Counterpoint

China is the world's biggest seafood exporter and the population consumes around a third of world's catch. How do they do it and at what consequence? Might facts be overrated and what can we learn about vaccinations from the 1976 swine-flu fiasco. What has 43 quintillion potential variations, has sold more than 350 million, and began as a spatial tool for people with science, math, or engineering backgrounds?

Imagined in 2001 and meeting since 2009, in 2020 just how successful has the BRICS grouping been and should it continue? Is Asia turning inwards? The Economist Intelligence Unit believes so. Was Milton Freidman right, or maybe half right. Is greed good? We all know that Australian lyrebirds are great mimics and that the male tail, when fanned out, is beautiful but did you also know that they are also ecosystem engineers?

Belarus is a country in turmoil, two months after the presidential election protests are still going on and the calls for a new election are getting louder. Can we compare what's happening here with the Ukranian protests of 2005 and 2013-2014? Why are conspiracies and conspiracy theorists' like QAnon, so popular in the United States right now? Did you know that there are about 200 contact languages in the world right now. Where are they and who is speaking them? Are you in the habit of dropping your apostrophes or using too many commas? The history and future of punctuation.

Is the silver lining of working from home an increase in productivity? How has this happened? The relationship between China and Taiwan is fraught with tension and right now that tension is being played out in a dispute over a bird conservation group. There's new documentary called Juice. It's abut electricity and those who have it and those who don't and an interesting tale about how carbolic acid has made surgery easier for everyone.

Recently there have been calls for Australia to decouple from China but is this really a good idea? Identity politics is all the rage right now and as such we appear to be living in an era in which people are more often rewarded for their identities, especially if it’s a victim identity, rather than for their achievements. Why is that? Why do cities get built where they do, what are they hoping to achieve and what happened to tact?