Whether you’re commuting to work or roadtripping up the coast, driving can be tiring.

That’s because driving is a complex task that requires multiple parts of your brain – including those that help you plan, stay alert, and perceive the world – to work together.

But when you’re tired, these parts of your brain may not function as well. That’s one reason why driver fatigue is such a concern.

Recent research shows drowsy driving contributes to between 20% and 30% of all crashes on Australian roads. And it can affect drivers of all ages and levels of experience.

So how does driving affect your brain? And how can you stay alert while on the road?

The neuroscience of driving

Driving is a complex task that relies on brain regions that control attention and vigilance, perception, motor control and high-level cognition.

One meta-analysis examined existing research about how driving affects brain activity. It found driving requires a surprisingly large number of specific brain regions.

This includes the cerebellum and premotor cortex, two brain regions that help coordinate movement. Also involved is the extrastriate cortex, which processes visual information from the world around you. Driving also activates the thalamus, a part of the brain that helps you stay alert and turn sensory information into physical movement.

Why is driver fatigue so dangerous?

Research suggests driving while you are tired can be just as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. About 20% of all deaths on Australian roads are fatigued-related.

Fatigue is a physiological state of impairment that impacts how well your mind and body function. Specifically, fatigue can negatively affect how well you pay attention, make decisions and respond to your surroundings – all of which are crucial for safe driving.

However, microsleeps are perhaps the most dangerous consequence of driving while tired. A microsleep is a brief, involuntary period of sleep which can last up to 15 seconds.

But even during a three-second microsleep at 100 kilometres per hour, your car may travel more than 80 metres without you being in control. This can have catastrophic consequences if you drift off the road, or into pedestrians or other vehicles.

Time matters

Driving may feel like a task you do automatically. But it does require a high level of sustained attention, especially compared to other activities such as responding to emails, operating machinery, or doing other ordinary work tasks.

If you drive for a long time, you might notice yourself paying less attention over time. That’s because driving takes significant mental effort, with some evidence suggesting fatigue may set in after just 60 minutes of driving.

The longer you’re continuously driving, the more likely you are to make a poor decision or fall into a microsleep. Research suggests this is especially true if you are driving at night or on monotonous roads. And even if you don’t feel tired, you may still make errors because your brain is not fully alert.

So if you have a long drive ahead of you, a good rule of thumb is to break it into two-hour blocks. This limits the amount of time spent driving without a break, which helps to reduce your risk of getting driver fatigue.

Other factors to consider

Several other factors may make you more tired while driving.

One is sleep. Research shows having less than five hours of sleep can double your chances of being in a crash. And being awake for long periods – that is more than 17 hours – is also associated with higher risk of driver fatigue.

Another factor is driving at times when you’d normally be sleeping. This disrupts your circadian rhythm – commonly known as your “body clock” – and may mean you’re more likely to fall asleep at the wheel.

Research suggests stress, parenting a newborn, and not consuming enough water or healthy food may also contribute to driver fatigue.

It’s also worth noting, being an experienced driver doesn’t protect you from fatigue. Research shows experienced drivers are still at risk of getting into a fatigue-related crash. Experienced drivers may also become overconfident and, as a result, may take more risks on the road.

So, how can I stay alert while driving?

It’s crucial to get enough sleep before jumping behind the wheel. To function at their best, adults generally need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. But to drive safely, you need at least five hours of sleep the night before.

Importantly, there isn’t much evidence to suggest strategies such as winding down your window or listening to music actually fight fatigue.

Instead, when driving long distances, remember to stay hydrated and take regular breaks. And if you’re feeling too tired to drive, take a nap first. You can also share the driving or postpone your trip.

Madeline Sprajcer receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Alysa Bachmann receives funding from Australian Rotary Health.

From personal health portals to AI assistants that draft emails, the digital age has simplified endless everyday tasks.

But for many older New Zealanders, the rapid march of technology has helped build a wall rather than open doors. Navigating online forms, changing apps, disappearing face-to-face services and the constant threat of scams can be daunting.

There is a term for this unease: technostress. Once used to describe the anxiety and frustration felt by workers, it has more recently been applied to older populations struggling in our digital-by-default world.

While older people’s overall digital engagement has grown over the years, about half of over 50s feel they are being left behind by modern technology.

Amid a planned public sector shake-up that would further digitise services, more than 40% of people older than 60 face barriers for accessing online government information.

More than ever, digital inclusion has become a necessity for older people to access essential services and maintain social connections. Without it, there are serious implications for their psychological, social, cognitive, physical and financial wellbeing.

Our newly published research, based on interviews with 23 people aged over 65, reveals a complex relationship with technology: one that can support independence, but also create new sources of stress and exclusion.

A double-edged sword

The experiences of those we interviewed varied widely. Some used technology very little – perhaps just for texts or phone calls – while others relied upon it heavily for daily chores and work. One study participant spoke enthusiastically about using an AI assistant to support her creative writing.

But regardless of how tech-savvy they were, all felt that keeping up with digital change was a never-ending but necessary challenge. This was especially apparent for those who used tech during their working years but found fewer resources available to upskill in retirement.

Another common theme was feeling targeted by scammers due to their age. For people living on a single income or pension, the financial risk of falling victim to a scam could be devastating and put them off going online.

Broadly, we found technology to be a double-edged sword for older people. For those who felt digitally included, it helped strengthen relationships through sharing photos and videos with family overseas and provided useful access to health information.

For those who felt shut out, technology became a source of distress, frustration and feelings of incompetence. They described struggling with online pension applications or having to relearn familiar software after unexpected updates completely changed the interface.

Some felt the accessibility features built into everyday digital devices were inadequate for their physical needs, causing them to abandon tasks because of eye strain or frustration.

Others felt digital technologies were not culturally responsive, reflecting a predominantly Western worldview. Common errors, such as the mispronunciation of te reo Māori names, could deepen feelings of exclusion and cultural invalidation.

Ageism and equity

Nearly all participants felt digital technologies were not designed with older people in mind, believing they were not viewed as a priority market by mainstream technology companies.

Yet many still blamed themselves for struggling to keep up. Some also described dismissive or impatient responses when seeking help, reinforcing feelings of frustration and inadequacy.

This may suggest a problem of digital ageism: the assumption that older people use technology less because they are unable or unwilling to engage with it.

In reality, meaningful digital participation depends on much more than willingness. It requires people to have the motivation, skills, confidence, access, trust and support needed to engage safely and effectively.

In this context, the challenge is not about age but equity. Fortunately, many organisations and individuals across Aotearoa New Zealand are working diligently on this issue, from advocacy groups to library-based digital skills programmes.

Some local companies have introduced equity products, such as age-friendly digital tablets and lower-cost mobile plans for pensioners. These efforts are essential, but more is needed.

More recent interviews with people working in the field suggest a need to dispel the myth that digital exclusion will disappear as older people increasingly become “digital natives”.

Instead, digital inclusion should be viewed as a fundamental right rather than a luxury in the hands of for-profit companies. This will require targeted policy, increased collaboration across sectors, and active involvement of older people as equal partners in digital design, testing and decision-making.

