

The Disability Royal Commission recommended group homes should be phased out by 2038. But federal, state and territory governments have not yet commenced working together on this recommendation.

A 2023 inquiry also identified many issues in how supported accommodation – meaning the combination of funding for support workers and purpose-built accommodation – currently works in the NDIS.

The inquiry found a greater need for choice and control for people living in group homes (for example, about where they live), better education of the workforce, and more regulation of these living arrangements.

So, how might commissioning providers work?

We still don’t have a lot of detail. But the goal will be to create greater oversight and control over who provides services, and curb safety issues such as neglect and abuse while improving quality.

It could mean the government will purchase more low-cost accommodation where several people share a support worker. And we can expect a more restricted list of registered providers, meaning the companies the government allows to employ the support workers.

Commissioning could also mean the government introduces new rules, such as caps on the number of people with disability who live in one place. Such restrictions are currently in place for specialist disability accommodation, but not supported independent living.

In practice, this might look similar to the current makeup of group homes – mostly small-scale group living – but there will be more regulation. There is also a question about whether commissioning will improve residents’s choice about where they live, or who they live with – a basic right.

The government has also begun trials in ten rural, remote and First Nations communities where they have identified service demand for people with disability far outstrips what is available, including supported accommodation. In these cases, commissioning services will focus on understanding what specific barriers there are to accessing support, considering cultural needs and what local services are available.

Living independently is about more than accommodation

Amid last week’s reforms, the government also announced it will reduce NDIS payments to individuals for social and community participation – from around A$31,000 to $26,000 a year.

These payments fund a person’s needs to travel outside their home, so they are an important part of what it means to live independently. They may cover the cost of attending appointments, shopping or paying bills, taking part in social activities and developing life skills.

The government has instead unveiled a new $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund. This will fund community groups to “host genuine participation activities” for those with disability.

This is part of the government’s broader push to provide foundational and mainstream supports – such as community or school programs, activities, skills-building and information – for people outside of the NDIS.

In some cases, it could mean better inclusion of people with disability in the broader community, such as through local sporting clubs.

But if the NDIS funding that allows people to take part in their community and build independence is cut before these other supports are properly established, there is a risk of further isolation. This could particularly affect people with disability in group homes with the highest needs who rely on this kind of funding to leave home.

And there continue to be concerns about the potential role of algorithms in determining who will receive NDIS funding and who doesn’t.

People with disability want – and have a right – to live a life connected to people and community. This right must remain at the heart of plans to reform how and where they live.

Libby Callaway sits on the NDIS Evidence Advisory Committee Assistive Technology and Capital subcommittee established by the Commonwealth Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. She receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Research Council (ARC), and icare NSW.

Jack Francis Kelly has previously undertaken research funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency in roles with UTS and the Council for Intellectual Disability (CID). Jack is an NDIS participant.

Phillippa Carnemolla receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with Melbourne Disability Institute via the Centre for Universal Design Australia.

Sally Robinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Federal and State Governments for research. She is affiliated with the National Disability Research Partnership.

When scientist J. Craig Venter and his team announced in 2010 that they had created the first cell controlled by a fully synthetic genome, it marked a turning point in how scientists think about life.

For the first time, DNA – the molecule that carries the instructions for life – had been written on a computer, assembled in a laboratory and used to control a living cell. The achievement suggested something profound: Life might not only be understood but designed.

A biologist widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to genomics, including leading efforts to sequence the first draft of the human genome, Venter and his team’s successful creation of the first synthetic bacterial cell is considered pivotal to the field of synthetic biology.

By combining biology and engineering, synthetic biology seeks to design and build new biological systems or redesign existing ones for useful purposes. Rather than only observing how life works, scientists use tools such as DNA synthesis and genetic engineering to “program” cells to perform specific tasks, such as producing vaccines, developing sustainable fuels or detecting environmental toxins.

But how far has the field gone since Venter’s original synthetic bacterial cell?

As a biochemist who uses genomics in my teaching and research, I am interested in understanding what this shift in biology means and how far it has actually taken scientific innovation. Following Venter’s death on April 29, 2026, it is worth revisiting that moment and asking whether synthetic biology has delivered on its promise.

What is synthetic biology?

For much of the 20th century, biology focused on decoding life.

The discovery of DNA’s structure in 1953 revealed how genetic information is stored. Decades later, the Human Genome Project that Venter helped accelerate mapped the full set of human genes.

But Venter and others pushed the field further: If DNA could be read like code, could it also be written?

