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The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hauntings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation

This year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas is an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 tale of vampiric horror and haunted sleep, The Room in the Tower....

wednesday 1

Alice Vernon

How Hannah Arendt can help us understand this new age of far-right populism

Sales of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) rocketed when Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election. Nearly a year into...

wednesday 10

Christopher J. Finlay

Top climate books to look out for in 2026 – recommended by experts

From compelling stories to non-fiction, books can spark ideas that help us navigate the climate crisis. As part of The Conversation’s ongoing...

wednesday 9

Dominic O&39Key

How poetry can sustain us through illness, bereavement and change

When COVID lockdown loomed back in 2020, many people panic-bought toilet rolls – but I stocked up on notebooks and my favourite pencils. I had been...

wednesday 5

Julie Meril Gardner

Treasure the emotional connections to the clothes you have and style could be a whole lot more sustainable

With January sales around the corner, another flood of unwanted clothes risks drowning our wardrobes and the planet. The average person now...

wednesday 5

Lee Mattocks

How displacement reshapes refugees’ gut health

Refugee health is often discussed in terms of crises such as disease outbreaks, malnutrition and psychological distress. But some of the most...

wednesday 7

Manal Mohammed

Tattoos, toxins and the immune system – what you need to know before you get inked

From minimalist wrist designs to full sleeves, body art has become so common that it barely raises an eyebrow. But while the personal meaning of a...

wednesday 4

Manal Mohammed

How testosterone went from prostate cancer villain to potential ally

For more than 80 years, men have been told that testosterone helps prostate cancer grow. But a very different picture has emerged over the past two...

wednesday 8

Daniel Kelly

The Taliban may not like Peaky Blinders, but its Afghan fans are part of a long history of cultural engagement with the world

The Taliban’s morality police recently summoned four young men in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan for a “rehabilitation programme”. Their...

wednesday 1

Magnus Marsden

Whether it’s a ‘productivity puzzle’ or the ‘British disease’, the UK economy has been underperforming for decades

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes – and economic history is no exception. In 1964, a Labour government came to power in the UK with a...

wednesday 1

Eoin Mclaughlin

Do marathons damage your heart? Decade-long study finally settles the debate

A marathon pushes the human body close to its limits. Legs tire, lungs burn and the heart works hard for hours on end. For years, that strain has...

wednesday 10

David C. Gaze

The evolution of digital nomadism: from hi-tech hacker spaces to crypto coworking

One of the first modern coworking spaces, C-Base in Berlin, was launched 30 years ago by a group of computer engineers as a “hacker space” in...

wednesday 7

Dave Cook

When AI recreates the female voice, it also rewrites who gets heard

Voice cloning technology platforms like ElevenLabs allow anyone to replicate a voice using just a few seconds of audio, for a small fee. These...

wednesday 4

Hussein Boon

How young adult literature and philosophy can help provide better role models for masculinity

Toxic masculinity doesn’t stop at marginalising women and LGBTQ people. It harms straight men by discouraging emotional expression, tenderness,...

wednesday 1

Adrianna Zabrzewska

Two-way electric vehicle charging at scale could stop renewable energy being wasted – here’s how it works

The amount of renewable energy produced around the world is increasingly exceeding demand – particularly from wind and solar sources. This presents...

wednesday 1

Vahid Vahidinasab

What if we taxed what people spend, not what they earn?

When people talk about tax fairness, the focus is almost always on income. How much the rich earn, how heavily that income should be taxed, and how...

wednesday 20

Marcelo R Santos

Huge online scam operations are flourishing in war-torn Myanmar – I travelled there to find out why

South-east Asia has become the “ground zero” for the global online scamming industry, according to the UN, costing victims billions of US dollars...

wednesday 5

Xu Peng

How ChatGPT could change the face of advertising, without you even knowing about it

Online adverts are sometimes so personal that they feel eerie. Even as a researcher in this area, I’m slightly startled when I get a message asking...

23.12.2025 4

Nessa Keddo

The magic of maths: festive puzzles to give your brain – and imagination – a workout

Mathematics is a “science which requires a great amount of imagination”, said the 19th-century Russian maths professor Sofya Kovalevskaya – a...

23.12.2025 1

Neil Saunders

The politics of the hyper-polluting private transport used by the world’s super-rich is hotting up

While millions of people make the effort to sort their recycling, buy fewer clothes and generally make greener choices, the world’s wealthiest can...

23.12.2025 1

Rowland Atkinson

England now has a plan to end homelessness – here’s how to test whether it will work

The UK has proved before that it can end homelessness. The Everyone In scheme during COVID lockdowns accommodated tens of thousands of people in...

23.12.2025 1

Michael Sanders

We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero

In October 2024, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch declared herself a “net zero sceptic”, but “not a climate sceptic”. Most recently she...