New Zealanders cannot benefit from even the most well-intended developments, such as telehealth services, if even one aspect of digital inclusion is lacking.

Without deliberate action, the shift to digital services risks widening the very inequities it is intended to reduce.

The author acknowledges the contributions of Rosie Dobson, Cinnamon Lindsay Latimer, Judith McCool, Robyn Whittaker and Vili Nosa to this research.

Melanie Stowell receives a doctoral scholarship from the University of Auckland and support from the Centre for Co-created Ageing Research.

Marjane Satrapi, best known for her memoir and film Persepolis, has died, aged 56. The death of this much loved Iranian–French artist, graphic novelist, film-maker and activist has been met with widespread celebration of her life – and its dedication to resistance, freedom and humanity. French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to “a great artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable”.

Satrapi was born in Rasht (like my own mother) in 1969, then raised in Tehran. She came of age during the Iranian Revolution and the turbulent years that followed. As political repression intensified, members of her family and wider social circle were arrested, persecuted – and in some cases, executed, like her uncle Anoosh, a former political prisoner and exile, executed by the Islamic Republic.

First published in 2000, Persepolis created a transformative shift in comics, memoir and political storytelling. Eventually extended into four volumes, it follows Satrapi’s childhood, her adolescence in Vienna (where her parents sent her to study in 1983) and her later struggle to navigate belonging between Iran and Europe. Satrapi returned to Tehran to attend university in 1989. In 1994, she moved back to Europe.

Satrapi finished her studies in France, where she settled, gaining French nationality in 2006. Last year, she refused France’s prestigious legion d'honneur, over its “hypocrisy” in its dealings with Iran.

Satrapi illustrated the dislocations of revolution, migration, adolescence and return in such a way that her memoir travelled far beyond her home country. Through its deceptively simple black-and-white illustrations, Persepolis became globally influential because it offered an intimate account of revolutionary Iran and exile that challenged dominant stereotypes.

For many readers, Satrapi is still the woman who explained Iran in the simplest, yet most powerful way.

Growing up between worlds with Marjane

Today, reading Persepolis with a cup of tea and a candle lit in Satrapi’s memory, I am struck by how little my reaction has changed since first watching the film at a university screening in France in 2019.

Like Marjane, I grew up between worlds: the child of returnees in the early days of the revolution, a girl who wore the compulsory hijab, listened to Western music, argued with authority, fell in love, had her heart broken and dreamed of lives beyond the horizon. Later, I welcomed political activism, harassment, migration and multiple exiles into my life. Yet what made Persepolis so powerful was not that it reflected my experiences of repression, but that it captured everything beyond.

Satrapi reminded the world that Iranians are not merely subjects of geopolitics or victims of authoritarianism. We have families, friendships, humour, terrible fashion choices, impossible romances and complicated identities.

Like all great memoirs, Persepolis made the particular universal. It allowed readers to see themselves in an Iranian girl from Tehran. In doing so, it made it harder to deny our shared humanity. Her art has the kind of charm that allows everyone to see themselves in one corner of it or another.

In Satrapi’s hands, exile was neither heroic nor tragic. It was disorienting, lonely, creative and politically productive. Her enduring legacy, however, lies not simply in what she told the world about the country she left behind, but in what she revealed about the experience of living between worlds as a human being.

“I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity.” Few lines from Persepolis capture the condition of exile more powerfully than this one.

Reading Persepolis at different times of one’s life offers a language for contradictions that often feel impossible to explain: loving one’s country while criticising it, belonging to multiple places while feeling fully accepted by none, and carrying memories across borders that others struggle to understand.

In telling her own story, Satrapi captured something far larger than herself. In her 56 years of life, she stayed true to herself and never forgot where she came from.

Iran: misunderstood and dehumanised

After the Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis in the United States, the wars with Iraq and the emergence of a new world order after 9/11, Iran became a misunderstood country, its population dehumanised. Satrapi’s memoir restored its complexities and nuances to the imaginations of readers from different backgrounds.

The power of Persepolis comes precisely from its ordinariness. Readers follow the life of a rebellious teenager. They learn about her family, grandparents, friends, teenage crushes, a failed marriage and the arguments that liven up any dinner table. Marjane’s story – garnished with music, humour and grief – reveals how extraordinary historical events are experienced through the mundane rhythms of everyday life.

Yet Persepolis is equally about leaving behind familiarity and home. Throughout, family becomes both refuge and history.

In one of the book’s most moving sections, Satrapi’s beloved Uncle Anoosh tells her, “Our family memory must not be lost.” Decades later, those words resonate for me. Reading them, I often think of my own uncle, Kambiz, whom I lost long before my birth, when he was executed by the Islamic Republic aged 23.

But the significance of this moment extends beyond the boundaries of any single household. In authoritarian contexts, where states often seek to monopolise history and memory, families become custodians of alternative narratives. In stories passed down by parents, grandparents and relatives, Satrapi preserves memories of political imprisonment, resistance – and hope that official accounts might prefer to erase.

Nominated for an Oscar

Satrapi returned to Iran before eventually settling in France, where she built the artistic career that would make her one of the most influential voices of the Iranian diaspora. She created several graphic storytelling books.

She co-wrote and co-directed the animated 2007 film adaptation of Persepolis, and was nominated for an Oscar, becoming the first woman nominated in the category of best animated feature. She went on to direct feature films.

Satrapi’s alternative view of Iran is so compelling because she refuses to romanticise her own country, or to idealise Europe or the West. She rejects both nostalgic nationalism and complete assimilation. Instead, she inhabits the uncomfortable space in between.

For many Iranian migrants and exiles who came after her, this condition feels deeply familiar. Loving a country while criticising it. Belonging to multiple places while feeling fully accepted by none. Carrying memories that others cannot quite understand. Satrapi transformed these contradictions into a language that could be shared.

She critiqued the repression of the Islamic Republic while remaining critical of Western hypocrisy. She condemned fanaticism without embracing cultural superiority. “Between one’s fanaticism and the other’s disdain, it’s hard to know which side to choose,” she wrote in Persepolis.

Importantly, Satrapi never positioned herself as the sole voice of Iran. Rather, she understood her work as a form of translation. As Iran enters yet another period of uncertainty, marked by regional conflict, repression and deepening social fractures at home and in the diaspora, Satrapi continued to insist on the humanity and complexity of Iranian lives.

Her activism included supporting the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini: a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman detained for allegedly not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf in 2022.

Her final years were spent challenging both the authoritarianism of the Iranian state and what she saw as the West’s persistent tendency to reduce Iranians to geopolitical abstractions, rather than people with histories, aspirations and agency.

A gift for generations of exiles

For many Iranian exiles, Persepolis remains more than a memoir. It is a map. A guide to memory, identity, belonging and survival. It reminds me that exile is not simply a matter of geography, but of consciousness. It has taught me that dignity can be an act of resistance and that memory itself can become a political act in times of political amnesia.

Her characters rarely find liberation through departure alone; instead, they grapple with loneliness, reinvention and the persistent question of belonging. Yet Satrapi approached these themes with humour, tenderness and an insistence on complexity.