This idea underpins synthetic biology, which aims to design and construct biological systems rather than simply study them. Instead of modifying one gene at a time, researchers began exploring whether entire genomes could be built and inserted into cells.

In 2010, Venter’s team demonstrated that this was possible. They constructed a bacterial genome and used it to take control of a living cell. While the cell itself was not built entirely from scratch, their work showed that the instructions for life could be engineered.

In other words, synthetic biologists were moving from reading life to rewriting it entirely.

Big promises and bold expectations

Synthetic biology has already led to a range of promising outcomes across medicine, energy and environmental science.

Researchers have engineered microbes to produce lifesaving drugs such as artemisinin, an antimalarial compound, and to manufacture sustainable biofuels that could reduce reliance on fossil fuels. In addition, researchers are using synthetic biology to design organisms capable of detecting and breaking down environmental pollutants, offering new tools for bioremediation.

At the heart of these ideas was a powerful analogy: If biology could be treated like software, then designing organisms might one day resemble writing code.

This vision attracted significant investment and policy attention. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has highlighted synthetic biology’s potential to address challenges in multiple industries while also raising important ethical and safety considerations. For example, synthetic biology techniques could be used to develop biological weapons and could unintentionally harm ecosystems and human health.

Progress slower than expected

Despite this progress, synthetic biology has not fully realized its early ambitions. One major reason is the complexity of living systems.

Early approaches to synthetic biology treated cells as modular systems, where components could be predictably exchanged. In practice, biological systems are highly interconnected. Gene interactions are difficult to predict, and results observed in controlled laboratory conditions do not always scale to real-world environments.

This challenge has been particularly evident in areas such as biofuels, where translating laboratory successes into industrial-scale production has proved difficult.

There are also more fundamental limitations. Scientists still cannot construct a fully living organism from nonliving components alone. Even Venter’s synthetic cell depended on an existing biological system to function.

As a result, the goal of creating life entirely from scratch remains out of reach for now.

New questions and emerging risks

As technology has advanced, it has also raised new ethical and security concerns. The same tools used to design beneficial organisms could potentially be misused.

Synthetic biology is widely recognized as a dual-use field, where advances in gene editing, DNA synthesis and bioengineering may enable not only medical and environmental innovations but also the creation or modification of harmful organisms.

The increasing accessibility of these technologies further lowers barriers to misuse, making biosecurity threats more distributed and difficult to control. At the same time, governance frameworks often struggle to keep pace with rapid technological developments, leaving gaps in oversight and international coordination.

Beyond immediate risks, broader questions remain about how far humans should go in redesigning life and what unintended consequences such changes could have for ecosystems. Engineered organisms may introduce risks such as genetic contamination and ecosystem disruption, which would harm biodiversity and ecosystem services.

These concerns are likely to become more pressing as the technology behind synthetic biology continues to develop, particularly as emerging tools such as artificial intelligence accelerate the design of new biological systems.

Venter’s legacy

The implications of the idea that life could be engineered rather than just observed is still unfolding.

Synthetic biology has not yet delivered a world of fully programmable organisms solving global challenges. But it has changed expectations, both within science and beyond, about what might be possible in biological design.

In that sense, the impact of synthetic biology is already clear: It has altered not just how scientists study life but how society imagines its future.

Venter’s legacy includes the questions he made unavoidable: how far scientists should go in designing life, who gets to decide, and what responsibilities come with that power. The answers remain unsettled. But the trajectory seems to be that science is learning, cautiously and imperfectly, to author life.

André O. Hudson receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation

Along with a drop in temperatures, May brings plenty of new streaming options, whether you’re after some classic American political drama, or some local family TV you can enjoy with the kids.

We’ve also got Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated film Marty Supreme coming to Stan, as well as a new series from Richard Gadd (of Baby Reindeer fame) on HBO Max. Sit back, grab a blanket, and enjoy.

All The President’s Men

Prime Video and Apple TV

All the President’s Men, which has just turned 50, was based on the 1974 book by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

A masterpiece of political cinema, All The President’s Men remains one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made. Steeped in a fog of paranoia and distrust – an atmosphere shaped in no small part by cinematographer Gordon Willis’ matchless treatment of light and shade – it is as relevant now as it was on first release.

Redford was the driving force behind the film. Convinced that the story demanded a restrained, quasi-documentary approach, he initially envisioned a black-and-white film shot in a pared-back style, with an emphasis on process rather than star power.

