Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London
It is a testament to the power of the late British actress Dame Maggie Smith that other eminent actors – though only male ones, as far as I can see – accused her of upstaging them.
Richard Burton complained that in Anthony Asquith’s 1963 film The VIPs, she didn’t merely steal a big scene with him, “she committed grand larceny”. After making the 1978 Neil Simon film California Suite with her (for which Smith won her second Academy Award), Michael Caine is reported to have phoned Michael Palin, who was to be her co-star in the 1982 film The Missionary. “Watch her,” Caine reportedly warned. “She’ll have that scene from under your feet.”
More recent audiences will recognise Smith’s arresting power in her portrayal of Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the long-running television series Downton Abbey and its two films. For film critic Peter Bradshaw, even “in the smallest of roles she set her own terms and every other actor was her satellite”.
A prominent part of what gave Smith her power was her caustic humour, an acerbic put-down, and that withering look – from huge eyes set over pursed lips. New York Times critic Frank Rich praised her ability to “italicise a line as prosaic as ‘Have you no marmalade?’ until it sounds like a freshly minted epigram by Coward or Wilde.”
But there was so much more to Maggie Smith than this. Her range was huge, and her power was built on craft.
The social satire and commentary of her performances could be conveyed through anything from minxy humour to world-weariness, but always intelligence. In a review of her portrayal of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in a 1970 National Theatre production directed by Ingmar Bergman, the Evening Standard’s Milton Shulman described her as “haunt[ing] the stage like some giant portrait by Modigliani, her alabaster skin stretched tight with hidden anguish”.
So, if you only know her work through recent blockbusters like Downton and the Harry Potter film franchise, in which she played Professor Minerva McGonagall, take a look at her vast and wonderful back catalogue. It’s a sustained masterclass in acting, as well as some of the very best explorations of the lived experiences of British middle-class women in the mid-to late-20th century. Two good places to start are the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the 1988 Alan Bennett television play A Bed Among the Lentils.
In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – adapted by Jay Presson Allen from Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel– Smith played the eponymous heroine and won her first Academy Award, for best actress. Miss Brodie is a vivacious, romantic teacher at a repressive girls’ school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Confident that she knows what’s best for “her girls”, she fails to recognise how her approach to teaching is as controlling and potentially more damaging than that of the conservative head mistress.
Smith sails through the film, moving from haughty grandeur through charming coquettishness to anguished despair. With just a hint of delicious melodrama, the film captures Miss Brodie’s hubris, but also the strict social limits of the times on girls’ and women’s freedoms and dreams.
A Bed Among the Lentils is one of playwright Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series of television monologues, written mostly for women. Smith plays Susan, the secretly alcoholic wife of an aspirational vicar. She is clearly under-stimulated by a life spent hosting visiting clerics at lunch and competing with other local women at flower-arranging for the altar. Her life shifts when she meets a kind, young and attractive Asian shopkeeper. He helps her to gain a different perspective on what gods can stand for and discovers what she wants and desires from life.
Smith’s performance under Bennett’s direction is sometimes achingly slow, though it poignantly captures the emptiness of Susan’s life. (Smith reports in the 2018 tribute film Nothing Like a Dame that Laurence Olivier once criticised her for line delivery so slow she “bored him off the stage”. When it came to their next performance, she says, “I went so fast he didn’t know if it was Wednesday or Christmas.”)
Again and again across an extraordinary career, Smith gave us painfully accurate portraits of British women, from steely and haughty to fragile and vulnerable – often simultaneously. She captured women’s fatigue with the social constraints imposed upon them and showed stunning glimpses of a world beyond those limitations, full of other potentials and possibilities.
Jen Harvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
How do you cast Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel about a child so brutalised by his adoptive family that he drives his pregnant love to death? Not, it would seem, like Emerald Fennell, the latest director to attempt it.
Fennell’s previous projects include the Oscar-winning A Promising Young Woman (2020) and Netflix hit Saltburn (2023), but she has been under fire for casting Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in the lead roles of Heathcliff and Catherine, two teenagers on the wild, 19th-century Yorkshire moors. As tanned Australian actors aged 27 and 34, best known for playing Elvis and Barbie, it is hard to imagine how they can pull this off.
But has anybody ever got Heathcliff and Catherine right?
Lawrence Olivier was nominated for an Oscar for playing Heathcliff in 1939, but his clipped, Royal Shakespeare Company gentlemanliness hardly befitted the “savage vehemence” of the role. Heathcliff is an orphan, probably picked up on the Liverpool docks, bullied for looking like “a dark-skinned gypsy”, “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway” (a lascar was a sailor or militiaman often from Asia). Among his many eventual crimes, he tortures puppies and beats children. But the Olivier movie staged the novel as a classic Hollywood romance.
Until very recently other directors followed suit, cutting the story’s more brutal elements (including most of its second half) and casting dashing (white) leads like Timothy Dalton (1970) and then-newcomer Ralph Fiennes (1992). In the latter film, Juliette Binoche’s Catherine had a notably French accent. (Maybe best not to mention Cliff Richard’s 1996 musical, in which, at 56, he was panned for playing a teenage Heathcliff as a pop idol.)
As the director of a 2011 BBC Radio Three adaptation put it, Wuthering Heights is not supposed to be “a Vaseline-lensed experience”. But it has been mostly sold that way.
Perhaps the only director to capture the nightmarishness of Bronte’s text is Andrea Arnold, who in 2011 cast untrained actors in the central roles, including a black actor, James Howson, as Heathcliff. At the time, some critics even found that decision controversial. But the casting was a turning point, and Arnold’s bleak, almost wordless, adaptation changed the game.
In 2024, audiences are more aware that casting a white actor like Elordi as Heathcliff is not only to undersell the novel as romance, but to wilfully ignore the imperialism in the text.
There is evidence to suggest that Heathcliff’s story was at least partly inspired by a local slave-owning family, the Sills, who, as well as making their money from sugar plantations in Jamaica, had 30 enslaved Africans working on their home estate in Yorkshire.
Also, as mentioned, characters speculate about Heathcliff’s race throughout. For instance, Nelly Dean, Cathy’s family’s servant, wonders whether “[his] father was Emperor of China, and [his] mother an Indian queen.” He is clearly not white.
Still, in going in the opposite direction to Arnold, Fennell’s film might offer us something new.
The novel is difficult to film not only because it depicts human beings at their most primal, but also because it is so strangely told. Bronte rarely shows us Catherine or Heathcliff firsthand. We learn their tale through an uninitiated southerner, Lockwood, who himself hears much of the story from a servant with unreliable passions of her own.
Key scenes in the novel have an emotional realism drawn not only from the rough-hewn Yorkshire rocks but also from gothic melodrama: Catherine’s ghost literally bleeds as it grasps Lockwood through a window; Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s grave just “to have her in my arms again”. If this is realism, it is so extreme it borders on the theatrical.
And this is where Fennell excels. Saltburn’s bathtub scene is infamous for body horror, but mostly it depicts an urgent need to consume and be consumed by another. Saltburn also has its own graveside scene, which clearly echoes Heathcliff’s necrophiliac desires in Wuthering Heights.
I would argue there can be no justification for casting a white actor as Heathcliff, and it is to be hoped that Fennell rethinks this decision. But perhaps there is also something to be gained from having a Heathcliff and Catherine with the glitzy theatricality of Elvis and Barbie. Fennell isn’t going to give us the Catherine and Heathcliff we have come to expect, but it is possible she will evoke the passion the characters deserve.
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Adelene Buckland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been charged with bribery and fraud following a spiraling federal investigation into his administration.
Among other accusations, federal prosecutors alleged in their September 2024 indictment that Adams received campaign donations from the Turkish government for his 2021 mayoral race and sought to conceal these illegal foreign contributions.
And as we document in our new podcast, “Scandalized,” discovering campaign finance violations is often just the first chapter in a much wilder story.
Why campaign finance law matters
The U.S. has federal rules that govern how political campaigns can raise and spend money in U.S. elections. For example, they limit how much money individuals and groups can contribute to candidates’ campaigns. Federal rules also restrict how campaign funds may be used and require the disclosure of all campaign expenditures, ensuring candidates can’t spend campaign money on whatever they want.
Legally, candidates may use campaign donations on expenses directly related to their race for office. Allowable expenditures include advertising, travel and costs related to fundraising, such as renting an event space or buying food for guests. Candidates may use excess campaign funds after the election is over to pay down outstanding loans, or they can transfer it to other campaigns or party organizations.
Campaign funds may not, however, be spent at any time on purely personal expenses. Candidates cannot pay their mortgage or rent out of their election war chest, or purchase clothing or household supplies.
The disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was a particularly egregious violator of the rules related to personal expenses.
Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024 to nearly two dozen counts of campaign finance violations – a smorgasbord of crimes. According to The New York Times, he rerouted “tens of thousands of dollars of campaign money toward personal expenses, including luxury goods, Atlantic City casinos, rent payments and a website primarily known for explicit sexual content.”
Santos, who served for just under a year until he was expelled from Congress in December 2023, is a prime example of how the complicated U.S. campaign finance system can unearth other, even more scandalous actions by politicians.
Former U.S. Rep. George Santos outside court after pleading guilty to 23 felony counts on Aug. 19, 2024, in West Islip, N.Y. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
A window into bigger scandals
A key element of campaign finance law is disclosure. Candidates must publicly report donations over US$200, for example, and document everything they spend those donations on during and after their campaigns.
For former U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a California Republican, failure to comply with disclosure laws during his 2016 election campaign resulted in a federal investigation. The Justice Department found that Hunter used campaign donations to fund family vacations, video game purchases and hotel rooms for multiple extramarital affairs. In 2020, he was sentenced to 11 months in prison.
Former President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, also failed to disclose a contribution to his boss’s 2016 presidential campaign. But the real scandal was what that money actually went for: paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making an unlawful contribution.
Many, if not most, campaign finance violations are minor. Small mistakes such as filing a late donor disclosure report or miscategorizing an expense usually incur little more than a small fine.
When technical campaign finance violations shed light on a big scandal, however, they attract attention. Voters and the media latch onto the fact that not only are donors’ funds not going where they intended, but in many cases the money has been spent to subsidize candidates’ personal misbehavior and corrupt activity.
High-profile political scandals erode the public trust
Just about every recent survey shows Americans’ levels of faith and trust in government at historic lows. In the 1960s, three-quarters of voters said they trusted the government to do the right thing most or all of the time. Today, only one-fifth do.
Unseemly behavior by politicians, including by candidates who misspend their supporters’ donations, may contribute to this declining trust. Americans have real fears about money in politics. For example, 84% of Americans worry that wealthy lobbyists and interest groups have undue influence on elections, and 80% say campaign donations have corrupting effects on politicians.
Even when candidates aren’t technically breaking the law, they often use campaign funds in ways donors may not realize – or appreciate.
Sometimes, investigations into seemingly technical campaign violations uncover a wilder story. Filo via Getty
The bottom line: Donations made to help a candidate win their race are not always going where donors actually intended or believed they would.
Still, the U.S. political climate is so polarized that these scandals may not dramatically affect voters’ decision-making. Political scientists sometimes refer to today’s voters as “calcified” in their partisan identities, meaning they are so loyal to their own party that campaign-finance violations and other scandals cannot change their views much.
Research shows voters are also increasingly motivated not so much by their support or affection for their own party but rather by their fear and loathing of the other party. As a result, partisan voters are willing to accept or forgive scandalous behavior from their own side in the interest of beating the opposition. Hardcore partisans are also adept at finding ways to justify or rationalize these transgressions.
With record amounts of money flowing in and out of political campaigns in 2024, the coming months are bound to bring more campaign finance scandals. But our research indicates they are unlikely to have major effects at the polling station.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Growing up in Aberdeen, Scotland, the shadow of the Piper Alpha disaster loomed large over our community. The tragic explosion of the oil rig platform in 1988 claimed the lives of 167 people. Back then, I was blissfully unaware of the ecological ramifications of that disaster. But the spill of 670 tonnes of oil wreaked havoc on marine life and had a lasting impact on the marine environment that I love to explore.
In recent decades, there has been a gradual decline in the number of oil spills and the volume of oil discharged from tankers, rigs, wells and offshore platforms. While incidents continue to occur globally – often in less scrutinised regions than the North Sea – the UK has, thankfully, not experienced another disaster of Piper Alpha’s magnitude since.
Does this mean that the UK’s oil and gas sector have cleaned up their act? They would certainly like you to think so. But ocean pollution isn’t just about large oil slicks that spread across the water’s surface.
As a new report, Sea Slick, from marine conservation charity Oceana explains, the extent of frequent, small-scale spills are still being grossly underestimated, even though big oil spills are less frequent.
The report reveals what it claims is the true scale and impact of chronic oil pollution in the UK, showing that for many years the North Sea has been subjected to hundreds of unaccounted for “chronic oiling events”. These are where oil is frequently released in lower volumes than those associated with large spills. This issue stems from a poorly regulated oil and gas sector and a lack of transparency in reporting, allowing oil and gas companies to mark their own homework.
Currently, a certain amount of oil pollution is permitted as part of routine operations for oil and gas developments. Companies can apply for oil discharge permits, which allow them to release a set volume or concentration of oil or chemicals into the ocean. This waste output is referred to as “produced water”. Produced water is a by-product of the oil and gas sector, which returns to the surface of the ocean as wastewater during oil and gas production. Produced water may be treated before release but still contains finely dispersed oil and toxic heavy metals, such as mercury and arsenic.
Oil and gas companies are regularly breaching their legal produced water permit allowances, Oceana’s report claims. Yet, in line with official government reporting requirements, these breaches are not registered as accidental oil spills. Indeed, Sea Slick counts a total of 723 permit breaching incidents in the last three-and-a-half years – that’s equivalent to 17 oil or chemical spills each month.
Currently these permit breaches aren’t counted as accidents. They’re not really counted as anything – other than permit breaches. If these unaccounted-for permit breaches are factored into official government data for accidental oil spills, Oceana estimates that the volume of oil spilling into UK seas increases by at least 43%.
The oil and gas sector are keen to reassure the public that chronic oil pollution can be quickly dispersed and poses a low risk to marine life or human health. Certainly, if incidents were rare, this might be a more persuasive argument. But they aren’t. Over time, the incremental release of toxic chemicals has a negative environmental effect. An estimated 248 spills from permit breaches took place within the UK’s network of marine protected areas between January 2021 and May 2024.
Why does this matter? Marine protected areas are regions of the ocean which have been given special designations to help preserve marine life and habitats. They have been created to protect rare, threatened and important habitats or species.
Marine wildlife is at great risk of harm from oil pollution, but a substantial number of oil spills occur within marine protected areas. werbefotos_com/Shutterstock
The release of produced water into areas, which have been singled out as especially important for protection, is shocking. Contaminants associated with chronic oiling have been shown to have a range of effects on marine life. The list is long: damaging cells and cell membranes, DNA damage (a common cause of cancer), the changing of gene expression and the disruption of reproductive functions. The steady leaching of toxic oil and chemical byproducts poses risks to human health too as toxic chemicals enter the food chain through farmed and wild-caught fish.
The new government’s water (special measures) bill will force water companies to clean up the UK’s rivers and oceans. A failure to cooperate or any attempts to cover up data around sewage spills could see bosses jailed for up to two years. Water company bosses are finally being held to account. Will the UK government apply the same rules to the bosses of oil and gas companies who are also polluting our seas?