23.12.2025 3

James Painter

The Battleship Potemkin at 100: why Sergei Eisenstein’s powerful silent film remains unforgettable

A landmark film in Russian cinema, Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin may have first been shown in Moscow on December 24 1925, but its...

23.12.2025 3

Dušan Radunović

A Wonderful Life is not a ‘feel good’ Christmas film – but it is incredibly therapeutic

Despite the reputation of It’s a Wonderful Life as a heartwarming Christmas classic, both its fans and detractors like to remind audiences that...

23.12.2025 1

Alexander Sergeant

What Renaissance readers left behind in haircare books

What if the pages of an old book could tell us who touched them, what medicines they made, and even how their bodies responded to treatment?...

23.12.2025 1

Stefan Hanß

Is democracy always about truth? Why we may need to loosen our views to heal our divisions

We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of truth. Trust in public institutions of knowledge (schools, legacy media, universities and experts)...

23.12.2025 2

Frank Chouraqui

We discovered an ancient ‘party boat’ in the waters of Alexandria – here’s what might have happened on board

Beneath the shifting waters of Alexandria’s eastern harbour, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, lie the drowned remnants of a once-splendid city –...

23.12.2025 3

Damian Robinson

Humans could have as many as 33 senses

Stuck in front of our screens all day, we often ignore our senses beyond sound and vision. And yet they are always at work. When we’re more alert...

23.12.2025 1

Barry Smith

Martin Parr: an astute and uniquely British photographer

The kitsch, the gaudy, the banal, the common, the superficial, the cheap: Martin Parr – who has died at the age of 73 – embraced and celebrated...

23.12.2025 1

Mark Durden

Freedom for Christmas: the extraordinary journey of an enslaved woman to Britain

A newly unveiled statue in North Shields is casting fresh light on the extraordinary life of Mary Ann Macham – a woman whose courage carried her...

23.12.2025 2

Genevieve Johnson

Worried about statins? Here’s what the evidence shows

Few medicines have sparked as much debate as statins. Cardiologists often describe them as life-saving, while some patients remain wary of side...

23.12.2025 2

Dipa Kamdar

A story about North Korea and Japan, an exhilarating political film and a funny spy thriller – the three best releases of 2025

In 2025, there was a lot of excellent art and culture to rave about. Anora, a film about a sex worker who gets caught up in the world of a Russian...

23.12.2025 1

Anna Walker

China’s durian craze has turned this tropical fruit into a tool of diplomacy

Distinctive in taste and famously divisive, durian is not everyone’s choice of fruit. This was certainly the case for some Chinese explorers when...

23.12.2025 1

Ming Gao

Can eating high fat cheese and cream reduce dementia risk, as a new study suggests?

A large Swedish study reported a lower risk of dementia among middle-aged and older adults who consumed higher amounts of full-fat cheese and...

23.12.2025 1

Eef Hogervorst

The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hautings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation

This year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas is an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 tale of vampiric horror and haunted sleep, The Room in the Tower....

23.12.2025 1

Alice Vernon

Why so many young people in China are hugging trees

In Beijing’s central district, trees are everywhere. In parks, along roadsides and in courtyards inside people’s houses. Many have only been...

23.12.2025 3

Akanksha Awal

Why returning to sport after childbirth is tougher than it looks for triathlete mothers

Today’s sporting landscape increasingly accepts that athleticism doesn’t end when motherhood begins. High-profile athletes such as middle-distance...

23.12.2025 10

Eleri Sian Jones

The ‘pawprint economy’ is booming – and it offers huge opportunities for tourism

Luxury pet pampering packages at hotels, menus with dog-friendly roast dinners and £6,000 animal-friendly charter flights. Pet travel isn’t just a...

22.12.2025 6

Lori Hoy

The ten best albums of 2025 – according to music experts

With Something Good, the arts and culture newsletter from The Conversation, we aim to cut through the noise and recommend the very best in new...

22.12.2025 2

Hussein Boon

Great apes are humans’ closest relatives, but many are endangered by illegal trading. Here’s what needs to be done

Great apes are humans’ closest relatives in the animal kingdom. As much as 98.8% of their DNA is shared, but while the number of humans living on...

22.12.2025 2

Matyas Liptovszky

AI translation is replacing interpreters in GP care – here’s why that’s troubling

When a doctor can’t find an interpreter, many now reach for Google Translate. It seems like a practical fix to a pressing problem. But a new study...

22.12.2025 1

Anne Cronin

Why there’s always room for dessert – an anatomist explains

You push back from the table after Christmas lunch, full from an excellent feast. You really couldn’t manage another bite – except, perhaps, a...

22.12.2025 5

Michelle Spear

Peace and austerity: how Britain celebrated Christmas in 1945

Eighty years ago, Britain celebrated its first peacetime Christmas since 1938. It was a time of hope indeed, but a look through newspaper archives...

22.12.2025 1

Tim Luckhurst

There are countless reasons families have only one child – and they won’t grow up to be selfish or spoiled

Are you a parent to one child? Or are you considering having a child in the future, and wondering about what your family size should be? Parents of...