Warner Bros, with whom he had a production deal, thought otherwise. Having already agreed to finance the film, the studio insisted that Redford take a leading role – and marketed the as yet-unmade project as “the most devastating detective story” of the century.

The result is an endlessly watchable and quotable (“Follow the money”) film that generates narrative and dramatic tension through the sheer difficultly of knowing anything at all.

In age beset by disinformation, brazen political deceit, strategic obfuscation and collapsing trust in public institutions, that lesson feels less historically distant than it does disturbingly prescient.

– Alexander Howard

Read more: All The President’s Men at 50: one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made

Caper Crew

ABC iView

The ABC’s new series Caper Crew follows 12-year-old Amelia Delaney (Isabella Zhang) and her 9-year-old brother Kai (Luka Sero), who live in Woodspring, “the most boring town on Earth”. That is, apart from one incident 27 years ago when the infamous Kangaroo Gang stole the town’s priceless golden meteorite. “The Nug” was never found, despite a $100,000 reward.

When their mysterious con-artist grandmother, Queenie, appears out of the blue and starts teaching them the art of the grift, Amelia and Kai can’t help but wonder: was Queenie part of the Kangaroo Gang? Does she know where The Nug is? The siblings join forces with their friends Penelope (Caitlin Niemotko) and Ophelbert (Tevita Hu) on a mission to find the lost object.

The young cast members are very endearing. The adults don’t disappoint, either; Tina Bursill is magnetic as Queenie, while Annie Maynard and ABC-favourite Michael Theo captivate as Mayor Katinkatonk and drama teacher Jojo Encore, respectively.

For parents and carers watching with kids, Caper Crew combines a Wes Anderson-esque visual quality with a nostalgic ode to millennial classics such as Matilda and Harriet the Spy. It may charm younger viewers into taking up magic, or planning their own heists. It also reminds us just how good Australian family TV can be, with a bit of resourcing.

– Alexa Scarlata

Read more: ABC’s Caper Crew delivers heists and heart – a bright spot in a struggling kids’ TV sector

Riot Women

SBS On Demand

“And you thought The Clash were angry!” retorts Beth (Joanna Scanlan), describing her newly-formed punk band of women largely 50 years and over.

Riot Women, a hilarious five-part BBC drama series, champions strong female characters whose dilemmas authentically reflect the female experience. The band’s tracks Hot Flush, I’m Not Done Yet, and Invisible No More counter society’s assumption that menopausal women have a use-by date.

Punk is used as a metaphor for female rampage, rather than the show’s subject – and despite some dark storylines (including suicide and violence against women), the show is a raucous celebration of women on their own terms. These women find joy and energy in mid-life, emerging as formidable because they no longer give a damn.

Riot Women is written by Sally Wainwright and co-directed by Wainwright and the late Amanda Brotchie, an enormously talented Australian director.

The outstanding ensemble cast is drawn from the crème de la crème of British talent, with Joanna Scanlan as Beth, Rosalie Craig as Kitty, Lorraine Ashbourne as Jess, Tamsin Greig as Holly, and Amelia Bullmore as Yvonne.

It’s an original, emotionally resonant and high-quality drama that, like much of Wainwright’s work, doesn’t disappoint.

– Lisa French

Marty Supreme

Stan, from May 15

Marty Supreme is a frenetic tale inspired by Marty Reisman, the charismatic American table tennis champion of the 1950s.

Charged by Timothée Chalamet’s electric lead performance – alongside a stellar supporting cast (including Gwyneth Paltrow), and director Josh Safdie’s signature, anxiety-inducing aesthetic – the film captures a young man’s all-or-nothing quest for greatness.

Marty Mauser is a morally ambiguous protagonist engaged in a sociopathic, self-obsessed pursuit of glory. But Safdie invites the audience to champion his quest. In this, Marty emerges as a particularly compelling entry into Hollywood’s longstanding tradition of unlikable heroes.

How does Safdie succeed in creating a protagonist who – despite lying that his mother died during childbirth and neglecting his pregnant girlfriend – nonetheless wins the audience’s support?

Marty’s championing is undoubtedly in part due to Chalamet’s star image and onscreen charisma. And his quest for greatness depicts the triumphant tale of a figure who, against all odds, continues to pursue his dreams with obsessive belief.

While his extreme measures may be unsympathetic – and perhaps unforgivable – Marty’s fundamental desire to transcend his circumstances remains relatable. His unrelenting commitment to his dream catalyses his moral failing. But he is nonetheless a figure capable of tenderness.