As the Sea Slick report notes, there is overwhelming public support for polluters to be held to account. By regulating and fining oil companies properly for chronically polluting UK seas, the government could enact and make permanent their commitment to end new oil and gas licenses. It’s time to take action.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
In recent months, Vladimir Putin and his proxies have been foreshadowing a change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine. This is the set of rules that spells out when and how his country might resort to the use of its nuclear arsenal, which is currently the largest in the world. Most recently his deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said the revisions to the rulebook were “connected with the escalation course of our western adversaries”. In other words: it’s not us, it’s you.
You don’t have to read too much between the lines to discern a connection between the growing clamour by some in the west to allow Ukraine to use western long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia and Russia’s decision to reconsider under what circumstances it would use its nuclear arsenal.
Over the past couple of years – since shortly after he initiated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – Putin and his inner circle have regularly invoked Russia’s nuclear deterrent, writes Christoph Bluth, an expert in nuclear proliferation and international security at the University of Bradford. All it seems to take is for the west to agree another large package of funding, or change the terms of its aid to Kyiv for the Kremlin to dust off the doomsday scenario.
So it comes as little surprise that, shortly after Volodymr Zelensky gave his impassioned speech to the United Nations general assembly yesterday restating his country’s urgent need for more support and more latitude in how to use it, Putin announced his country’s new “draft” nuclear doctrine. Henceforth, he said, Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state with conventional weapons. The trigger for the launch of nuclear missiles against Ukraine or any of its allies, he said, would be “reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border”.
Bluth recounts how, earlier this month, one of Putin’s proxies, Alexander Mikhailov, the director of the Bureau of Military Political Analysis, recently called for Russia to “bomb plywood mock-ups of London and Washington to simulate a nuclear attack, so that it would ‘burn so beautifully that it will horrify the world’.” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house, said that any attacks against Russia would prompt it to respond with nuclear weapons. He is reported to have added – with what appears to have been ghastly relish – that the European parliament in Strasbourg was “only a three-minute flight for a Russian nuclear missile”.
It’s tempting to dismiss Russia’s threats as just so much sabre-rattling. And there have been plenty of voices in the west urging leaders to defy Putin’s threats. After Ukraine launched its lightning raid into Russia’s Kursk province in August, Zelensky said it was clear that Russia’s red lines were a bluff. He said: “The naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled apart these days.”
Colin Alexander, a specialist in political commnunications at Nottingham Trent University, believes that since the end of the cold war the focus of what he calls “fear propaganda” has changed. It has moved away from the prospect of nuclear annihilation to “other threats, such as extremism, pandemics and migration”.
But anyone who grew up during the cold war will remember the omnipresent fear of the “three-minute warning” regularly reinforced by government messaging, TV documentaries and dramas. These all served to remind everyone that a nuclear holocaust was only a series of wrongheaded decisions away. It’s that atmosphere of peril, writes Alexander, which makes a leader’s threats believable.
And the “madman theory” which holds that only an unstable leader would contemplate pushing the button, has helped lull people into the idea that a nuclear conflict is indeed unthinkable, because surely no leader would be mad enough. But Alexander concludes by citing the one leader who actually did drop a nuclear bomb in an enemy:
US president Harry S. Truman pushed the button in 1945. He was then given detailed reports of the death and destruction that his decision caused to Hiroshima. Then he pushed the button again to annihilate Nagasaki.
Zelensky’s speech to the UN general assembly was compelling and moving in equal measure. He warned of intelligence reports that Russia was preparing to target Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of its campaign to wreck the country’s energy infrastructure before winter. He mourned for the children of Ukraine, who “are learning to distinguish the sounds of different types of artillery and drones because of Russia’s war”. And he restated his ten-point plan for peace, which involves Russia withdrawing from all the lands it has occupied since 2014.
But, Stefan Wolff notes, a growing number of countries are lining up behind a peace plan proposed earlier in the year by China and Brazil, which would freeze the conflict along the existing frontlines before proceeding to negotiations.
The state of the conflict in Ukraine as at September 25. Institute for the Study of War
Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, believes this plan is deeply flawed. For one thing it would inevitably involve Kyiv being forced to give up territory illegally annexed by Russia. It would also give Russia time to regroup, rearm and train extra troops and would almost certainly not guarantee a lasting peace, but would simply stave off another Russian assault on Ukraine.
But Zelensky faces two key problems which make his diplomatic mission that much harder. His voice is in danger of being drowned out by the conflict in the Middle East, which appears almost inevitably bound for a ground war in Lebanon in days to come. And the prospect of Donald Trump winning a second term in about six weeks’ time, means that the days of Washington as Kyiv’s staunchest partner could well be coming to an end.
As the conflict drags on – 31 months and counting – there is evidence that some Ukrainians would give up territory in return for peace and an end to the killing. Our team of political scientists, Kristin M. Bakke of UCL, Gerard Toal of Virginia Tech and John O’Loughlin of University of Colorado Boulder, have been polling Ukrainians since the invasion and have detected a definite shift in attitudes towards the conflict.
While most Ukrainians still hate the idea of having to give up territory to Russia, support for the proposition that Ukraine should “continue opposing Russian aggression until all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is liberated” had fallen from 71% in 2022 to 51% now. And, while in 2022 just 11% of respondents agreed with “trying to reach an immediate ceasefire by both sides with conditions and starting intensive negotiations”, that number had almost tripled in the most recent polling.
Interestingly, the researchers note, while most people they spoke with professed unchanged support for their country’s war effort, a growing number said they were worried that their fellow Ukrainians were beginning to suffer from war-weariness.
Russia is already calling for more territory in eastern Ukraine in the form of a “buffer zone” around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv in the north-east of the country. This, the Kremlin claims, is to protect Russian towns from shelling and missile attacks from Ukrainian territory.
Interestingly, writes Iain Farquharson, a security expert and military historian at Brunel University London, Israel has also proposed setting up a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, to protect Israelis living near the the country’s northern border from Hezbollah missile barrages.
Farquharson considers the history of buffer zones in the Middle East and beyond. Firstly, buffer zones rarely live up to their supposed function – as Afghanistan’s misfortune to be between British India and southern Russia in the 19th century and Lebanon’s bad luck to be between Syria and Israel in the 1960s and 1970s amply demonstrate.
But what Russia and Israel are proposing are not so much buffer zones as land grabs, pure and simple. There’s no sense that either country is willing to contribute any of its own territory to these so-called demilitarised areas (or that they’ll actually be demilitarised). They should, he writes, “instead primarily be seen as a way of formalising control over contested territory to protect their home bases, which would give them a military advantage”.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Vinita Srivastava, Senior Editor, Culture + Society / Host + Exec. Producer, Don’t Call Me Resilient
On Sept. 30, Canada will observe the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Formerly known as Orange Shirt Day, the now federal statutory day honours generations of Indigenous survivors, families and communities impacted by Canada’s residential school system and remembers the children who never returned home. It’s also a good time to honour the “Truth” in Truth and Reconciliation and check in on Canada’s progress on the 94 Calls to Action that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
Here at Don’t Call Me Resilient, we’ve curated a playlist of episodes for you that explore the historical and current issues of Indigenous communities. Through the voices of experts, the playlist features discussions related to Indigenous history, justice, rights and resistance. In each episode, Indigenous scholars and experts present their research and ideas to help explain the issues. They dive deep into conversations about the importance of preserving and protecting Indigenous land, life and identity.
As a collection, these episodes invite listeners to engage in a process of learning and unlearning; to acknowledge the tragic legacies of residential schools in Canada and to move beyond a single day of remembrance. Individually, the conversations are thoughtful and informative explorations of Indigenous scholarship, living history and the future of reconciliation in Canada.
In this episode, two Indigenous land defenders from different nations as well as generations: Ellen Gabriel, a human rights activist and artist well known for her role during the 1990 Oka crisis, and Anne Spice, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, discuss the importance and urgency of defending land. They explain why they work to protect the land against invasive development and why their work is necessary for everyone’s survival. Also, check out Gabriel’s forthcoming book with Sean Carleton: When the Pine Needles Fall. (first aired: March, 2021)
Stories are a powerful tool to resist oppressive situations. They give writers from marginalized communities a way to imagine alternate realities, and to critique the one we live in. In this episode, Vinita speaks to two storytellers who offer up wonderous “otherworlds” for Indigenous and Black people. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds is an L.A-based screenwriter and the producer of Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black. Daniel Heath Justice is professor in Indigenous literature at the University of British Columbia and author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of high-profile figures accused of falsely claiming Indigenous identity, of being “Pretendians.” These cases have become big news stories, but they have big real-life consequences, too. Misidentifying as Indigenous can have financial and social consequences, with the misdirection of funds, jobs or grants meant for Indigenous peoples. Vinita delves into it all with two researchers who look at identity and belonging in Indigenous communities: Veldon Coburn and Celeste Pedri-Spade from McGill University. (first aired: October, 2021)
The state of our environment keeps getting scarier and scarier: and we have yet to find a way forward. Two Indigenous scholars who run labs to address the climate crisis say bringing an Indigenous understanding to environmental justice could help us get unstuck. A big part of that is seeing pollution through a new lens — one that acknowledges it is as much about racism and colonialism as it is toxic chemicals. Vinita talks to Michelle Murphy at the University of Toronto, and Max Liboiron, author of Pollution is Colonialism, and associate professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. (first aired: November, 2021)
Over 17 per cent of households in Canada are food insecure. For racialized Canadians, that number is higher — two to three times the national average. In this episode, Vinita asks what is happening with our food systems, and what we can do to make them fairer with two women who have been tackling this issue for years. Melana Roberts is Chair of Food Secure Canada and one of the leaders behind Canada’s first Black food sovereignty plan. Also joining the conversation is Tabitha Robin Martens, assistant professor at UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Martens researches Indigenous food sovereignty and works with Cree communities to bolster traditional land uses. (first aired: November, 2021)
In this episode, we take a look at what has happened since the unmarked graves of 215 Indigenous children were found in Kamloops, B.C. in May 2021. Vinita speaks to Veldon Coburn, associate professor and faculty chair of the Indigenous Relations Initiative at McGill University about what happened, the widespread grief and outcry and the immediate political response, but also, how none of that lasted despite communities continuing to find bodies. Joining Vinita on the episode is Haley Lewis, then-Don’t Call Me Resilient producer and culture and society editor for The Conversation Canada. Lewis is mixed Kanyen’keha:ká from Tyendinaga and led our coverage of the findings. (first aired: May, 2022)
Since diamond mining started in Canada in 1998, Canada has become the third-largest producer of diamonds in the world. In 2019, the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls linked resource extraction to spikes in violence against women. In this episode, we hear from two women who talk about how diamond mines in the Northwest Territories have negatively impacted and perpetuated gender violence, particularly among Indigenous women. Vinita chats with Rebecca Hall, assistant professor of global development studies at Queen’s University and the author of Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North, and Della Green, former victim services co-ordinator, at the Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories. (first aired: June, 2022)
After weeks of the so-called Freedom Convoy in 2022, many of us took a hard look at the symbolism of the Canadian flag and the attempt to associate it with white supremacy. Some felt a new fear or anger at what they feel the flag represents. But other communities say they have always felt this way about the Canadian flag. Both our guests on this episode have studied multiculturalism, citizenship and belonging. Daniel McNeil looks at history and culture and the complexities of global Black communities. He is a professor and Queen’s National Scholar Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University. Lucy El-Sherif is an assistant professor of global peace and social justice at McMaster University. They help us unpack the meaning and symbolism of the Canadian flag. (first aired: June, 2022)
For decades, Canadian media have covered Indigenous communities with a heavy reliance on stereotypes — casting Indigenous Peoples as victims or warriors. This deep-seated bias in the news can have unsettling consequences for both how a community perceives itself as well as how others perceive them. Award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and former CBC reporter Duncan McCue is trying to change that both in the classroom and in the newsroom. He joins Vinita to talk about what Canadian media could be doing better. (first aired: November, 2022)
When the Queen died, there was a tremendous outpouring of love and grief for her and the monarchy she represented. But not everyone wanted to take a moment of silence — and there are a lot of reasons why. For example, the head of the Assembly of First Nations, RoseAnne Archibald told CTV News that the Royal Family should apologize for the failures of the Crown… “particularly for the destructiveness of colonization on First Nations people.” To explore these ideas further, we reached out to two scholars, Veldon Coburn, associate professor and faculty chair of the Indigenous Relations Initiative at McGill University and Cheryl Thompson, an associate professor of media and culture at Toronto Metropolitan University. Both say that the Queen’s death could be a uniting moment of dissent for people from current and former colonies. (first aired: September, 2022)
In 2023, the Vatican repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, a 500-year-old decree used to justify settler colonialism. In this episode, political and Indigenous studies scholar Veldon Coburn explains why the Vatican’s repudiation of the Doctrine is a huge symbolic victory. We also examine what this repudiation may mean for members of Indigenous Nations, what prompted this renouncement, and what still needs to happen. (first aired: April, 2023)
In this episode, we explore how the practice of gardening is deeply tied to colonialism that affects what we plant and also, who gets to garden. But there is also a growing understanding that centuries-old Indigenous land-based knowledge and practices can foster a more resilient landscape. We speak to community activist Carolynne Crawley — a woman with Mi’kmaw, Black and Irish ancestry who leads workshops and walks that integrate Indigenous teachings into practice — and Jacqueline L. Scott — a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education whose research focuses on the wilderness and making it a welcoming space for Black people. We discuss a new way forward, discussing practical gardening tips with an eye to Indigenous knowledge. (first aired: May, 2023)
Botanical classification; 227 figures of plant anatomical segments with descriptive text. CC BY
This episode tackles why the revitalization of Indigenous languages is so critical. Guest host Veldon Coburn speaks with Frank Deer, professor of education at the University of Manitoba, to tackle the issue of disappearing Indigenous languages. They delve into how language reflects philosophies that guide political, cultural and ecological relationships — and discuss what more needs to be done to revitalize them. (first aired: June, 2023)
In this episode, we take you inside the ongoing quest to document the children who died in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools system. Vinita speaks to Terri Cardinal, associate vice president of Indigenous initiatives and engagement at MacEwan University, about the search she led to uncover the unmarked graves of those who perished at the Blue Quills Residential School in Alberta. It’s deeply personal and emotional work for Cardinal, whose own father is a survivor of the school. Cardinal talks about what she found, how she felt, and what she hopes will come of it. She says the number of unmarked graves across the country is much higher than many of us could have imagined. And she says it’s important to keep shining a light on the rising numbers, especially with so many Canadians in denial about what really happened at these schools. (first aired: September, 2023)
Students at Blue Quills Residential School. Provincial Archives of Alberta, CC BY
Musician Buffy Sainte-Marie in 1970. CMA/wikicommons, CC BY
Lori Campbell, a ‘60s Scoop survivor and associate vice president of Indigenous engagement at the University of Regina, challenges the CBC’s motives in releasing an investigation that questioned the Indigenous roots of legendary singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie in this episode. Campbell asks: was the story in service of truth and reconciliation or a sensationalist headline? She also highlights the turmoil the story is causing, especially among Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan, home to the Piapot Nation that embraced Sainte-Marie. (first aired: November, 2023)
Plains Cree Chief Mistahimaskwa resisted signing a treaty with the ‘Crown,’ until starvation of his people propelled him to sign Treaty 6. (Library and Archives Canada), CC BY
Vinita speaks to two famine scholars about the use of starvation as a tool in the colonizer’s playbook through two historic examples — the attempted decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains, North America and the 1943 famine in Bengal, India. Our guests James Daschuk from the University of Regina and Janam Mukherjee at Toronto Metropolitan University discuss how colonial forces inflicted famine upon Indigenous populations to control them, their land, and their resources. (first aired: March, 2024)
Reservation Dogs: Sarah Podemski and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. Shane Brown/FX
Indigenous media in North America have rapidly expanded over the last 30 years, with Indigenous media makers gaining greater control of their own narratives, including the ability to subvert colonial representations. Karrmen Crey, who is Stó:lō from Cheam First Nation, is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and the author of “Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada.” In this special episode, recorded on-site with an audience in Vancouver at Iron Dog books, Crey speaks with Vinita about the ways Indigenous creators are using humour along with a sharp critique of pop culture to show just how different the world looks when decision-making power over how stories get told shifts and Indigenous media makers take control. (first aired: April, 2024)
The actor Gillian Anderson has just released a book of sexual fantasies. Titled Want, it catalogues a diverse range of fantasies submitted anonymously by women from around the world.