Marjane Satrapi spent her life ensuring that humanity, resistance and the memory of Iran is never forgotten. In doing so, she gave generations of readers – and generations of exiles – a more sophisticated language for understanding home, freedom and what it means to remain human between worlds.

Shadi Rouhshahbaz 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.

A pair of stars spiralling around each other. That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts we’ve detected, called ASKAP J1745.

In recent years, astronomers have been puzzling over mysterious bursts of radio signals, known as long-period transients because of how slowly they repeat. They were first discovered by chance with telescopes scanning large chunks of the sky.

To date, astronomers have only found a dozen of these weird sources, and we’re still trying to understand exactly what they are.

In a new study published today in Nature Astronomy, we describe a first-of-its-kind detection – both radio and X-ray bursts repeating with each orbit.

ASKAP J1745 is exciting because we’ve figured out what it is, unlike 10 of the 12 known long-period transients. Even better, we were able to detect it with a bunch of different telescopes that observe all different kinds of light.

Bearing the same message in three forms of writing, the famous Rosetta stone once helped scholars decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Similarly, this extra information we found about ASKAP J1745 will help astronomers better understand the mystery of all long-period transients.

What do long-period radio transients look like?

Long-period transients are things in space that produce bright, repeating bursts of light at radio wavelengths. Little is known about the origins of most long-period transients. In addition, many have been discovered close to the dusty region in the middle of our galaxy, so it can be hard to see them with visible-light telescopes.

Even with just a dozen of these strange sources discovered so far, they seem to come in a few different shapes and sizes. Their radio bursts repeat on timescales of minutes to hours.

Some have been making regular pulses for more than 30 years, while others turn off for days at a time or go permanently radio-silent.

Where do they come from?

Astronomers initially thought long-period transients were just very slowly spinning neutron stars, called pulsars. These are the fast-rotating dense cores left after the supernova explosions of massive stars.

The first few of these radio transients discovered were repeating roughly every 20 minutes. That’s much slower than the average pulsar, which repeats every few seconds.

Furthermore, when pulsars slow down their spin, they should stop producing radio light. This means we shouldn’t see radio bursts from neutron stars rotating so slowly.

So astronomers investigated other theories involving white dwarfs – the slowly cooling dead centres of less massive stars. And recently we discovered some long-period transients in binary systems (two stars in a close orbit) with evidence of both a white dwarf and a lower-mass red dwarf star.

The discovery of ASKAP J1745

ASKAP J1745 is a new long-period radio transient we found with the ASKAP radio telescope, owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. It’s the first one of these strange sources that we’ve identified as a “cataclysmic variable”.

Cataclysmic variables are systems with two stars – one of them a white dwarf – that orbit each other closely enough to interact. If the stars are close enough, the white dwarf’s gravity can pull (or “accrete”) material from the other star. That’s why these systems are also known as accreting white dwarf binaries.

Another long-period radio transient was recently discovered with X-ray bursts, repeating with the same regularity as the radio. However, the origin of the bursts and their shared timing remained unclear.

Now, for the first time, we have combined observations from radio, X-ray and optical telescopes to find that ASKAP J1745 produces both X-ray and radio bursts with each orbit of its two stars.

In these rapidly orbiting systems, the X-ray light is thought to come from the material heating up as it streams onto the white dwarf.

The bright radio bursts were a bit more of a mystery. But knowing that this is an accreting binary system helped us figure things out.

The type of pulsed radio light we detected is typically caused by energetic particles interacting with strong magnetic fields. Here, we have the perfect combination: two stars with strong magnetic fields (typically thousands of times stronger than an MRI machine), with charged particles flowing towards the white dwarf from the other star.

What this means for the future of astronomy

This discovery is unique because we have more information and at more different wavelengths than any other previous long-period transient.

Just like the Rosetta stone was key to decoding ancient Egyptian symbols, ASKAP J1745 will be key to deciphering the origins of other long-period radio transients that lack information at other wavelengths.

ASKAP J1745 is the first long-period transient showing signs of accretion across the spectrum of light – from radio waves to visible to X-rays. And this stream of charged material is a crucial ingredient for making the radio light we detect from these systems.

Exploring the mechanism that produces long-period radio bursts gives us a new laboratory to learn about extreme physics such as plasma flows and magnetic fields in conditions we can’t recreate on Earth.

We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamaji as the Traditional Owners and Native Title Holders of Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory where ASKAP is located.

Kovi Rose 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.

Imagine you have used a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool such as ChatGPT to tidy up notes you took while in a meeting. Your colleague comments on how clear they are. You don’t disclose it was the AI that made the notes clear and not you.

Now consider a different scenario. You are at your mother’s funeral. Her best friend of many years delivers a heartfelt eulogy, wishing her well in the afterlife. But later you discover her friend did not actually write the eulogy in any way – AI did.

The undisclosed use of generative AI in these two scenarios is deceptive. But is it morally wrong?

It’s worth considering this philosophical question in detail, given the rapid uptake of generative AI and the fact research has found people may be strongly incentivised to not disclose their use of generative AI because it may impact their relationships.

This is because people take generative AI outputs, generally, to be less valuable, and regard those who use the technology as less competent and authentic.

Distinguishing different kinds of deception

Roughly speaking, if you’re engaging in a “deceptive act”, you’re trying to get someone to believe something you know is false. However, deception can come in different varieties.

Philosopher John Danaher provides a useful framework to distinguish between three forms of deception by AI or robots. This framework is useful because, just as robots might convincingly mimic human behaviours, generative AI technologies are allowing humans to do the same.

Some deceptions involve lying or misrepresenting the external world, such as telling someone you saw a horse in the street, even though you didn’t. Danaher calls these “external state” deceptions.

Other deceptions involve lying or misrepresenting facts about ourselves, such as making someone believe you’re an accomplished artist, even though the artwork you showed them was generated by AI. Danaher calls these “superficial state” deceptions.

We can also deceive others into believing we lack thoughts, feelings or competencies we actually possess, such as pretending to not understand a language we speak in order to eavesdrop. Danaher calls these “hidden state” deceptions.

So, when is deception immoral?

To go back to the first example, by not disclosing you used AI to tidy up meeting notes, you’ve allowed your colleague to believe you have the capacity to do the work, which might be true. However, you also allowed your colleague to believe that you demonstrated that capacity by doing the work, which is false. This would fall into the category of an “external state deception”.

While this deception is morally objectionable, it’s arguably ethically permissible. Trivial deceptions like this happen all the time – and surely we aren’t obligated to always disclose everything about what we do and why we do it.

For example, we don’t blink an eye at undisclosed use of spell-checking software because, in most situations, being a good speller isn’t important. But triviality depends on context. If someone used spell-checking software at a spelling bee, we might be less forgiving.

The scenario about the funeral speech is similar to the first scenario, but less trivial. Your belief over your mother’s friend’s superficial state – that they wish her well – may or may not be false. However, your belief over the external state of affairs – that the eulogy is a demonstration of those well-wishes – is certainly false.

This is more morally problematic. When we claim an AI-generated output as our own – and particularly one that aims to reflect something about ourselves – we signal to others that we not only endorse the output, but that we have authored it. In this case it matters to us that the friend is the source of the eulogy – and not AI. The external state deception is deceptive in a non-trival way.