While Marty Supreme dramatises the egotistical pursuit of its flawed protagonist, it ultimately explores the universal ambition to dream big – and questions what is worth sacrificing in order to achieve success.

–Oscar Bloomfield

Read more: Antihero Marty Supreme is sociopathic in his pursuit of glory. Why do we want him to win?

Lizard

Mubi

Lizard (2020) is a Sundance-winning short film by British-Nigerian filmmaker and writer, Akinola Davies Jr. Currently streaming on Mubi, alongside Davies’ BAFTA-winning debut feature My Father’s Shadow (2025), it’s a magical and gritty portrait of religion, hypocrisy and violence.

Co-written with his brother, Wale Davies, Lizard is based on Davies Jr’s own childhood experiences. The thematically nuanced 18-minute narrative follows the inquisitive eight-year-old Juwon who, following some misbehaviour and removal from her Sunday school service, confronts the criminal underbelly of her Lagos church.

The fluidity between the real and surreal is central to Davies Jr’s cinematic imagination. Juwon is gifted with the ability to sense danger. Her mystic-like intuition materialises in the presence of the eponymous agama lizard: a figure who leads the young girl through her milieu.

The film masterfully blends elements of the fantastical with realist stylisation. It’s a portrayal of sociopolitical corruption and exploitation, but also extends beyond this. Through Juwon’s child-like imagination, it confronts the processes of understanding trauma and memory – with the film’s sensibilities questioning reality’s supposed superiority over fantasy.

Davies Jr is cementing himself as an exciting, distinctive voice in international cinema. I’m looking forward to watching My Father’s Shadow.

– Oscar Bloomfield

Half Man

HBO Max

Richard Gadd is perhaps best known for his hugely successful series, Baby Reindeer. Part of the unsettling thrill of that Emmy-award winning series was watching a dramatisation of Gadd’s own experience of being stalked. We saw a vulnerable protagonist, played by Gadd, drawn into considerably uncomfortable situations.

Now Gadd has returned to our screens with a new series called Half Man. A similar viewing experience to Baby Reindeer is established in the opening episode, where we witness a vulnerable, isolated young man get drawn into a toxic relationship. Gadd is a master at building tension and discomfort.

Niall (Jamie Bell) is visited by his estranged step-brother Ruben (Gadd) on his wedding day. After a violent confrontation, we jump back 30 years to when they were two schoolboys. Ruben has just gotten out of youth detention and, since his mother is dating and living with Niall’s mother, he has no choice but to move in and share Niall’s room.

As boys, a young Ruben (Stuart Campbell) is prone to violent outbursts at any moment, and young Niall (Mitchell Robinson) is shy and bullied by his classmates for being perceived as gay. The early dynamics between the two boys make for incredibly unsettling viewing. But knowing how good the emotional pay-off of Baby Reindeer was, I can’t wait to see where the series goes.

– Stuart Richards

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.

Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of people nowadays feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting their lives, despite all the talk of “democracy” and “the people”, they have no control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is spinning out of control.

People are not just annoyed and angry. They’ve grown convinced that elected governments have become so blind and corrupt that they no longer notice or even care that we earthlings are hurtling towards a future bruised and battered by more than a few perilous forces. Naked big power rivalries. Nasty genocidal wars. Hatred of immigrants. Border closures. Trade and tariff disputes. Extreme weather events. Pandemics. Corporate greed.

Polls show that millions of people are equally bothered by another unpromising political trend: the mounting anxiety that demagogues, despots and a strange new kind of Russian-style despotism with thoroughly 21st-century characteristics are gaining traction and everywhere getting the upper hand.

To speak of despotism is immediately to invite frowns and risk heated arguments. It’s an old word with a complicated and chequered history. Long out of fashion these days – “autocracy”, “fascism” and “authoritarianism” are the fashionable political buzzwords – despotism has often been dismissed as an emotionally charged and fuzzy term laden with Orientalist prejudices against non-Europeans.

But when suitably revised and carefully deployed, despotism is an indispensable keyword for making sense of the new global threats to democracy in polities as different as Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Vietnam, but also by the parallel and overlapping attacks on power-sharing democracy led by demagogues and their admirers in countries such as Türkiye, Israel and Donald Trump’s America.

This worldwide growth of a strange alliance between demagogues and despots is no coincidence. It ought to puzzle and worry every thinking person, and it needs to be understood.

Considered as a type of rule practised by both demagogues and despots, despotism is a way of handling power that defies the laws of political gravity. It’s a peculiarly fake type of democracy led by rulers skilled in the arts of manipulating and meddling with people’s lives, marshalling their support and winning their obedience.

