Most groups have one. Not a psychopath in the clinical sense. I mean the everyday bad actor. The person with no obvious brake pedal. The one who says the cruel, racist, or contemptuous thing, then looks around to see who is brave enough, or foolish enough, to object. They are seldom in the centre of the room. That would be...

AI isn't destroying writing. It is destroying the monopoly on polished prose. Imagine reading an essay and enjoying it. The argument is clear, the examples work, and a few lines make you laugh. You reach the end feeling that the writer has explained something you had vaguely sensed but never quite put into words. Then you discover the essay was...

China has just cracked down on AI companions. As of this week, minors can no longer be offered virtual boyfriends, girlfriends, relatives or other emotionally intimate chatbot companions. Adults can still have them, but the bots are not allowed to encourage addiction, emotional dependence or withdrawal from real human relationships. This is personally disappointing. I had been thinking that, for...

I love famous last words. They are death with a happy ending. And I'm a romantic, I love that. Nobody wants their final words to be "Did you smell that?" or "I think that prawn was off." We want to go out with wit, courage, love, and wisdom, or at least a line good enough to make our mourners speak...

Josh Szeps Ruined My Week Last week I wrote about polarisation. Then I flicked on my favourite Aussie podcaster, Josh Szeps, and heard him say something like, “maybe the real problem is not polarisation, but fragmentation.” He was arguing that polarisation implies a binary, whereas now our politics is a giant mosaic. So, like a true groupie, I pivoted. Well,...

The odd thing about modern argument is how quickly it shifts from “I think you are wrong” to “You are a terrible person.” We no longer simply disagree about climate, gender, immigration, race, COVID, Israel and Gaza, or crime. We read a person’s view as a full psychological profile. Their opinion tells us which tribe they belong to, what news...

Guess my status I’m writing this in a busy McCafe during a layover in Kuala Lumpur, travelling on a budget non-direct AirAsia flight from Phuket to Bali. I’m wearing frayed cotton trousers, a Kmart T-shirt, and plastic Birkenstocks. But I also have Bose headphones and the latest iPhone Pro. And, for reasons both trivial and revealing, I’m in seat 1A...

The current debate over suppression orders on mental health grounds turns on an important but often overlooked question: what, exactly, can psychiatric evidence reliably establish? As a psychiatrist, I do not wish to lessen the importance of mental illness. Courts should keep the authority to safeguard genuinely vulnerable individuals in exceptional cases. However, I am worried that psychiatric reports might...

Be honest. When was the last time a fictional scene made your throat tighten? A farewell at a train station. A reunion at an airport. A parent quietly making a huge sacrifice. Or perhaps something less noble. A romantic comedy where two mildly attractive people misunderstand each other for ninety minutes and then kiss in the rain as a string...

Let’s start with a simple observation. People will happily say they’re “trying for a baby”, aka having sex with a project plan. Mention masturbation, and the room goes into silent mode. Someone asks about the weather. It’s a strange arrangement. Most of us have a sexual inner life. We masturbate. We watch porn. We think about sex. Yet we treat...