We imply the output was directly caused by our thoughts, feelings or competencies. When we don’t disclose our use of AI, we deprive others of the kinds of information needed to form true beliefs about how the world is and how others are. This is wrong if people deserve to have such information.

However, the eulogy example can still show how not disclosing our use of AI can – all things considered – sometimes be permissible. Perhaps, for example, the friend was so wracked with grief, that having AI write the eulogy on their behalf was the only way for them to get the speech written in time for the funeral. So they endorsed the generated output as their own.

In such cases, not disclosing the use of AI may be permissible, even though still a morally objectionable kind of deception. This is because, like triviality in the first scenario, other reasons might sufficiently outweigh the wrongness of non-disclosure.

Using AI more ethically

So, how can people use generative AI more ethically?

If we are to avoid immorally deceiving others, we ought to disclose our use of it in non-trivial cases.

What makes undisclosed AI use non-trivial is malleable and context-dependent. It changes in response to social norms couched within particular social practices.

Being open about AI use gives others the opportunity to form more accurate beliefs about what we are communicating – and the internal states our communication demonstrates.

Siavosh Sahebi is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship.

Thomas Montefiore receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.

Some 350,000 years ago, the centre of New Zealand’s North Island appeared much different than the mountainous, scrub-covered landscape it is today.

Amid a glacial period, temperatures were colder and conditions harsher. Vast beech and podocarp forests blanketed the region, providing habitat for abundant native birdlife.

It was against this tranquil backdrop that the one of the Earth’s most explosive eruptions violently unfolded, releasing enough material to carpet much of the country.

Now, colleagues and I have pieced together traces left by the event to provide an unprecedented picture of how it happened – while shedding important new light on the mechanics of those rare cataclysms that are known as supereruptions.

Reconstructing a supereruption

The Whakamaru supereruption was one of the largest ever recorded on Earth – and the greatest produced by New Zealand’s famous Taupō Volcanic Zone.

Stretching from Whakaari/White Island to Ruapehu, this dynamic area is the product of two powerful geological processes: the Pacific Plate sinking beneath the Australian Plate, and the central North Island simultaneously being pulled apart.

It is home to numerous volcanic features today, from geothermal fields with bubbling hot springs and mud pools, to caldera systems and active stratovolcanoes.

Throughout its 2-million-year history, the zone has experienced four known events of such immense scale that they are formally classified as supereruptions – or those that would score a maximum 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.

Only a few dozen have ever been recorded worldwide – the most recent being the Ōruanui eruption that helped create Lake Taupō around 25,300 years ago.

For volcanologists, they pose some of the field’s greatest mysteries: how can so much magma build up below the surface, and then erupt all at once? And what happens to the surrounding landscapes?

To help answer these questions, we turn to preserved volcanic deposits that can be used to reconstruct the processes that play out during these rare events.

Two signature products of supereruptions are “flow” deposits – hot, dangerous masses of rock and gas that travel along the ground – and “fall” deposits, typically mixtures of crystals and volcanic glass that fall from the air.

The challenge for volcanologists is that typically only fragments of these deposits are preserved – and they are often scattered across great distances.

In the Whakamaru supereruption, massive pyroclastic flows left behind thick layers of dense volcanic rock across the Whakamaru and King Country regions. Ash and pumice spread much farther, blanketing much of the North Island and parts of the Pacific Ocean.

One of the first steps in our study was to build a database of these deposits by matching the unique chemical signature of volcanic glass produced during the eruption.

This process is similar to forensic science at a crime scene: fingerprints may suggest a suspect, but DNA evidence can confirm the match. In volcanology, deposits can offer clues as to how they got there, but it is their chemical composition which provides the definitive link.

Using this approach, we analysed more than 30 sites around New Zealand and the south Pacific Ocean. All were found to have come from the Whakamaru supereruption.

With these correlated, we were then able to reconstruct this extraordinary episode.

How the supereruption unfolded

At the beginning of the eruption, a large lake likely lay within the central North Island, much like Lake Taupō today.

When the magma reached the surface, it erupted directly into this lake, triggering extremely violent interactions between magma and water, which drove the earliest phase of the eruption.

It appears this first phase was driven by the evacuation of a singular magma body.

As the eruption progressed, the lake was gradually destroyed and infilled. Eventually, the system transitioned into a much drier style of volcanism.

At the same time, the eruption evolved into a far larger and more complex event beneath the surface. Instead of being fed by one magma chamber, it appears to have triggered a cascading sequence involving at least five separate magma bodies erupting at once.

The amount of ash generated by the eruption is staggering.

Most of the North Island – and even far-away Chatham Island – would have been carpeted in around 30cm or more of material. Areas closer to the eruption were left buried under as much as 4.5m of ash.

Hot, dense pyroclastic flows also swept across the landscape, leaving deposits up to hundreds of metres thick closer to the eruption source.

Altogether, we estimate the eruption released around 2,300 cubic kilometres of volcanic material – enough to bury the entirety of New Zealand beneath roughly nine metres of debris if spread evenly from Cape Reinga to Invercargill.

Today, the Taupō Volcanic Zone remains one of the most active and powerful volcanic systems on Earth.

Although supereruptions like Whakamaru are rare, Taupō volcano has produced many smaller yet still devastating eruptions throughout its history, all of which would have had major impacts on both New Zealand and the wider world.

Understanding how these types of volcanoes operate is essential, both in preparing for future eruptions and for understanding how past events may have transformed the landscape we see today.

The author acknowledges the contributions of Simon Baker and Colin Wilson to this research.

Anna Miller 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.

After trauma, some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition that can involve intrusive nightmares, flashbacks and physical reactions when reminded of the traumatic event, such as a racing heart or difficulty breathing.

Some people with PTSD also develop profoundly negative beliefs about themselves – intense shame, guilt and even feeling responsible for what happened.

For example, someone who experienced a violent assault may believe they somehow deserved to be attacked. Such beliefs can cause significant distress and drive persistent PTSD symptoms.

There are multiple evidence-based forms of cognitive therapy, also called “talk therapy”, that can effectively treat PTSD by helping to reframe these negative self-beliefs.

However, some people don’t respond to these kinds of therapy much – or at all.

In our research, we scanned the brains of 136 people – half who had PTSD, and half who didn’t – while they used cognitive therapy techniques to challenge negative beliefs. We found the reason some people don’t respond to treatment may lie in the way PTSD has restructured their brains.

First, how does talk therapy work for PTSD?

Research shows talk therapies targeting negative beliefs – including cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and trauma-informed cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT) – are broadly effective for PTSD. Most people show meaningful improvement in their symptoms.

Talk therapy for PTSD usually aims to equip patients with skills to challenge distorted negative beliefs through a structured dialogue, known as cognitive restructuring.

During therapy, a therapist might guide the person to counter the rationale underlying beliefs (for example, “who made the decision to commit the assault?”), or consider alternative perspectives (“is there another way of understanding what happened, which doesn’t put the blame on you?”).