It is not the first to do so. In 1973, American author Nancy Friday published My Secret Garden, a volume that provoked fierce debate at the time and is now considered to be an important milestone in the sex-positive movement. Each book gives a fascinating snapshot of women’s relationships with their own sexuality at a different moment in history.
Though attitudes, vocabulary and specific fantasy content have undoubtedly changed in the intervening half-century, there are striking similarities between the books. This is not only true of the subject matter — workplace flings and group sex are apparently timelessly appealing — but also of how people feel about their fantasies. Shame, in particular, continues to loom large in many women’s feelings about their own erotic imaginings.
Past research indicates that most adults (of all genders) experience sexual fantasies, suggesting many of us have grappled with the question of whether to tell a partner about ours. Over the past four years, we have been conducting research that explores this question: how do people decide whether to disclose their sexual fantasies – and what happens when they do?
An act of closeness
The women featured in both My Secret Garden and Want vary considerably in the degree to which they have chosen to share their fantasies with a partner. Some describe passionate relationships enhanced by the disclosure and enactment of erotic fantasies, while others intend to take their favourite fantasy to the grave.
We were interested in understanding the psychology of such radically different approaches. In a study published earlier this year in The Journal of Sex Research, we asked 287 people to reflect on a recent or prominent sexual fantasy. We found that over 69% of participants had previously disclosed their fantasy to a partner. Of those, more than 80% found this to be a positive experience.
Unsurprisingly, participants commonly cited sexual desire as their main reason for opening up. For example, many said they had shared their fantasy with a partner in the hope that they could act it out together. Others reported that they found talking about sexual fantasies arousing, or that discussing secret desires allowed them to learn more about their partner.
Several participants explained that they valued honesty and openness and that the level of trust and commitment in their relationship made them feel safe to share their fantasy with their partner.
Not all reasons for disclosing fantasies were positive, however. Some said they disclosed their fantasy in a last-ditch attempt to spice up an unsatisfying sex life.
The power of shame
Gillian Anderson, author of Want. wikipedia, CC BY-SA
Among the group who had chosen not to share their fantasy, many cited its content as the primary reason. Consistent with accounts in both My Secret Garden and Want, several of our participants were ashamed of their fantasy, or felt it to be too extreme or taboo to share with their partner.
Some — especially those whose partners had not responded well to similar conversations in the past — were worried they would receive a negative response that could cause problems for their relationship. We also heard from several people who explained that, put simply, their fantasies were private joys that they had no desire or intention to discuss with anyone.
In a series of follow-up studies yet to be published, we explored some of these ideas in more depth. One important finding is that relationship traits are a key predictor of whether a person will disclose their fantasy. For example, disclosure was more likely in relationships that already involved large amounts of sexual novelty and exploration.
We also confirmed that the content of a fantasy is critical to a person’s decision about whether to share it. Anything that is likely to be considered unacceptable by a partner or is otherwise potentially threatening to the relationship (such as a move away from monogamy), is unlikely to be disclosed. Indeed, even among participants who had previously shared a fantasy, we found over half also had at least one more that they were unwilling to divulge.
While our findings suggest that people who choose to tell their partner about their erotic daydreams usually get a good response, we also found that the process by which people reach that decision can be complicated. Some people have very good reasons for keeping their fantasy to themselves.
Hopefully, Want will help to reduce some of the shame associated with the very common experience of fantasising about sex. But its similarities to a book published 50 years earlier suggest we may still have a long way to go.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Jerrett, Lecturer, Faculty of Creative & Cultural Industries, University of Portsmouth
In late November 2020, I was one of those people standing in line – or rather,
refreshing my browser – hoping to snag a PlayStation 5 during a restock. The
pandemic was in full swing, and with most of the world locked indoors, there weren’t many better things to do. The original PS5 promised to deliver true 4K gaming at very smooth frame rates – though a claim that it supported 8K gaming was later removed from the console’s packaging.
However, the PS5 got off to a slow start, owing primarily to game delays as a result of the pandemic. Additionally, gamers had to effectively choose between preset modes related to fidelity – high-quality visuals – and game performance within the in-game settings menus.
In November, gamers will no longer be faced with this dilemma, as Sony is set to release its “mid-generation refresh” console, the PlayStation 5 Pro. Its upgraded graphics processing unit (GPU) has more processing power and a faster memory than the basic PS5, allowing for up to 45% faster rendering of the graphics.
Advanced ray tracing – a technique to simulate the way light behaves in the real world – and AI technology called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution are expected to enable higher-resolution visuals at higher frame rates. This could fulfil the basic PS5’s promise of 4K gaming at 60 frames per second.
However, all that power doesn’t come cheap. The £699 digital-only console scales to £798 with a £99 disc drive, which is required to play physical games. It is already selling out in some markets. There’s also a £25 vertical stand (which came bundled with the original PS5).
PS5 Pro Technical Presentation.
That’s a lot of money for a console that won’t have any exclusive titles. Every game you can play on the PS5 Pro will also run on the base PS5. Some even speculate that it still may not play forthcoming games at the highest possible fidelity.
That kind of price is even more of a shock when compared with the different world of 2020’s PS5 launch. Demand for games and consoles surged during the pandemic, but the economic landscape has drastically shifted in the past four years. Inflation is at an all-time high, and the cost of living has rocketed, leaving less disposable income for non-essential purchases, of which the PS5 Pro is a prime example.
The games industry has also seen waves of layoffs resulting from investment shortfalls, changing work patterns, and post-pandemic consumer behaviour. A further irony is that such layoffs prevent studios from having the time, budget, or labour to create the graphically intense, polished games that the PS5 Pro would take full advantage of.
Consoles have always been loss leaders –- products sold at lower profit margins to get buyers into a product ecosystem. The basic PS5 is barely fulfilling that role (most PlayStation gamers still play on the PS4). So it makes business sense for the PS5 Pro to merely reflect the economic realities of 2024, where the rising cost of materials, supply chain disruptions and a scramble for computing power due to AI’s enhanced workloads means that consoles are significantly more expensive to produce.
This time, instead of Sony absorbing the cost, they’ve passed it along to consumers – most of whom are deeply unhappy about it. YouTube reactions to the PS5 Pro reveal trailer have been overwhelmingly negative, sitting at a 3:1 dislike ratio on YouTube.
A solution without a problem?
Many are also wondering whether the PS5 Pro is solving any real problems. The current generation of consoles has been plagued by delays or underwhelming game releases, and many remakes and remasters. Sony is even porting games that were previously exclusive to consoles over to PCs in a bid to reach new audiences. This has left the PS5’s true “exclusives” library somewhat barren.
The PS5 Pro launch was similarly absent of any blockbuster titles making use of the new hardware. Astrobot, Sony’s most recent smash-hit and likely Christmas bestseller, certainly won’t be using all that horsepower.
Astrobot Launch Trailer.
Regardless, there’s little doubt that the PS5 Pro will sell out at launch. Sony is probably producing fewer units of the Pro model than they did for the basic PS5, creating an artificial scarcity that will drive demand. Those who can afford it and who want the best possible gaming experience will jump at the chance to own the most powerful PlayStation console ever made.
This all makes the PS5 Pro’s launch feel a little strange. The PS5 Pro’s technical improvements are genuinely impressive. It’s clearly aimed at the hardcore gamers who want the best possible experience, regardless of the cost –- Sony knows its audience here.
However, the PS5 Pro is not the console that will drive mass adoption nor convince PS4 players to finally upgrade. Instead, like all things “Pro” in the tech world, it’s simply another niche, high-end option.
And as much as I’m tempted by the promise of true 4K 60FPS console gaming, I can’t
help but feel that this mid-generation upgrade is arriving at a time when the games
industry has myriad more important things to address than a shiny new toy.
Adam Jerrett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There is growing awareness of the problems caused by the use of a fast-acting drug called ketamine. Often referred to as K or ket, it was made a class B drug in the UK in 2014 and is illegal to buy or sell. Possessing the drug can lead to a maximum five-year prison sentence and supplying the drug up to 14 years in prison.
Ketamine is an effective anaesthetic and plays an important part in battlefield and emergency medicine. It is used to treat pain in end-of-life care and could treat some forms of depression. However, it is its non-medical use that is causing concern among some doctors and specialist drug-treatment providers.
On the illicit market, ketamine is cheaper than cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy), costing about £20 a gram. Police forces report large seizures of the drug, but global rates of production are high, and the wholesale price of a kilogram of ketamine is believed to have fallen from £8,000 to £5,000. This makes it an attractive drug for young people and those with a limited income.
Ketamine typically takes about 15 minutes to work and induces euphoria, relaxation and a slight sense of detachment. However, with higher doses it can also cause dissociation. This can be confusing and can cause panic attacks and memory loss. It can increase blood pressure and affect breathing and heart function.
Effects can also be fatal. The Friends actor Matthew Perry died in 2023 as a result of using the drug.
Some urologists have also expressed concern about an increase in bladder problems (so-called “ketamine bladder”) as a result of prolonged and heavy use of the drug. Although national data about the number of people with ketamine bladder is not available, there are other sources about the use of ketamine.
Ketamine first became popular as a recreational drug in the early 1990s. Use among people aged 16-24 in England and Wales rose from 0.9% in 2006-07 to 3.8% in 2022-23 – which is about 220,000 people.
There has been an increase in young people attending specialist treatment services with problems related to ketamine use: 512 during 2021-22 rising to 719 in 2022-23.
The increase is concerning as few services and interventions are available that specifically address ketamine use. An increase in people seeking treatment has not been helped by historic cuts to drug-treatment funding, which is only beginning to be addressed, and a lack of meaningful drug education and early intervention responses.
This increase in young people seeking treatment is also seen in adults. Rising from 1,551 in 2021-22 to 2,211 during 2022-23. There has been a fivefold increase in adult treatment since 2014.
Self-medicating
There is a suggestion from experts that part of the increase in the use of ketamine is due to some people who have mental health problems that are unable to access treatment because of long waiting lists.
Rather than wait for specialist treatment some people turn to drugs like ketamine that offer some reprieve from their symptoms. Ketamine can create a sense of detachment in users, this will be a desirable state for those who are seeking to escape invasive mental health symptoms of troubling thoughts and feelings.
In effect, they are finding their own solutions by self-medicating with the drug. Given that ketamine is easily available, relatively cheap and fast-acting it is easy to see why this drug is appealing, particularly as there are no long waiting lists or invasive assessments to undergo.
Ketamine doesn’t induce the same type of hangover that alcohol and other drugs do. This makes it appealing to those who need to be at work the day after using it. Likewise, it is appealing to those on zero-hour contracts who are asked to work at short notice.
However, many people will use other substances alongside ketamine – typically alcohol. Mixing alcohol and ketamine can cause significant harm, ranging from slowed breathing to coma and even fatal overdose.
Paradoxically ketamine is being investigated as a treatment for those who are dependent on alcohol, including those who haven’t responded to more traditional forms of therapy.
As with the promise that other drugs, such as psychedelics, might help treat mental health problems, current evidence suggests that these drugs are only effective when given alongside therapy.
It’s not clear whether the UK has reached peak ketamine use. Most drugs fall in and out of fashion. It is clear that originally banning the drug in 2005, and increasing punishments in 2014 has failed to halt its rising popularity. What could have helped was investment into prevention, education and harm reduction services, but this didn’t happen and we are seeing some of the consequences now.
Preventing the use of ketamine is the only way to be sure that it won’t cause harm. But if we accept that young people and adults will continue to use it then we should be aiming to reduce the potential for harm. There are useful resources already available, but reducing drug-related harm requires a more active response – one that doesn’t rely on people visiting websites or reading a leaflet.
We should put effort and resources into providing public health messaging that reaches those who are at the most risk from harm due to ketamine. At the same time, investing in and providing timely mental health support would reduce the need for those who are self-medicating with the drug.
With a new government in the UK, commanding a sizeable majority in parliament, could this Labour government adopt a policy shift that could reduce suffering and save lives?
Harry Sumnall receives funding from public grant awarding bodies for alcohol and other drugs research, and fees from (international) not-for-profit organisations and government departments for consultation work. He is an unpaid steering group member of the Anti-Stigma Network, an unpaid member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals (ISSUP), an unpaid member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Mind Foundation, an unpaid advisor to the UK Drug Education Forum, and an unpaid co-opted member of UK Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) Working Groups on cocaine, and prevention.
Ian Hamilton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester
We recently asked subscribers to our arts and culture newsletter, Something Good, to name their favourite cover song. We received a range of replies, from Beyoncé’s reimagining of the Dolly Parton classic, Jolene, to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged recording of The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie. Here’s how seven of our academic experts responded when we asked them the same question.
1. Heaven, by DJ Sammy (2001)
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a glut of Euro-dance songs troubling the higher reaches of the UK charts, as artists like Alice Deejay, Fragma and Sash (all aliases for male DJs fronted by female guest vocalists) married heavy trance beats with catchy melodies. But above all others stood 2001’s Heaven, by DJ Sammy. A shining example of the energetic but straightforward approach to music that characterised the era, it had a generation of club-goers running for the dancefloor.
Heaven saw Spanish producer Sammy turn a mawkish 1983 Bryan Adams track into the ultimate dance track for all seasons, complete with a relentless beat, hypnotic synth riff, and earworm-of-all-earworm choruses delivered by Dutch singer Dominique Rijpma van Hulst (stage name Do). It’s fun, unapologetically simple, yet somehow seems to encompass every emotion going. An era-defining track that needs to be played loud and proud.
Glenn Fosbraey
2. Me and the Devil Blues, by Gil Scott-Heron (2014)
A great cover is more than a different version of a song – it re-articulates the track and injects it with new meaning. Some do this by radically changing the genre, others by making the song so intensely personal that it is difficult to imagine anyone else singing it. But Gil Scott-Heron’s cover of Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil Blues (1938), on Scott-Heron’s final album, accomplishes an even rarer feat.
It layers the pain and anguish of a modern black life lived in the heavy bootprint of the fight for civil rights, de-industrialisation and the “war on drugs”, over the legend of original singer Robert Johnson’s daring and tragic story in the Jim Crow south.
Scott-Heron’s cover is an opaque homage that ruminates on living in the echoes of an American music legend’s ruins. It’s a reminder of the continuing horrors of racism, and the enduring artistry of resistance and resilience.
Justin Patch
3. Helter Skelter, by Siouxsie and the Banshees (1978)
As a young artist from Liverpool who was newly signed to Deltasonic Records in the early 2000s, I was keen to find inspiration from artists other than our beloved Beatles. Little did I expect that much of this inspiration would circle back to Paul, John, George and Ringo when I discovered Siouxsie and the Banshees’ album The Scream (1978).
