Robert F Kennedy Jr caused controversy in April by promising to find a cause for autism by September. Claims by the new US secretary for health and human services that autism is a “preventable disease” with an environmental cause,  contradict a body of research that suggests autism is caused by a combination of genetic and external factors.

The US government announced that to support its new research effort into autism it would build a “data platform” involving data on claims, medical records and consumer wearables.

 In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Amy Gaeta, a  research associate at University of Cambridge in the UK who studies disability surveillance. Gaeta talks us through some of the strategies people are using to avoid potential surveillance, from self-diagnosis, to withholding information or being careful with the language they use to describe themselves.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Faced with the choice in their daily lives, their work or their politics, why do some people decide to keep quiet, to censor themselves in anticipatory obedience, even if they’re not ordered to do so?

In this episode we talk to self-censorship expert Daniel Bar-Tal at Tel Aviv University about what drives people to censor themselves, and its consequences for society.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

As Jaws marks its 50th anniversary, sharks continue to get a bad rap. Film after film portrays them as terrifying hunters, the bane of surfers and swimmers. But in Indonesia, sharks are the hunted. It’s the world’s largest shark-fishing nation, with more species of sharks found in Indonesian waters than in any other country.

So Indonesia was the ideal place for conservation scientist Hollie Booth at the University of Oxford to test out a new idea: would paying fishermen to release any sharks and rays caught accidentally in their nets help to keep more alive? Listen to Booth and her colleague M. Said Ramdlan in Indonesia discuss the unintended consequences of the incentive programme.

This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware with assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

In October 2021, 136 countries agreed to establish new tax rules requiring large multinational companies to pay at least 15% in corporate tax. Nearly four years later, this ambitious agreement is finally being implemented around the world, but its success faces big challenges.

In the second part of The 15% solution, we examine progress towards implementing the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's global tax framework. Featuring Martin Hearson, a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Donation

For decades, multinational corporations have used sophisticated strategies to shift profits away from where they do business. As a result, countries around the world lose an estimated US$500 billion annually in unpaid taxes, with developing nations hit particularly hard.

In the first episode of The 15% solution, we explore how companies have exploited loopholes in the global tax system. We speak to Annette Alstadsæter, director of the Centre for Tax Research at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and Tarcisio Diniz Magalhaes, a professor of tax law at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

In 2021, after years of international negotiations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development unveiled a global tax deal designed to address tax avoidance through a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. But will this new framework actually work? And what happens when major economies refuse to participate? The 15% solution explores why a new global tax regime is needed, whether it can fix a broken system, and what’s at stake if it fails.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Donation

More than two thirds of guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes originate in the U.S. For decades, Mexico has struggled with staggering levels of gun violence fuelled in large part by weapons trafficked across its northern border.

Now an investigation published by The Conversation has arrived at a new estimate of the scale of this illicit gun trade between the U.S. and Mexico in 2022: 135,000 guns.

Investigative journalist Sean Campbell and Topher McDougal, a professor of economic development at the University of San Diego, spent a year combing through multiple databases and court documents and conducting interviews to understand how the flow of guns works.

Their investigation reveals where in the U.S. the guns are coming from, what impact these American guns are having in Mexico, and how difficult it is for American law enforcement agencies to prosecute those trafficking guns across the border.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• US gun trafficking to Mexico: Independent gun shops supply the most dangerous weapons
• Gun trafficking from the US to Mexico: The drug connection
• Here’s how we figured the number of guns illegally trafficked from the US across the border to Mexico
• Guns bought in the US and trafficked to Mexican drug cartels fuel violence in Mexico and the migration crisis
• Mexican drug cartels use hundreds of thousands of guns bought from licensed US gun shops – fueling violence in Mexico, drugs in the US and migration at the border

For much of the 21st century, one theory has dominated research efforts to cure Alzheimer's disease: the amyloid hypothesis. Beta-amyloid is a protein that builds up in clumps, or plaques, in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and is linked to their cognitive decline.

But in recent years, despite the emergence of a couple of new drugs targeting these plaques, some scientists have begun to doubt the amyloid hypothesis. Donald Weaver, a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto in Canada, is one of them.

Weaver no longer believes there will be one magic bullet found to cure Alzheimer’s disease. Instead, he advocates for a magic shotgun approach that is likely to involve multiple ways of treating the problem, including starting much earlier in a person’s life. He tells us about shifts in the understanding of Alzheimer's during his career of more than 30 years, and the theories now emerging about what might cause the disease and how to treat it.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the host and executive producer. Sound design and mixing by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Three months after the Trump administration made drastic cuts to its aid agency, USAID, the effects are being felt across the world, particularly in Africa. In this episode we speak to Bright Simons, an African aid expert and visiting senior fellow at ODI Global about where the decimation of US aid leaves the debate about the future of development assistance.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• USAID’s apparent demise and the US withdrawal from WHO put millions of lives worldwide at risk and imperil US national security
• USAID: the human cost of Donald Trump’s aid freeze for a war-torn part of Sudan

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