Despotism feeds upon the voluntary servitude of its subjects. Those who think despotism is a synonym for repression, fear and raw force are profoundly mistaken. Despotic power can’t properly be understood through similes of hammers and nails; it requires thinking in terms of the attraction of metal filings to magnets.

In practice, despots are masters of seduction, deception and control. They calibrate their use of violence and manage, using a combination of slick means, including rigged election victories, to win the submission and loyalty of the ruled. Oiled by government largesse, rampant patronage, bags of money, job creation programs, legal trickery and endless talk of defending “the people” against its foes, despotism nurtures the docile subservience of its subjects, including important sections of the middle classes, skilled and unskilled workers, and the poor.

The result: the triumph of top-down pyramids of power that manage to win millions of supporters at home and acolytes and friends well beyond the borders of the states they rule.

What’s especially worrying is that the spirit of despotism is contagious. Despots and demagogues hunt in packs. Their promiscuity and wilful cooperation know no limits. Demagogues are despots in the making. Despots are what demagogues would like to be.

Consider the moment, in July 2024, when in a gilded ceremony in Moscow’s Grand Central Palace, Russian president Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, conferred upon his “dear friend”, Indian president Narendra Modi, Russia’s highest civilian honour, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle.

Now consider the grand showtime moment when an aspiring despot was greeted with open arms and lavish gifts by his more seasoned counterparts: Trump’s whirlwind May 2025 tour of west Asia.

In Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, the all-American demagogue was showered with the honour and recognition he had long craved. Lavish F-15 fighter jet escorts. Lavender and red carpets, mounted camels and women’s hair-flipping welcome ceremonies. Riders on white horses and Tesla cybertrucks sporting stars and stripes. Grand marbled halls, dazzling crystal chandeliers, the highest civil decorations, including a pure gold necklace.

Then there was the world’s tallest building, more than half a mile high, lit up with an image of the American flag. A campaign-style rally at the region’s largest US military base in Qatar.

And the material deliverables: trillion-dollar business and defence contracts, signed by cupidity in the presence of greed and fame. Plans (with Saudi Arabia) to establish a joint nuclear energy program. A preliminary agreement (with UAE) to import the most advanced AI chips. A lavish gift (from Qatar) of a luxury jet Trump intends to keep whenever he leaves office – all in confirmation of the point that, in these times of turbulence, demagogues and despots must fly together in safety and solidarity.

Dystopias

There’s growing awareness among journalists, intellectuals and citizens that such displays of despotic pomp and bromance power are undermining the freedoms and egalitarian promises of democracy. A sense of foreboding about these trends is spreading. Pessimism is fashionable.

As I write these lines, a South African colleague is in touch to say how grim are our times. She remarks that our world feels as if it’s passing through an era of “augmented brutality” (also the name of a popular video game). With seemingly ever fewer brakes upon what established despotic regimes and demagogues can get away with, my colleague tells me, our ethical conscience, moral qualms and public outrage against abuses of power are withering away.

When I ask other colleagues where our diseased democracies are heading, they predict several conflicting but equally gloomy dystopian futures. Some argue that reality is fast catching up with a prettified version of the future sketched in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Other colleagues warn of “backsliding” towards “autocracy”, “tyranny” or “authoritarianism”, exemplified by strongmen – Vladimir Putin, Javier Milei, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Alexander Lukashenko – who wield words and wave swords over the heads of their cowed subjects.

They speak of autocracy as a political system in the hands of a sole ruler with absolute power. Tyranny is, for them, as it was for Socrates, a dangerously unjust type of rule by a strong man consumed by lawless desires bent on robbing through “fraud and force” the property, livelihoods and freedoms of their frightened subjects.

Still other colleagues dread the return of what they call “fascism”, or “neo-fascism”. They liken present-day trends to past European and Asian totalitarian regimes that mobilised whole societies and exercised complete control over every citizen’s private life.

According to these colleagues, the democratic world is everywhere confronted with the possible repeat on a higher level of the totalitarian regimes of yesteryear. Just as Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China condemned their subjects to perpetual enthusiasm, so the new fascists call on “the people” to care about their future, they say.

The self-appointed philosopher of Italian fascism, Giovanni Gentile, captured the old spirit that’s now said to be back in vogue. “Among the major merits of fascism,” he wrote, was that it “obliged little by little all those who once stood at the window to come down into the streets, to practise fascism even against fascism.”