Another therapy, prolonged exposure (PE) gradually increases how much someone is exposed to reminders of the trauma, usually alongside reframing techniques. This can be done during therapy (for example, repeatedly describing what happened) or between sessions (for example, revisiting the scene of the trauma).

Read more: Why do some people who experience childhood trauma seem unaffected by it?

But it doesn’t work for everyone

Clinical studies show, after these kinds of cognitive therapy for PTSD, about one-third of people will still have diagnosable PTSD symptoms.

While zero improvement is rare, it means a significant proportion of people still aren’t achieving ideal outcomes from therapy. The factors underpinning this are complex and poorly understood.

But we know some people with PTSD are more likely to show no or little improvement after talk therapy. They include those with:

• the most severe symptoms
• persistent exposure to trauma (particularly during childhood)
• other psychiatric diagnoses, such as depression or substance use disorders.

Some studies also suggest older people, men, those from racial minorities and military veterans show less benefit on average from cognitive PTSD therapies.

This may because these groups are more likely to report other factors which affect how well treatment works. For example, men with PTSD typically have more symptoms of anger problems than women, and less social support.

What we did and what we found

Our recent study showed there may be a neurobiological explanation for why talk therapies work for some people and not others.

We asked 70 people with PTSD, and 66 people who’d been exposed to trauma but without PTSD, to challenge negative self-beliefs via cognitive restructuring while inside an MRI brain scanner.

In people with PTSD, we found their prefrontal cortex (the brain’s “control centre”) was worse at regulating activation in the thalamus – a small structure that works as a relay hub, allowing different parts of the brain to communicate.

These regions work together to let us represent abstract information – such as self-beliefs – in the brain, and to update our beliefs and their associated emotions with new information.

Among people with PTSD in our study, those with more severe negative beliefs showed weaker connectivity in this pathway when using restructuring techniques to challenge negative self-beliefs.

Weaker connection between these regions might hinder people’s ability to update negative self-beliefs with new information, resulting in less benefit from therapy.

So, why might this be?

We know that self-beliefs in people with PTSD are more often heavily influenced by negative information and events – that is, being criticised might make you feel worse about yourself, but being praised won’t make you feel that much better.

The way PTSD changes brain pathways points to why some people’s self-beliefs are harder to counter with positive reframing techniques, meaning these beliefs become “stuck”.

These trauma survivors may understand, on an intellectual level, that they weren’t to blame for what happened. But that understanding never quite shifts the part of them that still feels responsible, and they have little emotional relief.

Everyone seems to be talking about trauma. Do we know more about it? Or has the meaning changed? In this five-part series, we explore the shifting definition of trauma, why talking about it doesn’t always help, and what else can work.

What might work instead?

Some people may need treatments that first address the brain’s wiring needed to engage with talk therapy. For example, certain evidence-based approaches aim to build people’s emotion regulation skills before talk therapy.

A therapist will help someone improve their ability to deal with negative emotions, for example by learning effective strategies to tolerate and manage distress. They will unpack how these emotions influence their interactions with other people, so they are better able to take on the challenges of cognitive restructuring in therapy.

Other emerging evidence suggests therapy using MDMA or ketamine for PTSD may help those who haven’t responded to other treatments, by directly influencing brain pathways. Research is exploring how these can be delivered safely.

Read more: Psychedelic drug MDMA could help treat PTSD – but there’s a reason it’s not widely available

For some people, simply trying different treatments can yield better outcomes. What works can depend on a person’s symptoms or preferences. This won’t always be the first treatment someone tries.

However, we know people whose symptoms don’t improve after one first-line intervention (the “best-practice” treatments with the strongest evidence base) are less likely to engage in further treatment.

By refining our understanding of the brain mechanisms underpinning cognitive restructuring, we’re hopeful our work can inform more precise and targeted approaches to treating PTSD.

But there are other limitations

People with ongoing or repeated exposure to trauma, such as first responders, are also at risk of re-traumatisation. This is where past trauma causes heightened reactions to new trauma. Ongoing trauma can also amplify symptoms and make therapy less effective.

Cultural factors may also shape how well standard therapy formats fit. There is growing evidence that culturally adapted or group-based approaches (especially for interpersonal trauma, such as abuse) better serve some communities than the standard model of one-on-one talk therapy.

Trevor Steward receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Andrea Putica and James Agathos 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.

We have thousands of spontaneous thoughts a day. Most of them are mundane, such as “Where did I leave my car keys?”

But every now and then a strange and distressing thought might pop into our mind, such as “What if I hurt myself or someone I care about?”

So, what’s the difference between these random (and sometimes scary) intrusive thoughts and suicidal thoughts?

And when can our thoughts be a warning sign we need help?

What are intrusive thoughts?

Intrusive thoughts are sudden, involuntary thoughts, mental images or urges. They often cover difficult themes such as causing or experiencing harm, contamination, making a mistake, or sexual or religious content.

Sometimes these thoughts can feel alarming or upsetting, especially if they’re unwanted and we feel an urge to get rid of them.

But most people experience intrusive thoughts and having them doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or will necessarily act on them.

It’s unclear exactly why we have intrusive thoughts. It might reflect the natural tendency of our minds to wander. This process is usually helpful, and can help us form new understandings or generate new ideas.

But under stress having intrusive thoughts can become less helpful, particularly when they are unwanted, upsetting or feel hard to control.

So if intrusive thoughts are mostly a signal of stress, not danger, when do they become a problem?

If these thoughts cause you distress and make it hard to manage everyday things such as work, school or relationships, this could be a sign of a mental health disorder such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), an anxiety disorder, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

What should you do about intrusive thoughts?

The more we try to push intrusive thoughts away, the more they return and the more intense they can become.

However, a type of psychological treatment that pairs cognitive behaviour therapy with “exposure and response prevention” is effective for dealing with intrusive thoughts in anxiety or OCD.

This involves allowing intrusive thoughts to be present without trying to control them, then gradually reducing less helpful responses (such as scrolling on your phone to try to block out the thought), so the brain learns the thoughts are not dangerous.

You can try a simple version of this at home:

• label the thought (for example, “This is an intrusive thought.”)

• reduce unhelpful coping mechanisms (for example, drinking alcohol to block out unwanted thoughts)

• let the thought pass (for example, try a visualisation exercise where you imagine the thought drifting down a stream, without engaging with it or trying to get rid of it)

• refocus your attention on enjoyable activities such as going for a walk, chatting to a friend, or focusing on a task like cooking. This is not to “escape” the thought but to let it sit in the background while you focus your attention on what’s important to you.

Read more: Unwanted unacceptable thoughts: most people have them and we should talk about them

What if your intrusive thoughts are about death, self-harm or suicide?

Intrusive thoughts about experiencing harm such as your own death, self-harm or suicide are surprisingly common. We can also have intrusive thoughts about harm coming to others, including loved ones.

While they can feel upsetting, having thoughts such as “I wish I didn’t exist” doesn’t necessarily mean a person wants to or will act on them. However, it may indicate they are feeling emotionally overwhelmed, anxious or depressed.

Intrusive thoughts about your own death and specific ways of dying can also mean something more serious. It can lead to a greater risk of suicide or self-harm.

