The Conversation Weekly

In around ten minutes on April 8, the Israeli military hit more than 100 targets across Lebanon. Israel called the attack Operation Eternal Darkness and said it struck Hezbollah command and control centres. The Lebanese government said at least 300 people were killed and 1,000 injured.
Israel has a powerful and lethal army, and it’s been defending itself against attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But why has it chosen such brutal military aggression?
One historian, Yaron Peleg, believes the answer to this question lies in the early days of Zionism in the 19th century, when many Jews who arrived in Palestine were fleeing antisemitism in Europe. In defiance, they began a cultural revolution, emphasising military strength and honouring Biblical Jewish heroes.
But in the wake of the Holocaust, Peleg, who is a professor of modern Hebrew studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK, thinks Israel’s view of itself began to change. He tracks how he sees Israel’s self‑image changed from self‑reliance to aggressive militarism, and how that history helps to explain the way it wages war today.
This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany and the executive producer was Gemma Ware. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
Mentioned in this episode:
Voices of the South

For 16 years, Viktor Orbán built an illiberal democracy in Hungary. Orbán and his Fidesz party managed to take control of many of Hungary's levers of power, from the judiciary to state-owned media, and weakened the institutions that could keep them accountable. Now, his regime has been ended by a former Fidesz insider, Péter Magyar, who managed to unite Hungarians to secure a two-third majority in the country's parliament.
So how did Peter Magyar manage to beat his former boss? And what does Magyar's victory mean for the European Union, where Orbán was a belligerent, pro-Russian voice at the leaders' table.
We speak to Zsolt Enyedi, professor of political science at the Central European University and an expert in Hungarian politics.
This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Gemma Ware was the host and executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
He exposed corruption and walked across Hungary. Now Péter Magyar has defeated a powerful state machine
What Viktor Orbán’s election loss means for Putin, Trump and the rise of right-wing populism
Viktor Orbán’s election loss shows the limits of his propaganda machine

Mentioned in this episode:
The We Society
Tackling the big questions through a social science lens, the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences brings you some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. Join acclaimed journalist and Academy president Will Hutton, as he invites guests from the world of social science to explore the stories behind the news and hear their solutions to society’s most pressing problems.
Voices of the South

If you have teenagers in your life, they’ll probably have heard of the PSL scale. Or at least the language associated with it. Chad. Stacy. Normie. Subhuman.
The PSL scale is a pseudoscientific attractiveness rating system used by looksmaxxers, men in a part of the manosphere who can go to extreme methods to change their appearance.
The roots of this rating system lie in misogynistic online forums used by incels or involuntarily celibates, but now it’s all over social media. So how did the language of incels, and this one way of quantifying attractiveness and beauty, go so mainstream?
In this episode, we speak to Jordan Foster, an associate professor of sociology at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, who researches social media, beauty and masculinity. He explains the origins of the PSL scale, where it fits into the manosphere, and how some looksmaxxing influencers are making money off it.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
What parents need to know to talk to their children about the manosphere
How ‘looksmaxxing’ self-improvement apps are marketing misogyny to young men
Men can get out of the manosphere. Here’s what former incels say about why they left
From gym to jawline: What looksmaxxing says about modern masculinity

Mentioned in this episode:
The We Society
Tackling the big questions through a social science lens, the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences brings you some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. Join acclaimed journalist and Academy president Will Hutton, as he invites guests from the world of social science to explore the stories behind the news and hear their solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of One Nation, Australia's most controversial minor party.
For thirty years, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, no one is laughing. This week we're running the first episode of The Making of One Nation, a new series from The Conversation hosted by Ashlynne McGhee. She explores how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics.
Hanson's infamous 1996 maiden speech to the Australian Senate — warning that Australia was "being swamped by Asians" — still echoes through Australian political life.
But who was Pauline Hanson before she became a phenomenon, and what did she actually represent? Was she a cause of a new kind of politics, or a symptom of one already forming?
We hear from Anna Broinowski, documentary maker and senior lecturer at the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, who made a documentary and wrote a book about Hanson.
Follow The Making of One Nation to make sure you don't miss more episodes in the coming weeks.
Sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation. If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Final preparations are underway for NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission around the Moon for more than 50 years. Four astronauts, three men and one woman, will spend 10 days aboard the Orion spacecraft, going further into space than any other humans as they orbit the Moon and return to Earth.
The mission is the next step of the Artemis programme, which plans to land astronauts back to the Moon by 2028. China has its own programme targeting a full crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2030.
In this episode, we speak to Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University about why the US is going back to the Moon. Pace worked in space policy for the George W. Bush Administration, followed by a stint at NASA before his appointment as the executive secretary of the National Space Council during the first Trump administration, where he worked on the launch of the Artemis programme.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.
If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
NASA’s Artemis II mission will take an astronaut crew around the Moon – a space policy expert describes the long road to launch
Nasa’s Artemis II mission is crucial as doubts build that America can beat China back to the Moon
NASA announces a big shake-up of the Artemis Moon program
NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon shows how US space strategy has changed since Apollo – and contrasts with China’s closed program
NASA’s Artemis II plans to send a crew around the Moon to test equipment and lay the groundwork for a future landing