Inside Story

“The last best place on the internet.” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard Wikipedia described that way at conferences, in workshops, in casual conversation. The phrase has its origins in an article for Wired magazine written at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic by the Australian journalist and author, Richard Cooke.

It was an incantation of a lost t...

As it heads into the crucial midterm elections — effectively a referendum on the president and his party — the United States is facing a series of health crises. Healthcare costs are ballooning, reproductive health and abortion services have been compromised, assistance for the LGBTQI community is being cut, preventable infectious diseases are breaking out, food safety concer...

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning hovers uneasily between warning and reassurance as he returns to the organisation at the centre of The Social Network, the Facebook-origin story he wrote and David Fincher directed in 2010.

Fincher’s film, aided by Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, was a heady engagement with obsessi...

On the fiftieth anniversary last year of the Whitlam government’s dismissal, neither of the main characters had much evolved in the popular consciousness. Gough Whitlam was revered, at least on the left, as a progressive warrior and constitutional martyr. In a major sp...

In everyday life, “great” does not have to be all that great. A friend confirms a time and place for coffee. “Great!,” we reply. “See you there.” A motor vehicle has been serviced and is ready for collection. “Great, I’ll be over in an hour.”

In sport, there may be three levels: great players (many), greats (few), and greatness (statues at the MCG).

Tennis, sure...