Similarly, the democratic world is returning to the time when millions of people were captivated by skilfully orchestrated newspaper, radio and film performances led by showbiz demagogues dressed in formal attire, military uniforms and riding gear, or stripped to the waist helping sweating labourers gather the harvest (Mussolini’s specialty).

Public rallies organised by groups and parties with names like Alternative for Germany (AfD), Proud Boys and Sweden’s neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) are back in fashion.

Citizens are again celebrating in unity, marching in step across the stage fabricated from the glorification of bully demagogues, emboldened by nostalgia, national pride and hatred of foreigners, urged on by electrifying social media postings and public speeches by beguilingly sly leaders who leave no place to hide from the fascist voice.

Phantom democracies

One shortcoming of this dog-eared lexicon – autocracy, tyranny, authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism – is that these words blind us from seeing that what is happening today is not merely a repetition of the past. Our times are not just different. Their strangeness prevents us from understanding that democracies are drifting into a new age of despotism of a kind never seen before in world history.

An especially striking fact is that the commonplace distinctions between “democracy” and “autocracy”, “tyranny” and “authoritarianism” have in practice become deeply problematic and unhelpful in making sense of this new age of despotism.

For a start, consider how supposedly antagonistic regimes find themselves converging, bound together by state ceremonies, diplomatic cooperation, cross-border trade and investments, weapons deals, and the profit-seeking opportunism of Western banks and management consultants, who have, for many years, brazenly serviced large state-owned and state-guided corporations in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, China and Russia.

Equally striking is the way the wealth inequalities, revolving doors, dark money corruption, manipulated elections, fake news, state censorship, surveillance and heavy-handed policing – evident in regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Uzbekistan – are making strong appearances within the borders of existing democracies, most obviously in the country that reelected Donald Trump.

But that’s not all, we should note. What is becoming plain to see is how aspiring and established power-sharing constitutional democracies can easily and quickly be transformed into despotic regimes.

This anti-democratic degeneration has been the rule, not the exception, in the so-called transitions to democracy throughout central Asia, and in Russia and Belarus following the collapse of the Soviet Union during the years 1989–91. Elsewhere, despotism has prevailed in countries, such as Laos and Cambodia, following the restoration of monarchy after the genocide of the 1970s, and in Iran after the dramatic upheavals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Thanks to the election of power-hungry demagogues, the spirit and substance of despotism has also taken root in what political scientists once called consolidated democracies, initially in geopolitically less significant bellwether countries, such as Serbia, and nowadays in important states such as Brazil and Poland, and in the heartlands of the American empire.

Least obvious, and more than a little paradoxical, is the manner in which the established despotic regimes of our era mimic the methods of their so-called “democratic” rivals. Today’s so-called tyrannies and autocracies – I call them despotisms because their rulers are masters of the arts of seductive power – are parasitical upon the corrupted ideals and failures of power-sharing democracy.

But more than that, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other established despotisms exemplify a strange new type of pseudo-democratic government led by rulers skilled in manipulating their subjects into conformity to their designs.

Considered as a form of rule, these despotisms are something new under the sun. They are more stable, more attractive and better at managing political earthquakes and governing people than many observers suppose.

Despite their vulnerability to internal dysfunctions, external shocks, wars and chronic public resistance, these despotic governments learn the arts of ruling under duress. Trial-and-error improvement and perfection of the techniques of exercising power are their specialty, and a key explanation of their tightening political grip in world affairs, as is their whip-smart seductiveness.

It’s worth remembering that the original Greek term despótēs – from dómos (house) and pósis (husband, spouse) – referred to a benevolent and all-powerful master of a household, held in reverence and respect by its women, children and slaves. It later referred, in Christian circles, to God and to the bishops and patriarchs of the Byzantine Empire, whose power was blessed with authority by their subjects, who were duty bound to submit in all matters because they benefited from their masters’ kindness and good works.

Today’s despots aspire to stand in their shoes. They specialise in convincing their subjects to obey necessity and call it freedom. They want “the people” to suppose things are getting better and bigger, and that there is no viable alternative to the present order. They seduce rather than merely repress.

In this sense, the despotisms of our age are state-of-the-art forms of tutelary power, a type of media-saturated political rule that achieves something many previous observers thought impossible: they dominate their subjects by winning their calculated support and affection by means of top-down, people-friendly techniques of government, elections, happiness forums, online Q&A portals, public opinion sampling and anti-corruption agencies.

These regimes run by despots are more perfect and mature forms of the despotism yearned for by demagogues in so-named democracies. They are phantom democracies.

