Abstract The origin of pulsar radio emission has been a mystery for more than 35 years. The observed extremely high brightness temperatures strongly suggest that the radio emission must be highly coherent, but the real mechanism in operation has been evading identification. Instead of trying to solve this decades long problem, here I discuss several recent new observations and the ideas to interpret them, which shed new light on understanding pulsar radio emission. The topics include (1) a recent XMM-Newton observation of the famous, old-drifting PSR B0943+10 and its physical implications; (2) models to interpret the radio flaring activity of the pulsar B in the double pulsar system PSR J0737–3099; (3) possible identification of the inward radio emission from some pulsars; and (4) the suggestion that GCRT J1745–3009 is a white dwarf pulsar. Two possible interpretations to the recently identified Rotating RAdio Transients (RRATs) are also proposed.
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