By Laura Minor, Lecturer in Television Studies, University of Salford
When Charlotte Regan’s debut feature film, Scrapper, won the grand jury prize at the prestigious Sundance film festival in 2023, it announced a filmmaker of rare instinctive warmth.
Scrapper showed Regan to be capable of rendering working-class life with tenderness, wit and a magical lightness that felt entirely her own. With her new eight-part BBC series Mint, the filmmaker turns her hand to crime drama, bringing that same sensibility to television.
Mint sits squarely within what film scholar David Forrest, in his 2020 book New…
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By Matthew E. Oliver, Associate Professor of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Tibor Besedeš, Professor of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
The market for oil is global, which is why events like the war in Iran affect oil prices – and prices of the wide range of products made from oil – literally everywhere. Federal data shows that the price at the primary crude oil hub in the U.S. was US$66 a barrel in late February 2026 – before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran – and $101 a barrel on April 13. Similar price increases have reverberated around the globe.
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By Jonathan van Harmelen, Visiting Assistant Professor, Oberlin College and Conservatory
The Trump administration’s immigration detention policies appear to be, in part, inspired by the heavy-handed tactics of the former Arizona sheriff.
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By Robert Forrant, Professor of U.S. History and Labor Studies, UMass Lowell
On a spring morning in 1914, miners in Ludlow, Colorado, were celebrating Greek Easter when the Colorado National Guard and a private security agency opened fire on their camp with a machine-gun-equipped armored car called the Death Special.
The miners waged a pitched battle with the National Guard for 10 days before President Woodrow Wilson ordered federal soldiers to intervene. An estimated 69 to 199 people…
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By Charles Bell, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University
Interviews with parents of students with disabilities show that children were often physically restrained and secluded at school for nonviolent offenses.
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By Andras Molnar, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan
Two new experiments show that most people do not even consider that a personal message could be AI-generated, even when they themselves use artificial intelligence to write.
To see how people judge someone based on their writing in the age of ChatGPT, my colleague Jiaqi…
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By Greg Eghigian, Professor of History, Penn State
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.
Is the science that we do today truth, likely to be a lie, or is it undetermined? – Nathaniel K., age 15, Hamilton, Ohio
For most students, science is something you study and something you have to learn.…
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By Lise Eliot, Professor of Neuroscience, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Pulling together the results of 40 experiments done by different teams over decades, researchers found that infant boys and girls equally tune in to human faces and voices.
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By Colin Diamond, Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Birmingham
Sir Adrian Fulford’s report into the July 2024 attack in Southport that killed three young girls does not pull any punches. He concluded that the UK’s safeguarding model had completely failed, with no agency taking lead responsibility. He referred to “an inappropriate merry-go-round” of state agencies, none of which took responsibility for the risks posed by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana.
There were red flags about Rudakubana for several years before the attack. This included him carrying knives to school with the stated intention to use them, attacking fellow pupils, telling police…
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By Nye Davies, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff University
Welsh Labour is in unfamiliar territory. While winning elections in Wales had become routine since 1922, the upcoming Senedd (Welsh parliament) election has thrown the party into uncharted waters, with the prospect of finishing a distant third.
So much is new about this election. The Senedd has been expanded…
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