Two adventurers

That there are heat-seeking attractions and slow-motion convergences taking place between established despotic regimes, the United States and other so-named democracies, might surprise, shock and puzzle us. It shouldn’t. The breakdown of the semantic division between “democracy” and “autocracy” and the global drift towards phantom democracy are trends that have older and deeper roots.

To understand the strange new power dynamics fuelling the worldwide growth of despotism, we must turn to history to examine the thinkers and writers for whom the coming of global despotism would have been unsurprising.

Let’s therefore turn back the clock a hundred years, to the crucial moment when the struggle for election-centred democracy and “votes for all” came of age. Many observers predicted it would become the only political game on Earth. An American president, Woodrow Wilson, called for a world “made safe for democracy”, a form of “just government” that rested upon “the consent of the governed”.

In the catastrophic aftermath of the first world war, with empires everywhere collapsing, the flames of revolution licking the backsides of the rich and powerful, and demands for the right of “the people” to vote prevailing on several continents, two writers in particular stand out from the crowd. A Venezuelan named Laureano Vallenilla Lanz (1870–1936) and a German, Max Weber (1864–1920), made predictions that have an uncanny relevance for understanding today’s troubling times.

These writers weren’t timeless political geniuses. They were thoughtful explorers, curious and concerned about democracy’s fate, adventurers mapping out the likely consequences of the new age of people power in a period racked by enormous geopolitical and socio-economic upheavals.

Lanz was sure that parliamentary democracy was an unworkable ideal. He instead championed a new form of despotic government whose authority was based on “the people”. He threw down the gauntlet to grammarians suspicious of oxymorons by calling it “democratic Caesarism”: a political system whose rulers would use periodic elections and various forms of “soft” and “hard” power to rule absolutely over their compliant subjects.

In contrast, Weber feared that the advent of free and fair elections and parliamentary democracy, which he supported, would spawn the rise of demagogues: strongmen impatient with checks and balances, who in the name of “the people” would do everything they could to transform parliamentary democracy into what he called “plebiscitarian leader democracy”.

Democratic Caesarism

Lanz was a polymath scholar, senator, diplomat, national archives director and, for many years, editor of the leading Caracas newspaper El Nuevo Diario, the Venezuelan government’s unofficial mouthpiece. His book Cesarismo democrático, published in 1919, is unfortunately still not translated into English.

That’s a pity, considering that during the 27-year caudillo dictatorship (1908–35) of General Juan Vicente Gómez, for whom he served as in-house intellectual, Lanz foresaw that the ideals of democracy, loosely understood as popular self-government based on the periodic election of representatives to a parliament, could readily be harnessed by demagogues everywhere to perfect a new type of rule unknown in previous human history.

Strong-armed government with democratic trimmings and trappings was possible, necessary and desirable, he reasoned. Smart rulers had no reason to fear the advent of the universal franchise, periodic elections and the other paraphernalia of what was called “democracy”.

On the contrary, if rulers played their hands well, the mechanisms of self-government, in the name of “the people”, could be used to recruit them into an army of supporters loyal to a strong ruler, who would periodically win their votes and thus confirm their faithful subordination.

Lanz was no democrat in any straightforward sense. He detested the “spontaneous anarchy” within the human condition. The masses weren’t to be trusted. Fickle, excited by their passions, plagued by ignorance and arrogance, their outbursts regularly bring great social disorders and episodes of violence into the field of government.

Lanz was convinced that the old Thomas Hobbes principle of homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to other men) was correct. But he believed mandatory heavy-handed rule could win the people’s affection and support. Political leadership had to be exercised by a popular strongman – a “necessary gendarme”, he termed it – who would channel the energies of the masses towards a genuinely democratic order of effective government based on stable social relations.

In a remarkably creative if bizarre turn of thinking, Lanz reasoned that the history of turbulent disorder in postcolonial Venezuela and other countries proved that without a strongman leader the people couldn’t become their true selves. He urged a new form of political ventriloquism. Like Moses, who divined water from a rock, the leader would relieve the people of injustice and show them the way to a promised land of popular self-fulfilment.

With the advent of electoral democracy, the “ignorance and fanaticism of the popular masses” could be both tamed and refined by means of strong-armed leadership that galvanised people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, elevating men and women to the concomitant dignity that comes with the enjoyment of equality with others.

Lanz urged, and predicted, that this new form of “democratic Caesarism” would unleash the power of the masses, satisfy their “unconscious yearnings”, cure their hurt pride, make them feel wanted and important in determining the fate of the world.