Their cover of Helter Skelter from The Beatles’ White Album (1968) blew me away. Personally, I think this is the best cover of a Beatles song ever, performed by a woman who wasn’t afraid to take control of it.
Eva Petersen
4. Wild is the Wind, by David Bowie
David Bowie frequently supplemented his original material with thematically connected cover songs. There are covers on Hunky Dory (1971), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (1972) and Aladdin Sane (1973). These moments are often the weakest spots on Bowie’s records – with one major exception.
Bowie’s 1976 album Station To Station closes with his take on Wild Is The Wind, reworking Johnny Mathis’s two-minute original from 1957 into a soaring and theatrical six-minute showstopper. Bowie’s band dutifully rises to the occasion, decorating the track with elegant lead guitar work and one of the most exquisite drum performances ever committed to tape.
Never one to underplay, Bowie gives the vocal performance of a lifetime, culminating in a soaring climax guaranteed to leave goosebumps on any listener with a pulse.
Daniel Ash
5. Against All Odds, by The Postal Service (2004)
A good cover version needs to find ways to reinvent the texture and structure of the original. Beyond The Postal Service’s iconic 2003 album Give Up, the indie-tronica outfit have a tiny repertoire. For my money, their cover of Phil Collins’s Against All Odds (1984) was the only bright spot in the horrendous Josh Hartnett movie, Wicker Park (2004).
The familiar texture and soundscape of Give Up is heard in the distant and crackly vocal, reverse delays and keyboard of the opening verse and chorus. This gives way to a middle section which is cleaner and more purposeful than the first, with a brighter tempo. A final outro section repeats the lyrical hook – “take a look at me now” – with gentle guitar bringing the song to a close.
With this cover, The Postal Service manage to remake an emotional love ballad into a more angsty and complex work with their own musical stamp.
Conor Caldwell
6. Shipbuilding, by Suede
I always tell students to look at their hero’s heroes and find the covers they chose to do. It is often the case that we discover a classic song from a cover.
The 1995 charity album HELP featured 20 songs (many of them cover versions) by 20 artists in support of children displaced by the Bosnian War.
Suede’s cover of Shipbuilding (written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer in 1982) was the first version of the song I heard. Such is the power of the piece, I suspect it was not difficult to convey the message. Written during the Falklands war, it concerned the resurgence of the shipyards caused by the necessity to replace ships lost in the conflict.
This led me to discover the definitive 1982 version sung by Robert Wyatt and featuring Costello, which has superb brushed drums and double bass. A masterpiece.
Howard Monk
7. Such Great Heights, by Iron and Wine
In this cover, Sam Beam of Iron and Wine strips what could be potentially considered the calling card of The Postal Service’s small but perfectly formed oeuvre to its bare bones. Featuring nothing more than a hushed voice, gently plucked acoustic guitar and subtle flourish of mandolin, the yearning romanticism of the lyrics is endearingly exposed.
Curiously, The Postal Service chose to include this wonderfully considered cover version as a b-side to their own single release of the song in 2003. This may have prompted its use in the divisive indie movie Garden State (2004), elevating Iron and Wine to deservedly greater heights in the process.
Steve Ryan
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Eva Petersen has previously received Arts Council funding for her research in 2019. She currently works for Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
Conor Caldwell, Daniel Ash, Glenn Fosbraey, Howard Monk, Justin Patch, and Stephen Ryan do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jolanta Burke, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Positive Health Sciences, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just published alarming statistics showing that employee mental health issues result in a US$1 trillion (£747 billion) loss in productivity each year. The WHO has called on employers to take urgent action by introducing comprehensive wellbeing programmes to tackle the escalating mental health crisis in the workplace.
But the problem is that many workplace wellbeing programmes don’t work. A UK study which looked at 46,336 employees from 233 organisations found there was no evidence that a range of common workplace wellbeing initiatives – including mindfulness and stress management classes, one-to-one mental health coaching, wellbeing apps or volunteering work – improved employee wellbeing.
So despite companies investing over US$60 billion annually worldwide in wellbeing programmes, they appear to make little impact.
There are a number of reasons why these programmes don’t work – and understanding them is the only way companies will be able to make these programmes effective.
Motivation
Organisations often opt for easy-to-implement initiatives, such as hosting wellbeing talks or offering mindfulness or yoga classes. They then complain that employees don’t attend or don’t appreciate them.
Many employees say they don’t attend these activities because they find them irrelevant, unhelpful or they don’t value them enough to attend – meaning their workplace has failed in identifying their needs.
Understanding what motivates people to participate in wellbeing programmes is crucial in improving its effectiveness. For example, one survey found employees were more interested in learning about healthy lifestyles than having a discussion about stress management. Although not directly related to mental wellbeing, prioritising these kinds of talks would have a greater effect on improving wellbeing in the end.
Content matters
Wellbeing programmes tend to be more effective for people whose wellbeing is average or below average. So when people with high levels of wellbeing participate in such programmes, they often see little benefit. This can make it appear the programme isn’t effective – when in reality, it still is for those who need it most.
This is why it’s so important to determine what type of help employees need most when designing wellbeing programmes.
For employees who aren’t experiencing poor mental health, a programme that primarily addresses depression or anxiety may be less effective as they’re probably already practising many of the strategies such programmes would discuss. But if the wellbeing programme goes beyond reducing symptoms and focuses on promoting flourishing, meaning and purpose in life, it could provide value to a broader audience.
This is where a programme designed by an expert in positive psychology would be beneficial in workplaces. Positive psychology is the science of wellbeing. It focuses on building on the positive aspects of life that make life worth living – rather than solely addressing symptoms of mental ill health which only affect 10-20% of the population.But positive psychology measures still have a positive impact on those who experience mental health issues at the same time. They include such activities as identifying and using your character strengths at work, re-thinking your past events positively, learning optimism or practising gratitude.
The content of workplace wellbeing programmes is crucial. Avoiding generic self-help approaches will enhance their overall impact.
Even a person’s genetics can significantly affect whether such programmes have any impact. Research shows that people who have a higher genetic predisposition towards change are more likely to benefit disproportionately from these programmes – and their positive effect tends to last longer.
All of these factors should be carefully considered when designing a workplace wellbeing programme. And given how difficult this will make it to design one that’s effective, it’s important employee wellbeing programmes are actually developed by experts in the field – not consultants who lack in-depth knowledge of psychology.
Implementation
The way a wellbeing programme is implemented is just as important as its content – though this aspect is often overlooked by wellbeing consultants.
For instance, overusing gratitude exercises can lead to disengagement from a programme. Similarly, offering too many wellbeing activity options can overwhelm participants and result in them discontinuing the programme.
To maximise the impact a wellbeing programme has in the workplace requires careful attention not only to the content but also how it’s implemented.
There are many nuances involved in designing a workplace wellbeing programme. Employers must ensure the programmes they offer not only promote wellbeing but also avoid causing unintended harm to others in the process. Consulting experts who know the nuances of psychology and of wellbeing programmes is key, as they will ensure programmes will be effective and helpful. Programmes that combine positive psychology and lifestyle medicine (which focus on helping people improve their health and fitness) may be particularly beneficial in workplaces.
Jolanta Burke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Ethiopia’s capital city is undergoing a transformation. Addis Ababa is being redeveloped as part of Ethiopia’s broader economic ambitions. Mega road projects, ambitious housing developments and infrastructural changes, all aimed at modernising one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, are shaping its facade.
Over the past three decades, Addis Ababa has expanded in area and population. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s rise to power in 2018 accelerated the city’s transformation.
But the promise of a shiny, new Addis Ababa comes with social costs. Many of the city’s residents, including marginalised communities and those living in informal settlements, have lost homes and social bonds. So, will Addis Ababa’s evolution serve its estimated 4 million inhabitants?
At The Conversation Africa, we have worked with academics whose research seeks to answer this question. Here we share some essential reads on Abiy’s gentrification plans.
The challenges
Demolitions have become a common sight in Addis Ababa as the government pushes forward with plans to modernise the city. These plans are aimed at bringing foreign private capital into the country. However, to make this a reality, whole neighbourhoods have been levelled to make way for roads, high-rise buildings and modern housing complexes. Homes and livelihoods are being destroyed. Fikir Getaneh Haile has studied the impact of Addis Ababa’s urban renewal on residents. She suggests that policymakers should make sure the voices of affected communities are heard.
As it is, when bulldozers arrive in neighbourhoods, residents are left with little recourse and forced to rebuild their lives elsewhere. The destruction of these communities is not only material. There is a deep social cost. Neighbours who relied on each other are separated. The government is making efforts to relocate people to new housing projects, but houses are allocated by lottery. This is dismantling social networks. Further, with state housing developments located away from the city centre where jobs are concentrated, people are spending more time travelling to and from work, and less on building relationships with neighbours. Hone Mandefro’s research explains what happens when urbanisation plans disrupt the community ties that residents rely on for support and stability.
Political elites are driving Addis Ababa’s physical transformation. This has led to top-down planning that excludes the voices of the majority. Ezana Weldeghebrael explains that the state’s focus on aesthetics, with features like skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury housing complexes, fails to address the needs of the 80% of the city’s residents who live in dilapidated housing. This is widening the gap between the wealthier parts of the city and the poorer neighbourhoods. For the most vulnerable residents, the megaprojects represent yet another layer of exclusion. The city’s gentrification is creating pockets of prosperity surrounded by areas of deep poverty.
Addis Ababa’s redevelopment must create a more inclusive and equitable city. Biruk Terrefe explains that this requires a shift in focus from large-scale megaprojects to more localised, community-centred development that takes into account the social and economic realities of the city’s population. Resources and investments should be distributed more equitably across the city so that all residents, regardless of their income level, have access to basic services and infrastructure.
Ultimately, Addis Ababa’s transformation presents an opportunity to build a city that works for everyone. This requires a more inclusive approach that centres the needs and voices of its residents.
Young people in Britain could be forgiven for despairing at the financial pressures they face – and feeling that previous generations enjoyed a much fairer economic environment. Then just to add to their worries about home ownership and a precarious jobs market, along comes the gloomy announcement that the UK’s public debt is now 100% of GDP.
That debt burden will have to be carried by tax-payers for decades to come. Paying the interest – just the interest – of the country’s debt currently accounts for around 7.3% of public spending. That’s more than what is spent on defence (4.8%) or transport (3.8%).
And while some of what’s left will go to towards essential future public services, it will also go towards fixing problems caused by a historic lack of public investment (less money being spent by previous generations) in water, railways and other crucial infrastructure.
In fact, in the 1980s much of that infrastructure was used by the UK government to help finance itself, with assets including British Gas sold off at a bargain price. Those baby boomers and older generations who could afford to buy shares often made a decent profit.
There are other kinds of costs that today’s younger generations have had to bear too. During COVID lockdowns, universities and schools were closed as the young were forced to stay at home, predominantly to protect the elderly. They have lost the freedom to live and work in the EU after 60% of retired people voted for Brexit, while most young people voted against. Leaving Europe has also made the UK less well-off.
But not everyone is poorer. In the last 20 years, the average income of pensioners has increased on average by more than 50%, while that of working-age adults has risen by less than 10%. The median income of pensioner households is now higher after housing costs than that of households with children.
Most of the country’s wealth is now in the hands of older people. In 2018, one in four people aged over 65 was living in a household with a total wealth of over a £1 million pounds. Poverty rates of pensioners are now lower than for the rest of the population.
Yet pensioners receive all sorts of unconditional discounts and benefits, such as free or discounted public transport. Their income is exempt from national insurance contributions, and there is a triple-lock on state pensions, which is guaranteed to grow faster than work income.
Until recently, the winter fuel allowance meant that anyone born in 1944 or before received £300 (reduced to £200 for younger pensioners).
One reason for this reluctance to prise money from older people may be that while most pensioners are doing better (compared to the working population) this is not true of the poorest ones. Also, some pensioners do not claim the benefits they are entitled to, and the last thing a civilised society wants is to let its older people freeze.
But the apparent economic divide raises a broader question about inter-generational justice. What does one generation owe the generations that follow?
And it’s not just about money. Global warming is another thing older people have not spent most of their lives having to pay for, with the burden for repairing environmental damage again falling mostly on the young.
Perhaps a fair philosophical approach would be that it’s OK to leave certain costs to be paid in the future if the next generation can generally expect to live longer and in better health, with more consumer choice and comfort, and an improved quality of life.
In that sense, many people, however old they are, would probably sympathise with young people today. And they may even argue that it’s time for the government to focus on policies that explicitly benefit the young – like house building, different forms of taxation or subjecting pension income to national insurance.
Such changes would provide a dramatic shift towards an economic system which seeks to redistribute wealth not just among citizens – but between the generations.
Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Susan Goldstein, Associate Professor in the SAMRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science – PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand
The two public health interventions that have had the greatest impact on the world’s health are clean water and vaccines. Professors Susan Goldstein and Haroon Saloojee assess South Africa’s child vaccination programme.
Why are childhood vaccinations so important? What are some essential ones?
A recent study published in The Lancet estimated that since 1974, 154 million lives have been saved by immunisation, most of them children.
A 2016 study of low- and middle-income countries found that for every dollar invested in vaccines, the return on investment was estimated to be US$44, considering broader social and economic benefits.
Childhood vaccines are most effective when they are administered to children at the right age, and with the recommended dosage, as children are susceptible to certain diseases at certain ages.
As an example, polio occurs most frequently in children below the age of five. Five doses of polio vaccinations are recommended, starting at birth.
As the most contagious and fast-moving of the vaccine-preventable diseases, measles is often described as the “canary in the coalmine”: a warning of other disease outbreaks that might spring up where there are gaps in vaccination coverage.
How does South Africa fare?
A case study done in 2011/2012 found South Africa spent US$131 million on basic child vaccine procurement, less than 1%-1.5% of public health expenditure and comparable to Latin American countries known for early vaccine adoption. In 2023 new vaccines were included in the routine Expanded Programme on Immunisation to the value of US$194 million.
We do spend appropriately on vaccines.
South Africa has an excellent immunisation schedule with protection offered against 11 diseases.
In 2019, a national household immunisation survey, the first such survey done in two decades, provided the most detailed picture of South Africa’s vaccination programme that we have. The survey screened almost 2 million households and found 84% of babies had received all their shots by the time they turned one.
Although these rates may seem good, they fall short of the 90% target set by the United Nations. They are also lower than in several other sub-Saharan countries, as this graph shows.
A greater concern, however, is the disparity at the district level. For instance, Sekhukhune in Limpopo province had a coverage rate of just 53%, meaning almost one in two children were not fully immunised. Ten other districts had coverage rates below 75%, meaning that at least a quarter of the children were not fully protected.
What is preventing the country from achieving the 90% target?
In the national survey the main reasons for children not being fully immunised were related to the health service:
the vaccine was out of stock (29%)
the child was ill and not offered a vaccine (12%)
caregivers did not know that the child was due for immunisation (19%)
the caregiver forgot that the child had a scheduled immunisation visit (6%)
there was no-one to take the child to the clinic (9%).
Other factors include:
negative interactions with healthcare workers – these can deter caregivers from taking children for their vaccines
waiting times
the dynamics within families – for example, adolescent mothers and elderly caregivers might have difficulty getting children to clinics.
Vaccine refusal by parents for religious or other reasons existed, but this was infrequent (3%).
What needs to be done?