When do intrusive thoughts become a warning sign?

If intrusive thoughts are causing you distress, impacting your day to day life or you’re having thoughts about suicide, these are clear warning signs it’s time to get help.

Other important warning signs can include:

• more frequent or persistent thoughts or images about death or suicide

• increased hopelessness

• actively thinking about, planning or preparing for death

• behavioural changes such as withdrawing from others.

How can I get help and what can I do to help someone else?

You don’t need to manage these thoughts alone.

If you notice these warning signs in yourself, it’s important to ask for support. Talking to someone such a GP, psychologist, psychiatrist, trusted family member or friend can be a good first step.

If you’re having intrusive thoughts about suicide, your GP may ask you to complete a safety plan, which is a helpful reminder of ways to get support and keep safe when difficult thoughts, feelings or urges come up.

If you notice these signs in someone else, it’s important to check-in with how they’re doing at an appropriate time and in a caring way.

Here’s a four-step guide:

1. Ask directly about suicide. This won’t put the idea in someone’s head. When done sensitively, directly (“Are you thinking about suicide?”) and honestly, it can help people feel less alone.

2. Listen to the person, take them seriously and stay with them.

3. Get help (see examples below).

4. Follow-up and check in regularly.

For more information and support

For more information and resources about intrusive thoughts and OCD you can visit Lifeline, or for young people ReachOut or headspace.

You can visit This Way Up or MindSpot to access evidence-based online treatment programs for intrusive thoughts and OCD.

There are also online treatments for kids and teens with OCD.

If you’re having distressing thoughts about death and dying or suicide and need someone to talk to you can call:

• Lifeline: 13 11 14

• Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636

• Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Ann Martin and Jill Newby to this article.

Emily Upton receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Kayla Steele 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.

Headlines might describe meat as “a significant health risk” or “essential for a healthy and balanced diet”.

So what’s behind these seemingly contradicatory statements?

Our new research suggests one reason is who pays for the science behind the studies we see discussed online or via social media.

We examined whether meat industry involvement is linked to how scientific papers portray the health effects of eating meat.

We found studies with ties to the meat industry were 16 times more likely to conclude meat is harmless or beneficial, compared with studies without such ties.

Conflicts of interest in nutrition research are not new. Analyses of sugar, ultra-processed foods, and drinks have found the same pattern: industry-funded studies are more likely to produce outcomes that favour the sponsor’s commercial interests.

This can muddy the evidence base used to guide dietary guidelines and policy, which can influence consumers’ choices.

What we did

The meat industry’s role in shaping nutrition science has received little systematic scrutiny. Our aim was to address this through a simple question: when the meat industry is involved in a study, does that change the study’s conclusion about meat’s health effects?

We searched for nutrition studies published between 2014 and 2023 that examined how eating meat relates to health.

For each study, we recorded declared funding sources, author affiliations and declared conflicts of interest. For example, a study that declared funding by Meat & Livestock Australia was identified as a study with industry ties.

We then classified the paper’s conclusion about meat as favourable, neutral or unfavourable. For example, if a study concluded eating meat may cause cancer, this was classified as unfavourable.

We then analysed whether those conclusions were associated with meat industry ties. We were testing whether there was a statistical link between industry involvement and a more positive “spin” on meat.

What we found

Of the 500 studies included, 78 (15.6%) reported some form of industry involvement.

Studies that disclosed ties to meat related organisations were 16 times more likely to conclude meat was beneficial.

Studies that did not provide a funding statement or conflict of interest declaration also tended to report more positive findings, raising further questions about transparency in nutrition research. Perhaps there was meat industry involvement in this research but it was not declared. We have no way of knowing.

Importantly, we were not judging whether individual studies were “right” or “wrong” about meat’s contribution to health. Instead, we showed that the pattern of conclusions in the literature is strongly linked to who is paying the bills.

This finding is consistent with broader work on food industry sponsorship and outcomes in nutrition science.

Why it matters

Most people will never read an academic paper, but many will encounter its findings via news stories, social media, industry communications or even dietary guidelines.

Journalists and policymakers often rely on “the weight of the evidence” when deciding what messages to send about meat and health.

If industry involvement systematically tilts that evidence base, the public may be misinformed about foods in ways that do not fully reflect all the independent science.

For people trying to make sense of conflicting nutrition headlines, this means apparent scientific disagreement may reflect differences in who supported the research, not differences in the data.

Our findings do not mean every study with meat industry ties study is invalid, nor that independent studies are by default of higher quality. But they do suggest industry involvement should be treated as a key piece of information when weighing up nutrition claims.

For readers, a useful rule of thumb is to look beyond the headline and ask: who funded this study, and do the authors have financial ties to the products being discussed?

Journalists can help by routinely reporting funding sources and conflicts of interest when covering nutrition stories, and by seeking independent experts to contextualise new findings.

What needs to happen next?

Our study adds to growing calls for stronger safeguards around conflicts of interest in nutrition research. At a minimum, clear disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest should be non negotiable, and journals should enforce these policies consistently.

However, disclosure only tells us a conflict exists. It does not remove the conflict. Managing, and ideally eliminating conflicts of interest should be a higher priority than solely declaring them.

One way to do this is through greater public and independent funding to enable researchers to conduct studies without relying on support from commercial industries.

The public rightly expects nutrition advice to be grounded in the best available evidence. Our findings suggest that when it comes to meat, industry involvement can tilt that evidence in a certain direction.

Recognising and correcting for that tilt is an essential step towards more trustworthy dietary guidance.

Navid Teimouri receives funding from an Australian government research training program (RTP) scholarship for higher degree by research students.

Katherine Cullerton receives funding from the World Health Organization and NHMRC.

In a media landscape where sexual violence is largely normalised, the hit new show Off Campus is a refreshing pivot.

Created for Amazon Prime by showrunners Louisa Levy and Gina Fattore, the series explores the devastating impacts of sexual violence on young women. But it does so with sensitivity, and without gratuitous depictions of said violence.

Normalising sexual assault onscreen

Off Campus, a romantic college drama based on author Elle Kennedy’s novel series of the same name, is enjoying plenty of popularity right now. This is mainly due to its ridiculously attractive leading men and women, coupled with steamy (consensual) sex scenes and cheesy romance.

Season one follows college junior Hannah Wells and her fake dating scheme-turned-romance with star hockey-player Garrett Graham.

In a main subplot, we learn Hannah was drugged and raped by a classmate, Aaron Delaney, at a party. She was 15 when it happened.

But Hannah’s experience of assault chronologically takes place before the first episode. The incident is only hinted at subtly, through flashbacks.

Instead, the focus is on her life in the aftermath of sexual assault. This is the kind of representation post-#MeToo activists have been advocating for. Here, the reality of violence against women is addressed, but not viscerally depicted.

Contemporary series and films have a plethora of narrative plots predicated on graphic depictions of violence against women. Yet little has been done to address this.

As gender studies experts Stephanie Patrick and Mythili Rajiva explain, onscreen rape depictions continue to “rehearse gendered scripts, positioning women as sexual objects onscreen for the pleasure of audiences and/or male protagonists”.

