Speaking With...

Social researcher Hugh Mackay and The Conversation's FactCheck Editor Lucinda Beaman. “I’ve found 2017 a really disturbing year.” That’s the summary from writer, thinker and social researcher Hugh Mackay. Mackay spoke in December with The Conversation’s FactCheck Editor Lucinda Beaman at the Sydney launch of The Conversation 2017 Year Book: 50 standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers. Among the essays featured in the book is Mackay’s enormously popular and thought-provoking article titled The state of the nation starts in your street. The discussion, which you can hear in full on The Conversation’s Speaking With podcast above, touched on issues ranging from the rise of Donald Trump and what it means for Australian politics, to social dislocation and distrust in our institutions – and in each other. Mackay said: “We’re now seeing many long term trends coming to fruition”. “What is happening to Australian society is that we are edging in that same direction [as America]: more inequality, a gr