To protect children better, Unicef’s Immunization Agenda 2030 recommends a “people-centred” approach:
ensuring all healthcare workers are skilled at administering inoculations, and not missing opportunities to vaccinate a child whenever they visit a health service
avoiding vaccine shortages by electronically linking central pharmacies to facilities
listening to communities to understand their attitudes towards vaccines and their experiences with health workers at clinics, both good and bad.
In South Africa districts with low coverage warrant special attention, such as increasing access to immunisation services. This could mean opening clinics on weekends or evenings so that working parents could bring their children to be vaccinated.
Vaccinations are the safest method to protect children from life-threatening diseases. We need to ensure that every child gets them.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Castiel, played by Misha Collins, and Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles, in an episode of ‘Supernatural.’ Destiel is the slash ship between the two characters.(Apple TV)
Although the practice of pairing two characters together had existed in fandom for a while, this is recognized as the first use of the term. By the late 1990s, “relationshipper” had been shortened to “shipper” and was being used in other major media fandoms as well.
A ship refers to a romantic pairing between two or more characters, and is often a pairing that doesn’t actively exist in the original story. To “ship” a pairing is to support and enjoy the idea of that specific relationship.
Top 11 Smulder moments from the X-Files YouTube channel.
In the early 2000s, ships were often assigned nautical names, but now they are commonly portmanteaus of the two characters being paired — like Drarry, for Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, or Spuffy for Buffy Summers and Spike.
Many people can relate to seeing two characters interact and thinking, “they’d make a great couple!” But why do we become so invested in these relationships? And what makes some characters more shippable than others?
No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.
Shipping has become a massive part of fan culture. Even when writers and media producers don’t explicitly pair up characters, fans will fill the gaps, creating their own versions and interpretations.
Fans often become deeply invested in fictional couples because they empathize with and feel connected to the characters.
Well-developed characters evoke emotional responses in audiences, similar to the connections we forge with others in real life, especially when we’ve spent a lot of time engaging with the media. The characters become like friends on the screen or page — we become invested in their relationships and growth.
This connection grows even more when characters are placed in relatable situations, such as navigating a breakup or unrequited love. When we can put ourselves in the shoes of the character, we become more invested in their story. Fans connect with characters, and then yearn for their happiness because it feels connected to their own happiness.
It becomes more than just a story; instead, shipping the characters becomes a way for fans to explore their own emotions.
The slow burn effect
In recent decades, media producers and writers have leaned heavily into “will they or won’t they” relationships. These situations, much like a cliffhanger, keep audiences emotionally invested and engaged with the relationship.
The anticipation keeps viewers coming back for more, waiting for the romantic payoff, even in cases when they know it will never happen. The tension built between characters and the feeling of an unresolved romantic narrative — whether intentional or not — heightens fan interest and engagement in shipping.
Shipping also allows fans to project their own desires and fantasies onto a character. We all have our ideal meet-cutes and daydreams about meeting “our person” and what that connection would be like.
Aziraphale, played by Michael Sheen, and Crowley, played by David Tennant, in an episode of ‘Good Omens.’ Ineffable Husbands is the ship name of these two characters. (Amazon Prime)
So, when we encounter a character who feels relatable, or who feels like “our person,” shipping allows us to explore those daydreams without any of the actual risks of complications involved in real life relationships. In many ways, the act of shipping is an exercise in emotional fulfillment for the fan.
Some characters naturally have a spark that draw fans to them — whether it’s through witty banter, emotional vulnerability, opposites-attract tension or the fact that there’s only one bed. When characters have great chemistry, fans can’t help but see the potential for something deeper.
This is especially true when a character’s arc involves personal or emotional growth, as we are eager to imagine a happy ending for characters who are evolving. Combine this growth with the tension of a “will they or won’t they” relationship — a classic of the 90s and 2000s sitcom, think Rachel and Ross from Friends, or Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother — and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a beloved ship.
In fact, a common shipping trope is the slow burn where the romance builds excruciatingly slowly. These types of relationships keep fans hooked because the development is gradual, and subtle. On-screen couples like Jess and Nick from New Girl and Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago from Brooklyn Nine-Nine are prime examples of this.
Jake Proposes to Amy on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Fans experience the full gamut of the emotional journey with these characters and, should then tension break and romance bloom, the pay-off is incredibly satisfying.
If the relationships don’t come to pass, fans often turn to fanfiction — stories written by and for fans — to explore the potential of that ship more fully, with platforms like Archive of Our Own providing a space for these creative explorations.
Pushing for diversity in media
Fans are often drawn to relationships and characters that challenge the dominant ideologies and norms seen in media. Some of the most popular ships involve queer pairings — a trend that dates back, at least, to early days of media fandom with Spirk (Spock/Kirk) fanfiction.
Some of today’s most popular queer ships include Aziraphale/Crowley from Good Omens, Dean Winchester/Castiel from Supernatural, Villanelle/Eve from Killing Eve and Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham from Hannibal.
Such relationships can provide a sense of representation that’s often lacking in mainstream media, allowing fans to see themselves in the stories they love. In this way, shipping can serve as a form of advocacy, pushing for greater diversity and inclusivity in media.
Shipping is about more than wanting characters to kiss — it’s an emotionally charged experience that culminates from empathy, narrative tension, personal fantasies and desires. For fans, these fictional relationships can feel as real as any in our own lives, and that’s why we keep coming back for more.
Effie Sapuridis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Following the end of the progressive wave of the 2000s and 2010s in Latin America, the right has reinvented itself and regained political space.
There is the self-styled libertarianism of Javier Milei in Argentina, the protests against leftist president Gustavo Petro in Colombia and the increasingly authoritarian government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.
Whereas the traditional right often showed no interest in democracy and was more concerned with economic issues and fighting communism, the new right uses the tools of democracy to obtain power and govern, and focuses more on cultural issues.
Chief among these issues is the control of sexuality and gender, which differentiates the new Latin American right from its western counterparts, which are prioritizing the issue of migration.
Researchers have observed the focus on sexuality in the new Latin American right. While conducting field work last year in Colombia with right-wing activists, it became clear to me that groups as diverse as economic libertarians, evangelical anti-abortionists and security hardliners with military backgrounds shared a desire to control the sexuality of others.
Earlier this year, El Salvador’s Bukele ordered gender-related content removed from the public education system. Argentina’s Milei routinely attacks women’s reproductive rights, and the Peruvian government defined transgender identities as a “mental health problem.”
These varied efforts seek to maintain heterosexual and binary gender models at the top of the social hierarchy, while people with diverse identities are marginalized. These authoritarian tendencies are aligned with another of the new right’s favourite issues: a tough-on-crime approach to security.
Likewise, politicians in different countries market themselves as the local Bukele to win votes.
Sexuality, crime
Except for a few countries, migration is not a particularly relevant issue for adherents of the New Right in Latin America.
This is not due to a lack of migration. More than six million Venezuelans have migrated to other countries in the region as of 2023; several Latin American countries are transit points for migrants trying to reach the United States; internal migration and forced displacement are an ongoing issue for some countries.
Nevertheless, anti-migrant and nativist views are not commonplace. There is, however, an effort by the New Right to preserve white and white/mixed-race populations as well as western Christian values at the top of the social hierarchy — to the detriment of Latin America’s Indigenous and Black communities.
New Right figures now become leaders by winning elections. But once in office, they often try to concentrate power in the executive branch by undermining the separation of powers.
The New Right has also become adept at using judicial activism to advance its agenda and curtail the rights of marginalized citizens.
Grassroots organizing and social activism — tactics traditionally associated with the left — are now part of the New Right’s playbook in Latin America. Social movements were instrumental in the fall of Brazil’s Dilma Roussef and the subsequent 2018 victory of Bolsonaro.
Evangelical churches have also taken on a more visible role within the New Right, disputing the traditional leadership of the Catholic Church among conservatives. While evangelicals have long been an important electoral force in places like Brazil, they have had more mixed results in other countries.
Future implications
The New Right continues to influence the public debate and society at large in Latin America through street and social media activism, as well as institutional politics.
In 2025, the New Right could make further electoral gains in countries like Chile and Ecuador.
Because many existing New Right governments regularly undermine democracy and the rights of marginalized communities, it’s important to better understand their strategies and priorities — particularly in a region marred by exclusion and inequality.
Juan Manuel Morales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After a hearty lunch at work, you and your co-workers go into a meeting. First one colleague starts to yawn, then a second and finally it’s your turn. Many biological explanations have been put forward for this, but what is the scientific consensus?
Yawning is a universal phenomenon, observed in many vertebrate species, from wolves to parrots, and, of course, humans, from a very early age. But why do we tend to yawn when we see someone else doing it?
The reason why yawning has been present in so many species for so long is that it seems to be a necessary survival mechanism. But what is its real purpose? Whether it’s to oxygenate the brain, regulate body temperature or provide a social signal, there is no shortage of hypotheses, both among the general public and in the scientific community.
The widespread idea that yawning increases oxygenation of the brain has not been confirmed. Another explanation suggests that yawning helps maintain attention. Again, there is no consensus on this either.
What seems more certain is the link between yawning and circadian rhythm, our biological clock. The majority of yawns occur at rest, generally concentrated around the phases of waking and falling asleep. More precisely, they occur when the body is less alert, as when it’s working to digest a meal.
A means of communication?
Although the reasons behind yawning have yet to be confirmed, it’s “contagious” nature is generating significant discoveries in various disciplines, both in biology and social psychology.
Yawning could play an important role in social interactions, as observed in ostriches, which use it to synchronise group behaviour. As in humans, they often yawn when they shift from waking to resting, or vice versa. Yawning can then serve as a signal indicating a change in activity or alertness, ensuring that all members of the group are alert or at rest at the same time, increasing collective safety and maintaining the group’s rhythm.
However, the contagion of the yawn seems to be a predominantly human characteristic, with a few exceptions, such as chimpanzees or the lion monkey. This specificity reinforces the idea that human yawning, over and above its purely physiological functions, is a means of non-verbal communication. The main hypothesis is that yawning helps to synchronise group behaviour, a function similar to that observed in ostriches.
Indeed, seeing or hearing someone yawn stimulates brain regions involved in imitation and empathy, thanks in particular to mirror neurons. These neurons are activated by observing actions – for example when a child follows his parent’s movements to tie her or his shoes. However, certain areas of the brain specifically involved in contagious yawning are part of neural networks linked to empathy and social interaction.
A predisposition to contagious yawning?
Empathy appears to play a key role in susceptibility to contagious yawning. Individuals with social disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia, seem less receptive to picking up yawning from others. Research even shows that external factors such as breathing and body temperature could respectively reduce and increase contagious yawning.
This observation reinforces the idea that the perception of contagion may be exaggerated, partly because studies often involve observing individuals in groups. This dynamic could influence the observed frequency of yawning, suggesting that it is not necessarily seeing someone yawn that triggers the reaction, but rather the presence and interactions within the group.
So if you find yourself yawning when your colleague yawns after lunch, it may well be that it’s not his or her yawning that’s influencing you. Instead, it could simply be the shared context – in this case, having eaten well together – that provokes this synchronised reaction.
Astrid Thébault Guiochon ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of Bradford
Vladimir Putin has announced what appears to be a dramatic strengthening of Russia’s nuclear doctrine. The Russian president was responding to speculation that the west may relax its restrictions on Ukraine’s use of its weapons to attack targets inside Russia.
He told his security council that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state with conventional weapons. The trigger for the launch of nuclear missiles against Ukraine or any of its allies, he said, would be “reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our state border”.
Whether this will affect the thinking of Ukraine’s western allies about the use of its long-range missiles has yet to be seen. But one of the major features of the public discourse about the Ukraine war has been the risk of the use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear threats have been a standard tactic for the Russian leadership. Whenever Ukraine receives new weapons from the west or is allowed to use western arms to target Russian territory Moscow has responded by either referring to the devastation it could wreak with its nuclear arsenal or by holding a drill to remind the west of its existence.
But there have recently been reports of a growing realisation among Putin’s close advisers that these threats are beginning to wear thin, as one after another of Moscow’s “red lines” are ignored.
Nevertheless, despite providing Ukraine with the most advanced air defence systems and offensive missiles that could strike targets deep within Russia – and perhaps even influence the course of the war – Nato countries are maintaining a strict limit on their use. It’s an indication that despite scepticism about Putin’s willingness to use nuclear weapons, deterrence remains robust – in western minds anyway.
Nuclear deterrence is based on the threat to inflict “unacceptable damage” on an enemy. It is credible only if the adversary believes that the threat is accompanied by the capability and will to follow through.
Nuclear powers have generally conducted nuclear messaging by publicising guidelines for the use of their arsenals. Nato’s current strategic concept was adopted by heads of state and government at the alliance’s summit in Madrid in June 2022. It states: “The circumstances in which Nato might have to use nuclear weapons are extremely remote.”
But the document stresses that if nuclear weapons were used against any Nato member state it would “fundamentally alter” any conflict in which Nato was engaged. It goes on to warn that: “The Alliance has the capabilities and resolve to impose costs on an adversary that would be unacceptable and far outweigh the benefits that any adversary could hope to achieve.”
Russia, meanwhile, is reportedly updating its nuclear doctrine in response to what it says is “western escalation” in the war in Ukraine. The current doctrine, established by a decree in 2020, says Russia can use nuclear weapons to respond to a nuclear attack by an enemy, or to a conventional attack that “threatens the existence of the state”.
The latest statement by Putin is apparently the “draft” of a reworked nuclear doctrine. It certainly appears to lower the bar on resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.
Sabre rattling
The Russian leader made his first overt threat to use nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine in September 2022. He was overseeing the annexation of four occupied Ukrainian provinces after hastily arranged plebiscites, which were generally regarded in the west as being rigged.
He stated that “the US is the only country in the world that twice used nuclear weapons, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Incidentally, they created a precedent.”
He went on to assert that during the second world war the US and Britain had deliberately bombed several German cities to rubble. This, he insisted, had the “sole goal, just like in the case of nuclear bombardments in Japan, to scare our country and the entire world”.
But CIA director William Burns recently said the west should not take Putin’s threats seriously: “Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time.”
CIA director Wiliam Burns and MI6 chief Richatrd Moore in conversation at an FT conference, September 2024.
Burns told a festival organised by the Financial Times on September 7 that: “There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of potential use of tactical nuclear weapons … I never thought … we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that.”
He said he had subsequently passed on a message from US president Joe Biden to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service at a meeting in Turkey in November 2022 “to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be”.
US satellite networks and other intelligence sources have shown no evidence of any preparations for the employment of nuclear weapons. This is despite Russian claims that the alert status of Russian forces has been raised.
But Putin’s proxies have been busily putting out propaganda messages to reinforce their leader’s threats. According to the Washington Post, Alexander Mikhailov, the director of the Bureau of Military Political Analysis, recently called for Russia to bomb plywood mock-ups of London and Washington to simulate a nuclear attack, so that that would “burn so beautifully that it will horrify the world”.
The speaker of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned that strikes on Russia would lead to war with nuclear weapons and warned that the European parliament in Strasbourg was only a three-minute flight for a Russian nuclear missile.
So far Putin’s threats have been sufficient to limit the scope of western involvement. Whether the Russian president’s latest threat will be effective is now the question.
Christoph Bluth received funding from the Volkswagen Stiftung and the AHRC
While Russia continues its nuclear sabre rattling, with renewed threats to use its arsenal if attacked, fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine and in Russia’s Kursk region remains intense. But the diplomatic centre of gravity of the war recently shifted to New York and Washington.
Discussions at the UN and meetings scheduled between the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the US president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris are by no means unimportant for the outcomes of the conflict. But it is unlikely that they will constitute the pivotal moment in accelerating the pace towards a Ukrainian victory that Zelensky might envisage.