These portrayals are now a pervasive part of screen culture, spanning genres and audiences.

Game of Thrones (2011-19), for instance, had multiple violent depictions of rape of prominent female characters, including Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister and Sansa Stark.

Similarly, Teen drama 13 Reasons Why (2017-20) also depicted both the rape of the central character Hannah Baker and the gang rape of minor character Tyler Down.

Both shows, though wildly different, demonstrate a heinous interest in showing the violation of bodies for entertainment.

What do we audiences get out of watching this, other than gnawing discomfort? And why do such shows remain highly watched, despite the controversy they attract?

Do we need to see sexual violence?

One might argue depictions of sexual assault and violence may make viewers more invested in the issue, and therefore more empathetic towards the experience of survivors.

Feminist film scholar Debra Ferreday says “like fans, feminists are intimately invested in practices of remediation and in the creation of transformative works” – and are therefore more likely to respond to these depictions with an activist mindset.

But, it’s not that simple.

There is also the potential to re-traumatise viewers who have experienced sexual assault, something showrunners are starting to take into account. And this has partly driven the rise of intimacy coordination in the industry. In the words of screen and media scholar Inge Sørensen:

the ways in which nudity, sex and intimacy are […] directed and acted on and off set are no longer only an ethical issue for […] cast and crew members on discrete productions. It is an industry concern with potentially significant financial and reputational consequences for any production.

There is also the potential for graphic depictions of sexual assault to desensitise viewers and normalise predatory and/or violent behaviour, particularly with reference to young men.

We can sen the effects of this in regards to shows such as Game of Thrones, wherein a number of online users argued the fantasy setting provided justification for the violent rape scenes. They saw no issue with them.

The Off Campus approach

Enter Off Campus. Alongside the main plot of Hannah and Garret’s budding attraction, we get glimpses into Hannah’s post-traumatic stress.

She confides in Garrett about her inability to orgasm, is hesitant to drink at parties, and feels guilty the only result of her legal trial against her abuser was the alienation of her family in their hometown in Indiana.

These moments come to a crux in episode seven, when Aaron plays against Garrett in a hockey game, and Hannah is too traumatised to attend. She isolates herself, struggles with overwhelming anxiety and avoids Garrett’s calls.

This scene mirrors the experience of many victim/survivors, who fear they will not be believed, or their assault won’t be taken seriously. Hannah’s beliefs reflect pervasive rape myths and stereotypes that shroud victim/survivors in doubt and shame.

Off Campus successfully touches on these problematic ideologies, before challenging a legacy of storylines that have helped endorse rape myths and minimise the effects of sexual violence.

Hannah eventually reaches out to her family and friends, who rally around her. Her mum, for instance, tells her she has “nothing to be sorry for”.

Almost a decade on from #MeToo

The series’ overall sensitive approach suggests at least some showrunners are becoming less interested in violent depictions of sexual assault onscreen.

As we near the ten-year anniversary of the #MeToo movement, violence against women remains high, with an estimated one in five women having experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.

Off Campus marks a pivot away from harmful representation on a macro level, while initiating important conversations around the impact of sexual violence on an individual level. This visibility can steer victim/survivors towards seeking support, and encourage greater empathy and awareness among the broader audience.

The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

Bridget Mac Eochagain 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.

I was a junior doctor on the front lines when journalist Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation 25 years ago. Back then, my days (and far too many nights) were spent picking up the pieces of a healthcare system that already felt like it was bursting at the seams.

Fast Food Nation pulled back the curtain on the fast-food industry, showing how a system built for speed, efficiency and profit reshaped what Americans eat, how food is produced and the conditions under which many people worked. More broadly, it revealed the harms of the industrial food system as a whole. The New York Times called it “a fine piece of muckraking, alarming without being alarmist”.

We are no longer looking at a warning of what might happen. We are living through the reality Schlosser predicted: that allowing this hyper-processed, factory-style fast-food model to creep into our daily lives would drive a heartbreaking global epidemic of obesity and preventable chronic illness. Today, we know ultra-processed foods are linked to over 30 serious health problems, including cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes), type 2 diabetes and mood disorders (anxiety and depression).

In an afterword to the 25th-anniversary edition, Schlosser shares angry responses to the book from McDonald’s, the National Restaurant Association and the National Meat Institute. He also describes being heckled at events, including by a man who put him in a headlock in a carpark and shouted, “Why do you hate America, why do you hate America so much?”

Today, United States health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement echo the messages of Scholsser’s book, declaring ultra-processed foods “poison” and the main culprit of the nation’s “chronic disease epidemic”. (At the same time, president Donald Trump worked the McDonald’s drive-thru counter on the 2024 campaign trail and has even made a habit of serving McDonald’s to athletes at the White House.)

A broken food environment

In those early clinical years in 2001, I was treating what I now recognise as the end-stage symptoms of a broken food environment: Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and the early wave of the obesity epidemic. But at the time, I lacked the perspective of a long career – and the personal stake of being a parent.

I saw the patients, but I hadn’t yet fully grasped what Schlosser calls the “operating system” driving them into my clinic. Reading the book in 2026, the stakes feel vastly different. With two decades of general practice behind me and my own children now navigating their way around a kitchen, the clinical has become deeply personal.

In 2001, fast food was still draped in a cloak of mid-century optimism. The Golden Arches of McDonald’s, for example, weren’t just a logo. They represented consistency, safety and an image of suburban success.

Schlosser didn’t just critique the menus of the fast-food industry. He deconstructed the entire machine, revealing that a “cheap” burger was a financial illusion. The true costs were being paid by the whole of society: the exploited workforce, the polluted environment and eventually, the unsuspecting taxpayer through soaring healthcare bills.

As a GP, I see this as an important shift in blame. It moves the conversation away from “bad individual choices” and toward an understanding that industrial forces have tipped the scales against our biology.

1. The chemical hijack of our tastebuds

One of the most unsettling parts of the book is the look inside the secret flavour labs of New Jersey: the origin story of our current ultra-processed food crisis. Scientists didn’t just make food taste good, Schlosser revealed – they engineered “mouthfeel” and “aroma” to replace the nutrition lost in processing.

In medical terms, these are neurological hacks. They are designed to hit a bliss point that bypasses the body’s natural satiety signals. (The “I’m full” feeling.)

When we consume these foods, we’re not just eating; we are ingesting an engineered experience that creates a cycle of addiction – one many of our children are trapped in before they even reach high school.

2. The ‘Shadow Workforce’ and human dignity

Schlosser highlighted how the industry relies on treating humans as interchangeable parts within a system. His depiction of fast food is less a collection of convenient eateries and more a meticulously engineered extraction machine that sustains itself by consuming a steady diet of vulnerable human “inputs”.

He describes various people used to keep the system running. Children targeted by “cradle-to-grave” marketing and hazardous night-shift labour. Service workers and immigrants facing injuries on slaughterhouse floors. Independent ranchers (farmers), now functioning as quasi-indentured labour under monopoly power. And the low-income families trapped in areas with a high concentration of unhealthy food outlets.