Acting as the representative and regulator of popular sovereignty, the great leader, “democracy personified”, would be a genuine expression rather than a denial of truly representative democracy. The people could be persuaded to give themselves voluntarily to a new form of servitude, embrace with open arms rulers who would redeem and guarantee their wellbeing.

The novel result would be of historic significance. The new political system of “democratic Caesarism” would combine, into a higher form of political harmony, opposites that were once thought to be irreconcilable antagonisms: democracy and despotism; top-down leadership and equality; individual greatness and collective self-discipline; the power of the people and rule by despots who claimed to be their sole representative.

Führerdemokratie

It is of great interest, and highly relevant to the problem of despotism, that in the same period in which Lanz trumpeted the need for a newly “democratic” form of despotism, Weber launched an anguished defence of elections and parliamentary government.

A hard-working scholar, widely considered to be the greatest German social scientist of his generation, Weber predicted that in the aftermath of war, revolution and the triumphant entry of “the people” onto the stage of history, the transition to parliamentary democracy, with votes for all, would be an unhappy affair. The coming of the universal franchise and representative government would unleash electoral battles among demagogue leaders, who would use every campaign-trail trick to hoodwink and spellbind their audiences, win the votes of “the people” and, with cunning, luck and force, rule in their name.

Rather inelegantly, Weber called this scenario “plebiscitarian leader democracy” (plebiszitäre Führerdemokratie). The wonderfully German compound phrase was later to cause some embarrassment. A democracy with a Führer, people would ask? But his reasoning was marked by crystalline clarity and conviction.

The advent of periodic elections with universal suffrage, combined with a free press and civil liberties, Weber predicted, would propel the growth of fiercely competitive, mass membership, all-powerful party machines. Their leaders, lusting after power, hallucinating on fame, convinced they had the political support of “the people”, would behave like “dictators on the battlefield of elections”.

Following a visit to the United States, Weber thought that it was there, amid the razzamatazz of party machine politics, conventions and presidential election spectacles, that the “leader democracy” trend was most fully developed. It confirmed the new meaning of democracy as a political system, in which “the people elect a leader in whom they have trust” then say: “Now shut up and obey.”

Looking towards the future, Weber hoped that the coming of parliamentary democracy would produce level-headed leaders willing to put their shoulders to the wheel of history – politicians like William Gladstone, a Conservative MP who later became the leader of the Liberal Party and four-times prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In the case of post-World War I Germany, Weber proposed the direct election of a president, who would play the role of “steward of the masses”, respect the constitution, and accept that if they made mistakes “the gallows and the rope” would be their fate.

Weber’s personal wish was that cool-headed leaders, capable of skilfully winning elections by persuading millions of people of the importance of parliamentary elections, would prevail in opposition to forces such as demagoguery and the cramping and suffocating effects of what some nowadays call the “deep state” bureaucracy, whose spread he despised.

A self-described “class conscious bourgeois” liberal, Weber was sure Führerdemokratie was the only practicable form of democracy. Talk of “the will of the people” and “the true will of the people” were mere fictions, he told a colleague.

Weber died in June 1920, a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic, aged only 56. He did not live to see the rise of fascist demagogues, such as Mussolini and Hitler, who craftily rose to power on the back of the electoral democracy they later helped to destroy. A man who championed prudent reason, he worried that in the age of parliamentary democracy leaders might easily be seduced by the charms of vanity. He was equally aware that high-level politics in the new parliamentary democracies of Germany and other countries already involved the exploitation of “mass emotionality”.

Hence his abiding worry that they might degenerate into a new form of what he variously called “Caesarism” and “sultanism”, the kind of demagogic rule exercised by Napoleon III and the bossy chancellorship of Otto von Bismarck after the founding, in 1871, of the German Empire.

Weber understandably feared demagogues intoxicated with power and their own messianic certainties. In a burst of wildly creative forecasting, he predicted that in the name of democracy their hubris and lust for concentrated power might well disfigure and destroy power-sharing democracy.

If that happened – as has happened in recent decades in Russia, and is now occurring in the United States – parliamentary government would be transformed into a thoroughly modern form of despotic rule that combined “one person, one vote” elections with disdain for parliaments, intolerance of countervailing powers, and an overbearing executive playing the role of a “great statesman at the helm”, drunk on the liquor of permanent emergency rule.

This is an edited extract from Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the Brink.

John Keane will be appearing at the launch of Reclaiming Democracy Together, Melbourne Town Hall, May 9, 2026.

John Keane 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.