At meetings at the UN general assembly and security council, Zelensky appealed to world leaders to support his country and force Russia to make peace with Ukraine. His vision to achieve this is via a second global peace summit. This time he wants Russia to participate after the first effort in Switzerland in June achieved very little.
But with Zelensky continuing to push his ten-point peace plan and Putin insisting on Ukraine recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four regions on the mainland, the two sides are as far apart as ever. So prospects of any meaningful negotiations virtually non-existent.
The plan “envisages quick and concrete steps by our strategic partners … from now until the end of December”. These concrete steps are likely to include more western military support and the permission to use longer-range western weapons against targets deeper inside Russia.
This latter point is something on which the western alliance is divided – and the US sceptical on its strategic value. Putin’s insistence that Russia will respond by using its nuclear arsenal if it detects any western missiles crossing its border will have added to this uncertainty.
Even if more decisive western support were suddenly forthcoming, it is unlikely that it would offset other disadvantages that Ukraine and its allies are facing on the battlefield and beyond. Russia has consolidated its alliances with Iran, North Korea and China. All of these countries have supplied mission-critical ammunition and equipment that has enabled the Kremlin to sustain its war effort in Ukraine.
Russia, so far, has also maintained its advantage in numbers. It appears to be determined to push this even harder following Putin’s order to increase the number of combat troops of the Russian army by another 180,000 soldiers.
Meanwhile, a relentless Russian air campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure has also caused lasting damage, especially to the country’s energy supply network. This is likely to have a particularly adverse effect on Ukraine’s civilian population. It is likely to seriously dent morale during the coming winter.
Other plans (and priorities)
As discussions at the UN this week have underlined, there is also some diplomatic momentum building up behind a joint proposal by Brazil and China that was initially launched in May. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, pushed the plan during his speech at the UN general assembly on September 24, as did China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi.
Like previous proposals from China and Brazil individually, as well as from Indonesia, a group of African states and Saudi Arabia, the joint Brazilian-Chinese plan calls for a ceasefire along the current frontlines. Negotiations would then follow.
Ukraine fears, rightly, that this would entrench the status quo and effectively amount to Kyiv giving up territory illegally annexed by Russia. It would not guarantee any fruitful negotiations but give Russia time and space to regroup and rebuild its armed forces for a likely future escalation. None of this is acceptable to Ukraine and its allies as Zelensky made clear in his speech at the UN.
Volodymr Zelensky criticises the Brazil-China plan at the UN general assembly.
China’s previous effort to promote this joint initiative with Brazil just before the peace summit in Switzerland last June, did not go very far. It may not go much further this time either.
But attention and resources are now much more focused on the Middle East and – to a lesser extent – the civil war in Sudan. So the very fact of this plan’s resurrection may be enough for Russia and its allies to prevent the rest of the world from uniting behind the western-backed Ukrainian proposal for a second global peace summit.
This is clearly a concern for Ukraine. Zelensky, with a clear eye on countries in the global south, not only rejected the proposal but also argued that forcing Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Russia would be akin to reimposing a version of the brutal colonial past of the Soviet era on his country.
Will Zelensky be Trumped in November?
While the stars are thus hardly aligning in Ukraine’s favour at the UN in New York, things did not go much better as far as US domestic politics is concerned ahead of presidential elections in November. Questioning whether Donald Trump really has a credible plan to end the war, Zelensky triggered the notoriously short-fused Republican contender into lashing out at him at campaign rallies.
Donald Trump takes aim at Volodymr Zelensky.
Trump is both accusing Zelensky of refusing to make a deal and expressing doubts about Ukraine’s ability to win the war. Meanwhile, a recent opinion piece penned by Robert F. Kennedy Jnr and Donald Trump Jnr for The Hill, an influential political newspaper, urges that Ukraine be pushed to make a deal with Russia to prevent nuclear escalation.
And Trump’s running-mate J.D. Vance has made clear his opposition to the US continuing to supply aid to Ukraine if elected in November. So it’s pretty clear that there is a very real prospect that Washington may soon cease to be Kyiv’s most important global ally.
All of this explains the urgency behind Zelensky’s push for more and more decisive western support in the coming months, and his pleas to the wider international community to back efforts for a just peace for Ukraine. But it also indicates that Russia and its allies have, for now, done enough to further frustrate any progress towards a Ukrainian victory both on the battlefield and at the negotiation table.
Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Guy Collender, Post Doctoral Senior Research Associate, Centre for Port Cities and Maritime Cultures, University of Portsmouth
The rapid sinking of the Bayesian superyacht and the loss of seven lives, including tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, in August 2024 cruelly emphasised the potentially lethal perils of the sea. This tragedy, although much publicised, is far from unusual. Globally, accidents at sea lead to thousands of deaths every year – but the true scale of the problem is unknown.
Undoubtedly, life at sea remains hard and dangerous in the 21st century, but this is difficult to quantify. There were 215 shipping industry related deaths at sea recorded in 2022. However, due to a lack of standardised data and under-reporting this figure is likely to be an underestimate.
Efforts to raise awareness and improve safety at sea today have much to learn from historic and successful safety initiatives in the UK’s docks. My research on early 20th century docks shows that proper data is a prerequisite to understanding a problem and identifying trends. Such an assessment can then lead to the allocation of resources, targeted safety measures – and life-saving change.
These steps all apply to improving safety at sea, but the lack of accurate data is a real stumbling block.
Life and death at sea
Fishing is widely recognised as the “most dangerous occupation globally”, but estimates of deaths among the fishing community vary enormously from 32,000 to more than 100,000 deaths per year. Of course, such deaths also occur inland in lakes and rivers, as well as at sea.
Twenty-six vessels of over 100 gross tonnes were recorded lost in 2023, with 13 sinking beneath the waves. This is low when compared with the loss of more than 200 vessels a year in the 1990s, but there have also been recent worrying trends such as attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. So far in 2024, four Red Sea seafarers have been killed by Houthi rebels from Yemem, with others injured and held hostage.
Desperation and war are also leading to deaths and risks elsewhere. A total of 3,155 migrants crossing the Mediterranean were recorded as missing or dead in 2023.
Nevertheless, such challenges and risks to life are increasingly being recognised and efforts are underway to address them. Importantly, better data collection and monitoring is in the pipeline.
An amendment to the 2006 international maritime labour convention is expected to come into force in December 2024. It will require countries that have agreed to the convention to report deaths of seafarers on an annual basis to the UN’s International Labour Office.
These will be published in a global register, and they will be investigated. It remains to be seen how such reporting will operate in practice and how deaths will be categorised – but it will be a good start.
My study shows how progress was linked to gathering better data, and recognising the risks of loading and unloading cargo. The counting and scrupulous categorisation of accidents helped identify the problems and appropriate safety measures.
In 1900, factory inspectors identified five causes of dock accidents, including falls (into the ship’s hold, or into the water), and shunting accidents involving trains. The docks were classified as one of the “dangerous trades” in the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.
Under the dock regulations of 1904, “life-saving appliances” – chains or floats – were introduced to prevent drownings. Lifting machinery was also subject to stringent checks to prevent deaths from falling loads.
And more and more proactive inspections took place as the number of inspectors rose from 137 in 1900 to 320 by 1939. All these safety measures and others contributed to dock deaths falling from 115 a year in 1899 to 69 a year in 1939.
Today’s safety initiatives at sea often echo the work of those safety pioneers in the early 20th century. Together in Safety, a consortium of companies dedicated to improving safety in the maritime sector, suggests a three-step safety process – assess the situation, act to improve, appraise the progress – which replicates the work of those early legislators and inspectors.
Together in Safety’s clear and succinct golden safety rules show how to mitigate the risks of maritime work, including working over water and entering enclosed spaces.
What’s more, Lloyd’s Register Foundation – a charity that helps to protect life and property at sea, on land, and in the air – is undertaking work to “assure the safety of people as the ocean economy grows” as part of its Global Maritime Trends 2050 Research Programme.
Two million seafarers face daily dangers to keep the global supply chain operating smoothly. Doing more to highlight their safety will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the challenges they face. This, in turn, should lead to better safety procedures and practices to save lives at sea.
Guy Collender was commissioned and paid to research the history of dock safety in the UK for Hindsight Perspectives for a Safer World – a collaboration between History and Policy and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. He is currently employed by the University of Portsmouth on the ‘Sail to Steam, Carbon to Green’ research project, which is funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Colin Alexander, Senior Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University
Vladimir Putin has spoken several times about using nuclear weapons since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, the initial attention and concern that global news media gave to Putin when he first spoke on the issue in September 2022 seemed to have largely dissipated over the past two years of conflict, perhaps because of the frequency with which he has threatened to resort to use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Now Putin has issued his strongest threat yet, saying that Russia would use nuclear weapons against any country attacking it, even with conventional weapons. This statement appears to be intended to influence the debate happening at the United Nations, where Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to persuade his country’s western allies to allow Ukraine to use the weapons they have provided against targets deep within Russia itself.
This has been a “red line” hitherto that Ukraine’s allies have been unwilling to cross. That may be about to change though and Russia’s reaction has been to reiterate a nuclear response.
For those interested in the study of propaganda, Putin’s threats appear to have moved from what American media scholar Dan Hallin called the “sphere of legitimate controversy”, where the validity of an utterance is urgently debated by journalists, politicians and academics, into the “sphere of consensus”, where there is broad agreement about the meaning of the message. This generally results in it receiving less attention.
To believe that Putin is not serious about using nuclear weapons is a dangerous assumption to make. But it provides a good opportunity to examine the political and public relationship with nuclear weapons in more detail.
The psychology of nuclear threat
Most adults know of the existence of nuclear weapons and understand the consequences of their use. Very few are simply ignorant of them or their immense power. But global annihilation is too overwhelming to think about other than fleetingly. As a result we tend to focus on less drastic futures.
These regular denials and self-deceptions affect political outlooks though. Every so often the leader of a nuclear-armed country is asked by a journalist or another politician about their readiness to press the nuclear button. They always say “yes”. When this question is asked in front of an audience there is usually enthusiastic applause.
This response – applauding an individual politician’s willingness to bring about the end of the world – is perhaps the most compelling evidence of the duality that the threat of nuclear war exists within. Rather than perceiving such a response as the worrying sign that a maniac has somehow manoeuvred their way into high office and should be immediately removed, the voter perceives the utterance as a signifier of leadership strength.
Psychologically, it can be argued that the applause actually represents an outpouring of relief that this mass self-deception can continue.
‘Fear propaganda’ and confirmation bias
During the cold war, official propaganda placed great emphasis upon threat and preparedness for nuclear attack. The BBC film Threads first aired 40 years ago in September 1984 and depicted the aftermath of a nuclear strike. It was responsible for great alarm among the British public at a time when news media, movies and even official literature were also focused upon the threat of nuclear war.
Between 1974 and 1980, the UK government issued a booklet entitled Protect and Survive, accompanied by short films. The BBC, in its public service role, also ran documentary programming including a 1980 edition of Panorama called If The Bomb Drops. While US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s 1957 study Nuclear War and Foreign Policy caused alarm for arguing that small-scale nuclear war using “battlefield” weapons might be possible.
Cold war communications like these served to focus the public mind towards the threat of nuclear attack above all other fears. And perhaps, at that time, they were right to do so. But more than 30 years have now passed since the end of the cold war and the emphasis within what is known as “fear propaganda” now focuses on other threats, such as extremism, pandemics and migration.
As such, Putin’s nuclear threats provide propaganda analysts like myself with a case study about the important role played by fear propaganda in determining what people are scared of. If taken within the wider history of the fear of nuclear holocaust, it is clear that political leaders cannot rely on their words alone to be taken seriously. They require a wider supportive propaganda environment – like the atmosphere created at the height of the cold war.
Putin the ‘madman’
Questions around how to understand Putin’s nuclear attack threats ought to be positioned as the latest in a long(ish) line of world leaders who have tried to convince global publics of their readiness to commit nuclear genocide.
Richard Nixon, for example, used what was referred to as “madman” tactics when trying to convince people of his readiness to push the button. Interestingly, the more recent depictions of Putin, Kim Jong-un and other authoritarian leaders as madmen by western tabloids can actually helps them by playing down the fact of their inferior military capabilities when compared to those of the Nato allies.
Don’t think for a moment though that any of this discussion of propaganda increases or decreases the actual threat posed by nuclear weapons. Indeed, there exists a degree of confirmation bias among politicians, journalists and other public commentators that because nuclear war did not happen during the cold war, it is unlikely to happen now. But this can’t be guaranteed. It may be that these conclusions are mistakenly based upon the intensity of the propaganda environment – not the actuality of the threat posed.
To this end, it ought to be remembered that the ability to press the button sits well within the capacity of the sane human mind. US president Harry S. Truman pushed the button in 1945. He was then given detailed reports of the death and destruction that his decision caused to Hiroshima. Then he pushed the button again to annihilate Nagasaki.
Colin Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Some nanoparticles take the form of sheets or fibres. But nanomaterials all have one thing in common – their structure contains components with dimensions in the nanometre scale – that’s more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Research shows that nanomaterials often perform better than the same materials made at a larger scale. They have huge potential, but currently their manufacture can result in harmful environmental effects due to the use or production of hazardous chemicals.
I’m one of many researchers studying how to create, manipulate and apply these materials sustainably to develop new technologies and improve existing ones. This offers advantages across many applications, including aerospace, solar panels and electronics.
Silica nanomaterial is already all around you, but you probably don’t even realise it. Silica (SiO₂), a compound that contains both silicon and oxygen, is commonly found in rocks. It is one of the most mass produced nanomaterials worldwide, with an expected market of US$5 trillion (£3.8 trillion) by 2025.
It’s used to make things you encounter every day, from improving the strength of concrete or the durability of rubber tyres, plus it enhances the cleaning properties and consistency of toothpaste. Silica nanomaterial could have exciting high-value applications, like medicines and wastewater treatment.
While silica products might be great, the way they are made is often not great for the environment, or even economically feasible. Manufacture is key to overall product sustainability, but it’s often invisible to consumers. As such, it’s an aspect that most people consider far less than, for example, whether something will be recycled.
Making silica often requires energy-intensive processes, or makes nasty waste products that are difficult to safely dispose of. Trying to reduce the environmental footprint for existing processes is not enough. Developing new production methods is paramount to ensuring that new technologies, such as more advanced solar panels, can both help society and have less impact on the environment than traditional manufacture.
I am part of the Green Nanomaterials Research Group at the University of Sheffield, where my colleagues and I are working hard to develop sustainable, scalable and economical routes to functional nanostructured materials. We address aspects from discovery to manufacturing, applications and commercialisation, considering the performance, scalability, environment and cost.
A greener approach to chemistry
We aim to make better nanomaterials for important applications, while considering the environmental impact at every stage of a nanomaterial’s life, from raw materials through to the use and disposal of product and any by-products. This approach is known as “green chemistry”, a concept developed in 1998 that has been used to develop strategies for greener routes to nanomaterials.
Some algae, including these diatoms, make silica naturally to build cell walls and are studied in the development of bio-inspired silica. Diana Will/Shutterstock
Silica nanomaterial suits this green chemistry approach because it is already made in nature by plants and sponges as structural support. What better teacher for green chemistry than to learn from nature itself? My research group created bio-inspired silica, a product that can be made at room temperature, and in the mild conditions under which silica is made in biology naturally.