Ultimately, the industry thrives by externalising its “true cost”, he writes. The silent taxpayer is left to pick up the multi-billion-dollar bill for both the welfare subsidies of underpaid workers and the chronic disease epidemics.

From a public health perspective, when you prioritise “throughput” over human dignity, the trauma and physical toll on workers eventually lands right back in the lap of the public health system.

3. The monopoly on our health

By 2026, the “captive supply” Schlosser warned about has become a reality. “It’s just another way of controlling prices through captive supply,” he wrote. “The packers now own some of these big feeders lock, stock, and barrel, and tell them exactly what to do.”

A handful of companies now control everything from infant formula to meatpacking. This lack of competition isn’t just an economic issue; it’s a national security and health risk. When a system is this brittle, a single failure can threaten our access to basic nutrition.

Monopoly power has effectively diminished our “food sovereignty”, or community control over our own food – the freedom to choose health over convenience.

2026: from debate to rebellion

The most striking change since the book’s first edition is the shift in the political weather. For decades, critics of the food industry were dismissed as “nanny state” enthusiasts.

But in 2026, something has changed. We’ve seen an 83% consensus among voters for clearer warning labels on processed foods. Regardless of your personal politics, the emergence of the MAHA movement, and the unlikely alliance between traditional disrupters and health advocates, show that the old guard’s influence is being substantially challenged.

The movement echoes Schlosser’s core arguments.

The true cost must be paid, he argues. We can’t let corporations privatise profits while the public pays for expensive heart surgeries. Corporations aren’t people: the legal fictions that allow the manipulation and exploitation of children’s diets must be challenged. And agency is essential; we are not victims of an inevitable system.

A GP’s final word

Fast Food Nation shifted the public conversation about food and health away from individual “willpower” and onto systemic corporate accountability. It catalysed the modern food activism movement, forever changing how society calculates the “true cost” of a cheap meal. And it directly paved the way for today’s historic, cross-partisan demands for health reform and food sovereignty that we see today.

As a doctor who has spent 20 years treating damage done by the industrial food complex, I see this book as a necessary health check on the world we’ve built. The true cost of a fast-food burger is never just a few dollars; it’s the quiet, chronic toll it takes on our bodies, our families and our communities.

However, Schlosser’s 2026 update isn’t a “told you so”. It’s a call to take back our agency. The Golden Arches are no longer seen as a “trusted friend,” but as a monument to a model we have finally outgrown. We have the collective power to un-rig the system and choose real food again.

The question is: will we?

Natasha Yates is affiliated with the RACGP.

Have you heard someone say online or in casual conversation, when responding to someone’s struggles, “well, the body keeps the score”?

For many people, this phrase is a useful way to name the physical toll stress and trauma can take when the body is in “fight or flight” mode.

The everyday use of this phrase also demonstrates the extraordinary reach of the 2014 non-fiction book that popularised it, The Body Keeps the Score by Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. But as the idea has spread, it’s also been simplified.

In fact, this book – which has spent almost six years on The New York Times bestseller list – goes beyond arguing that trauma affects the body. It rests on a far more contentious claim: that traumatic memories live in the body, inaccessible to conscious memory.

This idea of repressed memories has a long and controversial history. Here’s why we’re worried it’s making a comeback.

The memory wars

During the 1990s, the idea of repressed memories sparked a major scientific dispute known as the “memory wars”. Clinicians and memory researchers disagreed over whether traumatic events could be completely inaccessible to conscious memory, only to be recovered later in therapy.

The core idea, rooted in psychoanalytic theory, was that traumatic experiences are so overwhelming that the mind unconsciously represses them as a defence mechanism, removing them from conscious awareness while they continue to produce psychological symptoms.

After more than a decade of research raising serious doubts about repression as a reliable mechanism, many believed this debate had been settled.

Yet the idea of repressed memories is returning.

Today, the claim is not only that traumatic memories can be repressed, but that the body stores them. These repressed, stored memories are said to re-emerge later through physical symptoms.

The Body Keeps the Score suggests healing requires “releasing” or “integrating” these hidden memories of trauma through a variety of alternative, often non-evidence-based therapies, such as yoga, pyschedelic-assisted therapy and guided imagery.

Traumatic experiences are further described as disrupting the nervous system in lasting ways – even beyond a person’s conscious awareness or memory of what happened. This argument has shifted public perceptions of trauma.

Trauma and the body

The kind of memory research we do does not deny trauma, nor that it can affect the body. The concern is specifically about how this relates to memory.

There is broad scientific agreement that stress, often associated with traumatic experiences, can alter hormone levels such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, which can then impact other systems of the body. This can elevate blood pressure, affect libido, and influence how safe or unsafe the world feels on a bodily level.

For some people, trauma can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which involves physical symptoms such as nausea, panic attacks, difficulty breathing, trouble sleeping, and feeling exhausted from constantly being “on guard”.

Read more: What do people mean when they say their nervous system is overloaded or needs a reset?

How memory works

Memory doesn’t work like a recording device we can simply “play back”.

Decades of research show that autobiographical memory is reconstructed each time an event is recalled. This means the context we’re in – including new information, our emotions, and other people’s expectations – can influence what we remember. This may distort or alter our memories.

Suggestive therapy techniques – for example, hypnosis or guided imagery, where patients enter a highly suggestible state – are especially prone to implanting false memories.

Major professional organisations, such as the American Psychological Association and the British Psychological Society have repeatedly warned that these therapeutic techniques designed to recover supposedly buried memories can create false memories.

Everyone seems to be talking about trauma. Do we know more about it? Or has the meaning changed? In this five-part series, we explore the shifting definition of trauma, why talking about it doesn’t always help, and what else can work.

Alternative therapies

The Body Keeps the Score promotes a broad range of therapies for trauma as alternatives to more established PTSD treatments, including yoga and psychodrama, which is the use of roleplay to re-enact the traumatic experience.

Some of these approaches may be helpful for some people. There is no harm in doing yoga if you have PTSD and feel it helps to reduce stress.

However, problems arise when these techniques are claimed to be able to help people “access repressed memories”.

This idea can be exploited. Recent ads on social media suggest nightmares or trouble sleeping could be due to extensive trauma you don’t remember. A quick quiz will deliver your test results and redirect you to a “trauma-informed” online coaching program that you pay for.

What about psychedelics and MDMA?

More recently, van der Kolk and others have turned attention to psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Substances such as MDMA and psilocybin have shown promise in tightly controlled research settings. They appear to influence brain pathways, though the mechanisms are not yet fully understood.

From a memory perspective, psychedelics raise specific concerns. Research suggests psychedelics can affect memory in some worrying ways.

They make people more suggestible, meaning they are more likely to accept ideas or stories as true, even when they come from an outside source. They also create a powerful feeling that what people experience is deeply and certainly real.

This is a risky combination, because a person could come away with a false memory they feel convinced has happened.

Early qualitative reports already describe cases in which apparent memories of trauma emerged during psychedelic therapy, with uncertainty about their accuracy.

Recent US research found the vast majority of people endorse belief in repressed memories and the idea that “the body keeps the score”. This research is currently being replicated in Australia, with preliminary findings suggesting these beliefs may be even more widespread over here.

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.