22.12.2025 1

Amy Brown

The enduring power of journalism in a world of more media and less freedom

A vast amount of information has not necessarily meant more reliable information, writes James Rodgers, a former BBC correspondent who held...

22.12.2025 3

James Rodgers

Staying fit over Christmas using science-backed methods

The festive season has a reputation for undoing good habits such as eating well and exercising. Normal routines disappear, days become less...

22.12.2025 1

Paul Hough

The five best films of 2025 – according to experts

In no particular order, here are The Conversation’s top five films of 2025 as reviewed by our experts. The latest film from director Paul Thomas...

22.12.2025 3

Ruth Barton

The cost of chocolate is soaring, but blaming cocoa prices doesn’t give the whole picture

Familiar bars of chocolate have been getting more expensive, and often smaller. Is this really just because cocoa has become more expensive, as is...

22.12.2025 1

Peter Alexander

Over 16,000 dinosaur tracks discovered at a site in Bolivia

Scientists have discovered the single largest dinosaur track site in the world in Carreras Pampa, Torotoro National Park, Bolivia. The tracks were...

22.12.2025 1

Sally Christine Reynolds

Meet today’s hunt saboteurs – ‘doctors, teachers, even farmers’ working with police to bring illegal fox hunts to justice

Pseudonyms are used throughout this article. The authors’ interviews with hunt saboteurs and police officers were carried out on condition of...

22.12.2025 1

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Sources

Newspaper Columnists

The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hauntings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation

Alice Vernon

How Hannah Arendt can help us understand this new age of far-right populism

Christopher J. Finlay

Top climate books to look out for in 2026 – recommended by experts

Dominic O&39Key

How poetry can sustain us through illness, bereavement and change

Julie Meril Gardner

Treasure the emotional connections to the clothes you have and style could be a whole lot more sustainable

Lee Mattocks

How displacement reshapes refugees’ gut health

Manal Mohammed

Tattoos, toxins and the immune system – what you need to know before you get inked

Manal Mohammed

How testosterone went from prostate cancer villain to potential ally

Daniel Kelly

The Taliban may not like Peaky Blinders, but its Afghan fans are part of a long history of cultural engagement with the world

Magnus Marsden

Whether it’s a ‘productivity puzzle’ or the ‘British disease’, the UK economy has been underperforming for decades

Eoin Mclaughlin

Do marathons damage your heart? Decade-long study finally settles the debate

David C. Gaze

The evolution of digital nomadism: from hi-tech hacker spaces to crypto coworking

Dave Cook

When AI recreates the female voice, it also rewrites who gets heard

Hussein Boon

How young adult literature and philosophy can help provide better role models for masculinity

Adrianna Zabrzewska

Two-way electric vehicle charging at scale could stop renewable energy being wasted – here’s how it works

Vahid Vahidinasab

What if we taxed what people spend, not what they earn?

Marcelo R Santos

Huge online scam operations are flourishing in war-torn Myanmar – I travelled there to find out why

Xu Peng

How ChatGPT could change the face of advertising, without you even knowing about it

Nessa Keddo

The magic of maths: festive puzzles to give your brain – and imagination – a workout

Neil Saunders

The politics of the hyper-polluting private transport used by the world’s super-rich is hotting up

Rowland Atkinson

England now has a plan to end homelessness – here’s how to test whether it will work

Michael Sanders

We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero

James Painter

The Battleship Potemkin at 100: why Sergei Eisenstein’s powerful silent film remains unforgettable

Dušan Radunović

A Wonderful Life is not a ‘feel good’ Christmas film – but it is incredibly therapeutic

Alexander Sergeant

What Renaissance readers left behind in haircare books

Stefan Hanß

Is democracy always about truth? Why we may need to loosen our views to heal our divisions

Frank Chouraqui

We discovered an ancient ‘party boat’ in the waters of Alexandria – here’s what might have happened on board

Damian Robinson

Humans could have as many as 33 senses

Barry Smith

Martin Parr: an astute and uniquely British photographer

Mark Durden

Freedom for Christmas: the extraordinary journey of an enslaved woman to Britain

Genevieve Johnson

Worried about statins? Here’s what the evidence shows

Dipa Kamdar

A story about North Korea and Japan, an exhilarating political film and a funny spy thriller – the three best releases of 2025

Anna Walker

China’s durian craze has turned this tropical fruit into a tool of diplomacy

Ming Gao

Can eating high fat cheese and cream reduce dementia risk, as a new study suggests?

Eef Hogervorst

The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hautings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation

Alice Vernon

Why so many young people in China are hugging trees

Akanksha Awal

Why returning to sport after childbirth is tougher than it looks for triathlete mothers

Eleri Sian Jones

The ‘pawprint economy’ is booming – and it offers huge opportunities for tourism

Lori Hoy

The ten best albums of 2025 – according to music experts