Now, colleagues in my research group are scaling up bio-inspired silica production, exploring its use in different applications and making different nanomaterials. Meanwhile, I’m exploring how changing the conditions under which we make silica can improve the properties, like surface area, that make it function better.
There’s huge scope for green nanomaterials to advance essential technologies, and if green silica could be scaled up, the potential for substantial change drug delivery and renewables is vast.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jenny Woodley, Senior Lecturer in Modern American History, Nottingham Trent University
For decades, Black history in the UK has been siloed from the mainstream, as if incidental to the nation’s history. Black History Month in October is dedicated to celebrating Black heritage, but the rest of the year, it feels largely neglected and ignored. Public historian and broadcaster David Olusoga, is at the forefront of efforts to integrate Black history into our national story.
His latest book, Black History for Every Day of the Year, co-created with two of his siblings, Yinka and Kemi, is another contribution to that work. This attractive and substantial book has an entry for each calendar day detailing an event, person, place, or theme associated with black history.
There are biographies of artists, musicians, activists, politicians, filmmakers, writers, and scientists. We learn about legal cases, such as Brown v Board of Education, when racial segregation in US schools was ruled unconstitutional, and the Mansfield Judgment, a 1772 British ruling which decided the fate of enslaved African James Somerset, and was used by abolitionists in their campaign to end slavery.
We get to see important objects, like the Benin Bronzes, a collection of sculptures created by skilled artisans in the Kingdom of Benin – now part of Nigeria – which were looted by British forces in 1897. They were then given to institutions like the British Museum, where some are still on display.
The book narrates histories of violence and injustice, from centuries of enslavement and brutal colonial rule, to South Africa’s Sharpeville massacre when, in March 1960, 69 people protesting apartheid laws were killed by the police.
The tragedy of the 1981 New Cross fire in south London, where 14 young Black people were killed in a suspected arson attack on a house party, is recounted as is the racist murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence, also in south London in 1993.
It tells stories of resistance and resilience, such as the uprising of enslaved people in Jamaica in 1760, known as Tacky’s revolt, and the 1961 Freedom Rides, when Black and white students challenged racial segregation on American buses and were met with violence.
In Britain it examines the Bristol bus boycott of 1963, a four-month-long protest against the bus company’s refusal to hire Black or Asian drivers. Many of the events and names will be familiar to some readers but there is likely to be plenty that is new and novel.
It is not a book which invites intensive reading, but rather the joy is to dip in and out, finding connections between entries, dates and themes. The popularity of social media “On This Day” posts suggests many readers will enjoy connecting past with present.
At the end of the volume, as well as a glossary of terms, are 12 timelines which place some of the entries into a more cohesive – though potentially more limiting – narrative.
For example, they outline Black resistance to slavery, abolitionist movements, and histories of imperialism and colonialism. Both here and throughout the book readers are pointed to connections between the entries. The text is enhanced by beautiful illustrations at the beginning of each month, which explore objects, places and themes associated with the entries, and the timelines are likewise creatively illustrated.
Black History for Every Day is educational and informative, but it is written with a deft touch and its format, along with the illustrations and inclusion of photographs, mean it is also engaging and accessible.
The scope of the histories included is global and many are transnational, showing the connections between the struggles and stories of people of African descent across the world. However, the majority of entries are associated with British and US history. This is not surprising given the authors’ research interests and the likely market for the book.
While it is apparent that an attempt has been made to be geographically and chronologically diverse, around a third of the 366 entries deal with US history, suggesting that our understanding of Black history is still often dominated by its American iterations.
The book is not attempting to break new ground. The timeline of the US civil rights movement, for example, begins with the Supreme Court ruling to desegregate education in 1954 and includes the acts of nonviolent direct action which have dominated the widely accepted “master narrative” of the era.
However, the book does at least go slightly beyond the usual cut-off point to include the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program, which addressed poverty and hunger in the Black community between 1969 and 1980, and the murder of Black Panther deputy chairman Fred Hampton, who was killed in 1969 at the age of 21.
The entry for Martin Luther King Jr. claims he organised the Montgomery bus boycott, ignoring the contributions of black women who were the driving force behind the movement. This is somewhat modified by the entry for activist Rosa Parks, which acknowledges the work of the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery.
The book’s purpose is not to be comprehensive; it cannot be, given its breadth. Rather, each entry is intended to serve as an introduction. The authors explain they hope people will be inspired to find out more after reading it.
Taken together, the daily entries narrate centuries of discrimination, violence and injustice against people of African descent. But they also tell stories of Black resilience, innovation, talent and achievement. The Olusogas’ book is published in time for Black History month in the UK, but it makes the case for engaging with black history beyond a single month every year.
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Jenny Woodley has received funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.
In a surprise announcement, Keir Starmer told Labour party conference that his government would end homelessness for veterans. “Homes will be there for heroes,” the prime minister said.
Labour has promised to build 1.5 million new homes as part of its manifesto. In his speech, Starmer also said that care leavers and victims of domestic abuse will have a “guaranteed roof over their head”.
I’ve been involved in research about veteran homelessness for ten years. While Starmer’s promise is welcome, it will be hard to achieve. Government data reported that there were 2,110 homeless families with an armed forces veteran in England in 2022-23, a 14% increase from the previous year.
But that figure is likely to underestimate overall levels of housing insecurity among veterans. Many people who leave military service could be considered “hidden homeless”, particularly female veterans who are unlikely to engage with formal services and young service leavers who easily slip through the cracks of existing provision.
Those who have been lucky enough to find the right service at the right time may live in veteran-specific housing, including supported accommodation. Others may have found help through Operation Fortitude. This government-run referral scheme for veterans at risk of homelessness has housed over 400 people since it began in September 2023. But these services aren’t enough to ensure stable and secure housing for all veterans.
The scale of the housing crisis has widened the gap between military and civilian life. Service leavers now need to save more and for longer than they did in the past to have any hope of closing the gap between their entitlements in military accommodation and the cost and availability of civilian housing.
While in the military, service members’ accommodation is deeply subsidised. Today, a service family with two children could be entitled to a three-bedroom house, paying around £320 a month. For single personnel, it could be as little as £106 per month. In 2013 (the most recent available data), most personnel paid less than 12% of their salary for accommodation charges. The civilian population at the time paid between 20% and 40% for housing.
However, many service members do not consider what they might do once that support ends. The people most vulnerable to homelessness after military service are those who are discharged quickly, for example for medical or disciplinary reasons. They might be required to leave military accommodation within weeks (or sometimes hours), and haven’t had chance to plan for life after the military.
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Many of the veterans and service members my colleagues and I interviewed for our research spoke of the lack of planning and ability to save. One told us: “When you join at 18 and get a salary at the same time as all my mates’ student loans, you think you’re a multi-millionaire.”
Our research suggests that home ownership at the point of discharge is out of reach for many. Social housing is not an option for many veterans, who do not qualify if they are single or have available savings.
Social housing allocation rules require applicants to have a local connection to qualify. The government said it will bring in changes to fully exempt veterans, care leavers and domestic abuse survivors. Veterans are currently exempt from this for five years. But the exemption is irrelevant if there are no suitable properties available, and veterans are consequently likely to be in temporary accommodation.
Housing in the private rented sector is expensive to secure and costly to maintain. Many service leavers find themselves returning to the parental home, sometimes after many years of successful service.
Transitioning to civilian life
The move from military to civilian life is hard to navigate. While it is certainly true that many service leavers thrive in civilian life, others struggle to find the right support and resources. They may not have the financial literacy and planning to know how to navigate the housing system. One veteran described feelings of “abandonment” after leaving service:
I joined at 16. I did 15 years. I left at 31. The Royal Navy were my parents. … I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
Many service leavers are affected by trauma and PTSD, as well as other mental health or substance abuse problems. Like civilians suffering from these conditions, these interconnected issues can exacerbate housing insecurity. And long wait times for mental health services can reduce the chances of finding long-term housing as they struggle to maintain tenancies, pay bills on time and keep stable employment.
How then, can the government and military best help veterans at risk?
The first 12 months after leaving service are critical to help the transition to civilian life and ensure service leavers have accommodation. In that time, service leavers should be given an automatic referral to a time-limited housing support scheme if they have nowhere to go.
They could also be given the option to remain in military accommodation with support to give them time to transition. Another direct solution would be to give service leavers money for private rented sector or mortgage deposits.
These solutions can’t just start when people leave service. Better mental health support and improving financial literacy while still in service is critical.
And any solutions can’t be short-term. The homeless veterans I have met over the years were often discharged many years before they experienced homelessness. Evidence suggests that within five years post-discharge is a critical time for rough sleeping to be established. Support for those who left service some years ago also needs to be part of the offer.
Lisa O’Malley receives funding from Forces in Mind Trust.
Cosmic microwave background shows fluctuations in temperature.ESA/Planck Collaboration
Given how unfathomably large the universe is, it is perhaps understandable that we haven’t yet cracked all its secrets. But there are actually some pretty basic features, ones we used to think we could explain, that cosmologists are increasingly struggling to make sense of.
The standard model originated some 25 years ago and has successfully reproduced a whole plethora of observations. But some of the latest measurements of large-scale structure, a topic which I work on, indicate that the matter is less clustered (smoother) than it ought to be according to the standard model.
This result has cosmologists scratching their heads looking for explanations. Some solutions are relatively mundane, such as unknown systematic errors in the measurements. But there are more radical solutions. These include rethinking the nature of dark energy (the force causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate), invoking a new force of nature or even tweaking Einstein’s theory of gravity on the largest of scales.
At present, the data cannot easily distinguish between different competing ideas. But the measurements from forthcoming surveys are poised to take a giant leap forward in precision. We may be on the cusp of finally breaking the standard model of cosmology.
This is article is part of our series Cosmology in crisis? which uncovers the greatest problems facing cosmologists today – and discusses the implications of solving them.
The early universe
To understand the nature of the current tension and its possible solutions, it is important to understand how structure in the universe formed and subsequently evolved. Much of our understanding comes from measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB is radiation that fills the universe and is a leftover relic from the first few hundred thousand years of cosmic evolution after the Big Bang (for comparison, the universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old).
Scientists discovered the CMB by accident in 1964 (garnering them a Nobel prize), but its existence and properties had been predicted years earlier.
In excellent agreement with some of the earliest theoretical work, the observed temperature of the CMB today is an incredibly chilly 3 Kelvin (-270°C). However, at very early times, it was sufficiently hot (millions of degrees) to enable the fusion of all of the light elements in the universe, including helium and lithium, into heavier ones.
The CMB’s spectrum (light broken down by wavelength) suggests it must have been in thermal equilibrium with matter in the past – meaning they had the same distribution of energies. Matter and radiation can only reach thermal equilibrium in very dense environments. So measurements of the CMB convincingly demonstrate that the universe was once an extremely hot and dense place, with all the matter and radiation packed into a very small space.
As the universe expanded, it quickly cooled. And as it did so, some of the free electrons that existed at the time were captured by protons, forming atoms of hydrogen. This “era of recombination” happened around 300,000 years after the Big Bang. After this point, the universe was suddenly less dense so the CMB radiation was “released” to travel without impediment, and it has not significantly interacted with matter since.
As the radiation is very old, when we make measurements of the CMB today, we are learning about the conditions of the early universe. But detailed mapping of the CMB tells us a great deal more than this.
A key insight from CMB maps obtained with the Planck telescope is that the universe was also exceptionally smooth at early times. There was only a 0.001% variation from place to place in the density and temperature of the matter and radiation in the universe. If there had been more extreme variation, that matter and radiation would have been much more clustered.
These variations, or “fluctuations”, are of fundamental importance to how structure subsequently evolved in the universe. Without these fluctuations, there would be no galaxies, no stars or planets – and no life. A very interesting question is, where did these fluctuations come from?
Our current understanding is that they are a result of quantum mechanics, the theory of the microcosmos of atoms and particles. Quantum mechanics shows that empty space has some background energy which allows sudden, local changes, such as particles popping in and out of existence. The quantum nature of matter and energy has been verified to remarkable accuracy in the laboratory.
These fluctuations are thought to have been blown up to large scales in a very rapid period of expansion in the early universe called “inflation”, although the detailed mechanism behind inflation is still not fully understood.
Over time, these fluctuations grew and the arrangement of matter and radiation in the universe became more clustered. Regions that were slightly denser had a stronger gravitational pull and so attracted even more matter, which increased the density, which strengthened the gravitational pull, and so on. Regions of slightly lower density lost out, becoming emptier with time – a cosmic case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
The fluctuations grew to such an extent over time that galaxies and stars started to form, with galaxies being distributed in and along the familiar filaments and nodes that make up a “cosmic web”.
The standard explanation
The rate at which fluctuations grow over time, and how they are clustered in space depends on several factors: the nature of gravity, the constituent components of matter and energy in the universe, and how these components interact (both with themselves and with each other).
These factors are encapsulated in the standard model of cosmology. The model is based on a solution to Einstein’s general theory of relativity (our best understanding of gravity) that assumes the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales – meaning it looks the same in every direction to every observer.
It also assumes that the matter and energy in the universe is composed of normal matter (“baryons”), dark matter consisting of relatively heavy and slow-moving particles (“cold” dark matter) and a constant amount of dark energy (Einstein’s cosmological constant, denoted Lambda).
Since its origin approximately 25 years ago, the model has successfully explained a great many observations of the universe on large scales, including the [detailed properties of the CMB].
And until very recently, it also provided excellent fits to a variety of measurements of the clustering of large-scale structure at late times. In fact, some measurements of large-scale structure are still very well described by the standard model and this may be providing an important clue as to the origin of the current tension.
Remember that the CMB shows us the clustering of matter (the fluctuations) at early times. So we can use the standard model to evolve that forward in time and predict what it should, theoretically, look like today. If there is a fit between this prediction and observations, that is a very strong indication that the ingredients of the standard model are correct.
The ‘S8’ tension
What has changed recently is that our measurements of large-scale structure, particularly at very late times, have significantly improved in their precision. Various surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey and the Kilo Degree Survey have found evidence for inconsistencies between observations and the standard model.
In other words, there is a mismatch between the early time and late time fluctuations: the late-time fluctuations are not as large as expected. Cosmologists refer to this clash as the “S8 tension”, as S8 is a parameter that we use to characterise the clustering of matter in the late-time universe.
Depending on the particular data set, the chance of the tension being a statistical fluke may be as low as 0.3%. But from a statistical point of view, that is not enough to firmly rule out the standard model.
However, there are strong hints of the tension in a variety of independent observations. And attempts to explain it away due to systematic uncertainties in the measurements or modelling have simply not been successful to date.
For example, it had previously been suggested that perhaps energetic non-gravitational processes, such as winds and jets from supermassive black holes, could inject enough energy to alter the clustering of matter on large scales.
However, we have shown using state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (called Flamingo) that such effects appear to be too small to explain the tension with the standard model of cosmology.
If the tension is indeed pointing us to a flaw in the standard model, this would imply that something in the basic ingredients of the model is not correct.
This would have huge consequences for fundamental physics. For example, the tension may be indicating that something is wrong about our understanding of gravity, or the nature of the unknown substance called dark matter or dark energy. In the case of dark matter, one possibility is that it interacts with itself via an unknown force (something beyond just gravity).
Alternatively, perhaps dark energy is not constant but evolves with time, as early results from the Dark Energy Survey Instrument (Desi) may indicate. Some scientists are even considering the possibility of a new (fifth) force of nature. This would be a force of similar strength to gravity that operates over very large scales and would act to slow the growth of structure.
