The Sydney Morning Herald

The pastor had always terrified me. He held himself in the highest regard, demanding to be addressed formally by his full title. It wasn’t just tradition; it was a sign of respect, and he made sure everyone understood that. One Sunday, when I was around six or seven years old, …

I was recently venting a frustration to an acquaintance who abruptly said, “What’s your star sign?”“Pisces,” I replied, cautiously. She gave a knowing nod. “Ahh, yes. Typical water sign. You’re struggling to adapt because Neptune is doing doughnuts around Saturn right now.”According to her, I just needed the right energy …

I’m turning 40 in 304 days (not that I’m counting), and while many women my age are quietly pricing Botox treatments, I’ve spent a genuinely alarming amount of time feeding selfies into AI to see what I’ll look like at 80. Just me, my laptop, and a face that’s seen …

The other day, on my morning walk, I smiled at a woman powering past in activewear. She looked confused, as if she was an alien learning to human via student exchange. “Morning!” I said, further raising the stakes. Her confusion turned to mild alarm, and she powered on. I imagined …

When I first arrived at the local Rotary Book Fair, I felt the giddy thrill usually reserved for Millennials going to a bespoke plant nursery on payday.Like houseplants, books are generally considered non-essential items, but no one would accuse someone of “hoarding plants”.I wandered down the long tables packed with …

The first time I read the words “Ozempic face” I clicked, genuinely alarmed by the implication that this class of drug might be disfiguring its users. I was relieved to find nothing pointing to actual harm, especially given how many people in my immediate circle had started taking it. But …

A profile of Sydney Holocaust survivors Dasia Black-Gutman, Mimi Wise, Ernie Friedlander, and Sabina Kleitman, daughter of Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, killed in the Bondi terror attack, who shared some powerful reflections as Australia grapples with the rise of antisemitism.

FICTIONDeparture(s)Julian BarnesJonathan Cape, $39.99A Belgian interviewer was blunt: “So, Mr Barnes, you are now 76 and you will never win a Nobel Prize because you are a white man — are you raging against the dying of the light?” – hinting not just at the end of the Booker Prize-winning …

At the start of school holidays, like a good disciple of modern mindfulness, I set my intention: the summer holidays will be fun and relaxing – a chance to reconnect with my kids. After all, I’d be off work as well. I would be the ringleader of fun.By day three, …

One of the lesser-known perils of becoming a school teacher is not breathing second-hand vape mist (mango tango!), or working out why your students keep chanting “6-7” like small communists. It’s working out how you’ll be addressed.It began casually. After starting work at my school, another teacher was writing the …

He swivels his camera to show me a mundane grey box beneath his desk that looks like last century’s e-waste. “That’s a computer from 1993 called ‘Deep Crack’ that was built by my friend John Gilmore, and it could break the NSA cypher in two-and-a-half hours.”

The other day, I was ducking into Bunnings with my four-year-old to grab some potting mix when we saw her: dark empty eyes, skeletal arms and wispy grey hair. It wasn’t another mum of small children, though that’s usually an apt description – speaking for myself at least.It was a …

What is it about movies that turns everyone into number-crunching accountants? We don’t talk about books or other art forms this way.

In 2022, living in Laos and searching for an apartment to rent, I came across a Facebook post from a desperate parent trying to locate her daughter. All she knew was that the daughter had arrived from Vietnam with a promise of lucrative but vaguely defined work. Upon landing, she …

Exclusive: The Herald can reveal that fewer than 1 per cent of searches conducted under police powers granted after the Bondi Junction attack in April 2024 have resulted in a punishment, as more charges are laid for non-weapons charges than weapons charges following the knife wanding operations.

Exclusive: The Herald can reveal that fewer than 1 per cent of searches conducted under police powers granted after the Bondi Junction attack in April 2024 have resulted in a punishment, as more charges are laid for non-weapons charges than weapons charges following the knife wanding operations.

Last school holidays, I took my six-year-old to see the film adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man. It would be fun! Mummy-daughter time! Gourmet choc-tops! Popcorn! Although scoffing our choc-tops and popcorn during the trailers was fun, Dog Man exploded onto the screen with such feverish madness, a wall of …

Exclusive: Sydney commuters would be paid to ride an e-bike or e-scooter to work under a European-inspired financial incentive scheme being assessed by the NSW government, in a bid to promote the uptake of electric-powered devices on streets across the state.Financial incentives for e-micromobility devices were proposed in a secret …

Exclusive: Sydney commuters would be paid to ride an e-bike or e-scooter to work under a European-inspired financial incentive scheme being assessed by the NSW government, in a bid to promote the uptake of electric-powered devices on streets across the state.Financial incentives for e-micromobility devices were proposed in a secret …

There comes a time in every parent’s life when you realise you need the mental grit of a hostage negotiator to withstand the rapid-fire questions from your small child. My six-year-old daughter is in her “spelling” era. “Mum, how do you spell ‘elephant’? How do you spell ‘vacuum’? How do …

In case you’ve been living under a rock while the world quite literally blows up around us, for reasons unbeknownst we are still talking about Sabrina Carpenter, the “woman who ruled most of 2025”.If you need me to fill in the gaps, she’s that pint-sized ex-Disney princess producing earworms and …

Exclusive: Critical worker shortages and inflationary pressure on high-volume materials are among the causes driving the unprecedented cost of building a house in Australia, as...

The state’s three-person panel with special powers to accelerate housing supply has sent more than 100 major proposals on a fast track to approval in its first six months, more than doubling initial projections and smoothing the path for...

Exclusive: Transport bureaucrats circulated secret plans to slash improved safety measures at a major Sydney intersection four days after the then-minister gave public assurances that no such cuts would be made, casting aside expansive upgrades promised as a condition of WestConnex four years ago...

What started out with shots about our skinny jeans, side-parts and use of laugh-cry emojis has snowballed into a laundry list of jibes from Gen Z. Another day, another TikTok video pointing out more ways in which us Millennials are cringe.

HISTORY Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his mates in the Spanish Civil WarMichael SamarasConnor Court Publishing, $39.95Doubtless European leaders today use the Spanish Civil War as a lesson to harden resolve against Vladimir Putin and Russia. Like Ukraine, the Spanish War came to represent a global struggle against authoritarianism. The Western …

Exclusive: An urgent document exposing the presence of a deadly synthetic drug 100 times more powerful than heroin in NSW pushed Chris Minns to launch the state’s landmark pill testing trial months after he ruled out the move.In a letter delivered to Minns and Health Minister Ryan Park, co-chairs of …

While I was grabbing the peanut butter the other day, a sharp pain shot through some obscure tendons in my thumb, making me shriek. A preliminary Google revealed that I’d acquired the embarrassingly 21st-century ailment of “texting thumb”, also known as de Quervain’s tenosynovitis, which should be reserved for a …

Now that it’s over, I’m officially calling it – this was the summer when Aussies finally ordered last drinks on our toxic drinking culture. Big call? Maybe. But (as the kids would say) there’s definitely been a “vibe shift”.Mine was a typical Millennial summer, chock-full of Christmas parties, lawn bowls, …

In news that won’t shock anyone who engages with comments on social media or Married at First Sight, human intelligence is declining. The Financial Times reported the downward trend of literacy and numeracy in both kids and adults, as found by the OECD. It appears to be “a broader erosion …