But note that any modifications of the standard model would also need to account for the many observations of the universe that the model successfully explains. This is no simple task. And before we jump to grand conclusions, we must be sure that the tension is real and not simply a statistical fluctuation.
The good news is that forthcoming measurements of large-scale structure with Desi, the Rubin Observatory, Euclid, the Simons Observatory and other experiments will be able to confirm if the tension is real with much more precise measurements.
They will also be able to thoroughly test many of the alternatives to the standard model that have been proposed. It may be that within the next couple of years we will have ruled out the standard model of cosmology and profoundly changed our understanding of how the universe works. Or the model may be vindicated and more reliable than ever. It’s an exciting time to be a cosmologist.
Ian G. McCarthy receives funding from UKRI’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). He works for Liverpool John Moores University.
In 2018, the Australian philosopher Kate Manne coined the word “himpathy” to describe what she called “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior”.
What makes somebody more likely to feel himpathetic, either to somebody facing accusations in the public eye, or in their own workplace?
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to a human behaviour expert whose research seeks to understand what makes some people more inclined to support perpetrators of sexual misconduct than the victims.
Samantha Dodson is an assistant professor of organisational behaviour and human resources at the University of Calgary in Canada. She first started researching the ways people react to accusations of sexual misconduct around the time of the #MeToo movement, as women came forward with accusations of sexual harassment in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein case.
Dodson and her colleagues wanted to understand why some people are predisposed to express sympathy towards male perpetrators of sexual misconduct, or himpathy. Over a series of five studies, both analysing public comments on X related to the #MeToo movement and through lab-based psychology experiments. Her team used moral foundations theory to build a profile of the kinds of people more likely to be himpathetic.
Moral foundations theory argues that there are innate moral concerns that everybody holds to different levels. These concerns include respect for authority, loyalty, staying pure, being fair and being caring toward other people.
Don’t rock the boat
What we found is that when people strongly value things like loyalty, respect for authority and purity, they’re more likely to feel sympathy toward the man accused of sexual misconduct and feel anger toward the women who made that allegation.
Dodson says people who hold these moral values very strongly are more likely to see allegations as a threat to the stability of a company, or institution. And, as a result, they’re also less likely to believe a victim.
It also leads to people being more likely to seek punishment for the women who made the accusations and less likely to seek punishment for the men who have been accused.
Overall, Dodson found the vast majority of people in their studies were “not himpathetic” and it’s just a small subset of people who react this way.
The challenge is if those people are in positions of authority, or … if you have one person that you work with who’s himpathetic and you’re a victim you might experience some iciness from them or ostracism.
Their work also looks at how managers can better deal with accusations of sexual harassment in the workplace as a result of their findings.
Listen to Samantha Dodson talk about her research and the recommendations from it on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also features an introduction from Eleni Vlahiotis, business and economy editor at The Conversation in Canada.
A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.
In the past months, the planet has experienced the hottest months of June and August, boreal summer and day on record, with a global average temperature of 17.16°C on 22 July. While many have been getting on with their lives as best as they can, there are many more who are feeling the heat, as levels of climate anxiety continue to rise. At risk are people experiencing climate impacts in the Global South, but also professionals in the Earth sciences documenting and modelling them.
So, how can we channel our alarm in a way that doesn’t paralyse us, but propel us into action? To answer this question, The Conversation Europe spoke to one of the world’s most public-facing climate scientists, the Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Diána Ürge-Vorsatz.
Could you start off by describing your work? According to you, what have been the highlights of your career as a climate scientist?
So I mostly work in the area of energy efficiency. I have done a lot of modelling, including to demonstrate how higher efficiency buildings could reduce carbon emissions. Among others, I have alerted the world of what we call the carbon lock-in risks of inefficient building retrofits — when fossil fuel-intensive systems perpetuate, delay, or prevent the transition to low-carbon alternatives.
I’ve always tried to concentrate on solutions which not only allow us to solve environmental issues, but also to increase human well-being and meet other societal goals. That’s because I come from a country [Hungary] where I see that while the environment and climate change are important, they typically play second fiddle to other priorities. Hence, I believe we have to solve these things in a way that makes it worthwhile.
Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, 2024. Fourni par l’auteur
My work therefore prompted lawmakers to revise the EU’s legislation to boost building energy efficiency – the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive – in 2010. On the first day the Fidesz government was reelected that year, I showed them how many jobs could be created through high efficiency building retrofits. Based on our research, they committed that the entire building stock would be refurbished to slash energy consumption by 60 %, which would have been really very ambitious, the first such commitment in the world. Unfortunately, a few months later, they changed their direction and they rather went into other energy policy priorities.
That’s one of my concerns, yes, because it’s amongst the tipping points that would exert its impact the earliest.
If we look at other Earth system tipping points, most of them require a century, several centuries, if not several millennia until they exert a full impact. If AMOC collapses, it would exert its full impact within two to three decades, potentially. These are very strong impacts predicted clearly, on Europe as well as other regions. More and more papers have shown evidence that its collapse could already be underway. That’s definitely been alarming.
When you started on this career path, would you describe yourself as prey to eco-anxiety? And if not, was there a turning point when it appeared?
No, when I started I don’t think we had any knowledge that would have amounted to any existential threat, and it was still not so tangible that so many things could go wrong.
I was studying for my PhD at UCLA, at UC Berkeley from 1992-96. In the LA Times, there was a two page advertisement calling for artists to design artwork that would scare anyone away, which they could put above the Yucca Mountain deep high-level based nuclear repository so that even if people didn’t speak English or they didn’t understand our script anymore, they could still understand that there was something really dangerous under that.
At that point, I remember thinking: “Oh my God, if you just can’t dig or walk wherever you want anymore, that’s just wrong. We cannot do that to future generations.”
Then there’s the never-ending news cycle, making it hard to pinpoint specific moments that alarm you. One that comes to mind has been the discovery over time that forever chemicals – Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – are everywhere, even in the most remote parts of the earth and rain is no longer of drinking water quality even in Antarctica. This isn’t going to go away — precisely because PFAS are what we call forever chemicals. We will never be able to vacuum clean the planet from PFAS. Likewise with microplastics. When you start looking ahead with your eyes open, it can be really scary.
And how do you experience the intimate knowledge of that alarming data on the one hand, and the public’s, and above all the elites’, climate inaction on the other?
Well, I wouldn’t quite call it “climate inaction”. It’s easy to dwell on the idea that the glass is half empty. But in fact, the glass is half full. Lots has been done since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which was itself a miracle.
You were there when the deal was struck, weren’t you? Could you tell us what it was like?
Well, it was truly euphoric, because before that, if a scientist dared mentioning [the threshold of] 1.5°C [of warming above pre-industrial levels], you were a tree-hugger and an advocate, not a scientist. You did not get funding.
And suddenly that became a political reality, or at least a political goal. I think that was really amazing for me because that time we didn’t have science clearly backing that you actually could achieve 1.5°C. So in the run-up to the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) asked the IPCC to produce a report on 1.5°C. I remember talking about it with colleagues at the time, who told me: “That’s crazy, this train is gone, let’s not do it”.
Then the months went by and and those voices faded. By the time we got to the plenary meeting in January there was not a single voice saying “We shouldn’t do this report”. Scientists changed course and put so much effort in on trying to say “Okay can this be done well? Let’s actually see”. Then they ran their models to figure out that actually not only can it be done — but there are so many ways we can get there. Yes, I know that it’s now increasingly unlikely that we still will meet it, but it still created a lot of momentum.
One fact that we don’t emphasize enough: we have prevented the world from warming by five to six degrees by the end of the century, and we are now at worst saying perhaps four degrees, but more likely 2.5°C to 3.5°C.
How do you communicate with your children about the climate crisis? For example, are there things that you choose not to tell them in order to protect them?
I don’t hide anything from them. We quite frequently talk about the gravity of the situation because I cannot help bearing on them in the evening all the negative experiences and facts I learned during the day and I just have to unload these for them at dinners and so on.
One of my daughters did experience quite severe environmental anxiety for almost two years when she was about nine years old. She had come with me to a TV shooting and they allowed her into the studio. And before my interview, they just played this intense clip about storms and fires – typical climate impacts. But after that, she was really very afraid for a long time.
How did that fear translate itself?
She couldn’t sleep very well. She was constantly afraid physically. She would tell me: “My god, is this going to burn around us? Are we going to have floods?”
And it’s that a nine year old cannot, of course, fully comprehend yet how these risks will unfold in the future. I think she was put in this state of fear and anxiety. So that’s why it was also hard to manage because it wasn’t anything concrete or anything that she could verbally express or phrase nicely.
And I couldn’t say, “Look darling, it’s not going to happen.”
And how did she manage to surface from that state of paralysis?
After a while, I think she understood that it wasn’t yet threatening her life. But all of my children are still concerned and many of them want to contribute to fighting climate change in some way.
For example, my eldest daughter was studying medicine, but after her second year, she spent the entire summer in tears. She was deeply passionate about climate action and believed there were only two paths forward. Either she could still save the planet by becoming an architect to design zero-energy buildings, or, if it was too late, she should focus on mitigating the damage by remaining in medicine. After two months of struggling with this dilemma, she abandoned her dream of architecture and decided to continue with medical school. It was heartbreaking for me to see how little hope they had of solving the climate crisis.
What would your advice be for parents whose children are suffering from eco-anxiety?
I think the best way is to turn anxiety into action — to explain to them that they have and we still have agency. Even though we are small, we have a very important impact. We can vote. We can choose a profession where we can change the world. We can be role models and we can influence our peers through social media and many other ways.
So if we tell them the five scenarios that the IPCC presents (investor, consumer, citizen, role model, professional) in the 6th Assessment Report as individual roles we can play to curb climate change, it’s not only through whether we choose to take a plastic bag or not. The future isn’t something that happens to us, but in our hands. We are all part of systems where each of us can influence more than we think.
If your children were to start striking for the climate, would you support them?
Yes, I think protests are one of the very important ways how we can have an impact. Besides, children often don’t have any other tools. And that’s why they also feel anxiety because they don’t yet have influence. They don’t have any money to spend, or any voting rights yet. They don’t yet have a profession through which they can influence the world. They feel powerless.
And often children’s only power is to protest. If we give them other means to where they can influence the processes, that’d be even better.
Diána Ürge-Vorsatz ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
In the past months, the planet has experienced the hottest months of June and August, boreal summer and day on record, with a global average temperature of 17.16°C on 22 July. While many have been getting on with their lives as best as they can, there are many more who are feeling the heat, as levels of climate anxiety continue to rise. At risk are people experiencing climate impacts in the Global South, but also professionals in the Earth sciences documenting and modelling them.
So, how can we channel our alarm in a way that doesn’t paralyse us, but propel us into action? To answer this question, The Conversation Europe spoke to one of the world’s most public-facing climate scientists, the Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Diána Ürge-Vorsatz.
Could you start off by describing your work? According to you, what have been the highlights of your career as a climate scientist?
So I mostly work in the area of energy efficiency. I have done a lot of modelling, including to demonstrate how higher efficiency buildings could reduce carbon emissions. Among others, I have alerted the world of what we call the carbon lock-in risks of inefficient building retrofits — when fossil fuel-intensive systems perpetuate, delay, or prevent the transition to low-carbon alternatives.
I’ve always tried to concentrate on solutions which not only allow us to solve environmental issues, but also to increase human well-being and meet other societal goals. That’s because I come from a country [Hungary] where I see that while the environment and climate change are important, they typically play second fiddle to other priorities. Hence, I believe we have to solve these things in a way that makes it worthwhile.
Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, 2024. Fourni par l’auteur
My work therefore prompted lawmakers to revise the EU’s legislation to boost building energy efficiency – the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive – in 2010. On the first day the Fidesz government was reelected that year, I showed them how many jobs could be created through high efficiency building retrofits. Based on our research, they committed that the entire building stock would be refurbished to slash energy consumption by 60 %, which would have been really very ambitious, the first such commitment in the world. Unfortunately, a few months later, they changed their direction and they rather went into other energy policy priorities.
That’s one of my concerns, yes, because it’s amongst the tipping points that would exert its impact the earliest.
If we look at other Earth system tipping points, most of them require a century, several centuries, if not several millennia until they exert a full impact. If AMOC collapses, it would exert its full impact within two to three decades, potentially. These are very strong impacts predicted clearly, on Europe as well as other regions. More and more papers have shown evidence that its collapse could already be underway. That’s definitely been alarming.
When you started on this career path, would you describe yourself as prey to eco-anxiety? And if not, was there a turning point when it appeared?
No, when I started I don’t think we had any knowledge that would have amounted to any existential threat, and it was still not so tangible that so many things could go wrong.
I was studying for my PhD at UCLA, at UC Berkeley from 1992-96. In the LA Times, there was a two page advertisement calling for artists to design artwork that would scare anyone away, which they could put above the Yucca Mountain deep high-level based nuclear repository so that even if people didn’t speak English or they didn’t understand our script anymore, they could still understand that there was something really dangerous under that.
At that point, I remember thinking: “Oh my God, if you just can’t dig or walk wherever you want anymore, that’s just wrong. We cannot do that to future generations.”
Then there’s the never-ending news cycle, making it hard to pinpoint specific moments that alarm you. One that comes to mind has been the discovery over time that forever chemicals – Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – are everywhere, even in the most remote parts of the earth and rain is no longer of drinking water quality even in Antarctica. This isn’t going to go away — precisely because PFAS are what we call forever chemicals. We will never be able to vacuum clean the planet from PFAS. Likewise with microplastics. When you start looking ahead with your eyes open, it can be really scary.
And how do you experience the intimate knowledge of that alarming data on the one hand, and the public’s, and above all the elites’, climate inaction on the other?
Well, I wouldn’t quite call it “climate inaction”. It’s easy to dwell on the idea that the glass is half empty. But in fact, the glass is half full. Lots has been done since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which was itself a miracle.
You were there when the deal was struck, weren’t you? Could you tell us what it was like?
Well, it was truly euphoric, because before that, if a scientist dared mentioning [the threshold of] 1.5°C [of warming above pre-industrial levels], you were a tree-hugger and an advocate, not a scientist. You did not get funding.
And suddenly that became a political reality, or at least a political goal. I think that was really amazing for me because that time we didn’t have science clearly backing that you actually could achieve 1.5°C. So in the run-up to the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) asked the IPCC to produce a report on 1.5°C. I remember talking about it with colleagues at the time, who told me: “That’s crazy, this train is gone, let’s not do it”.
Then the months went by and and those voices faded. By the time we got to the plenary meeting in January there was not a single voice saying “We shouldn’t do this report”. Scientists changed course and put so much effort in on trying to say “Okay can this be done well? Let’s actually see”. Then they ran their models to figure out that actually not only can it be done — but there are so many ways we can get there. Yes, I know that it’s now increasingly unlikely that we still will meet it, but it still created a lot of momentum.
One fact that we don’t emphasize enough: we have prevented the world from warming by five to six degrees by the end of the century, and we are now at worst saying perhaps four degrees, but more likely 2.5°C to 3.5°C.
How do you communicate with your children about the climate crisis? For example, are there things that you choose not to tell them in order to protect them?
I don’t hide anything from them. We quite frequently talk about the gravity of the situation because I cannot help bearing on them in the evening all the negative experiences and facts I learned during the day and I just have to unload these for them at dinners and so on.
One of my daughters did experience quite severe environmental anxiety for almost two years when she was about nine years old. She had come with me to a TV shooting and they allowed her into the studio. And before my interview, they just played this intense clip about storms and fires – typical climate impacts. But after that, she was really very afraid for a long time.
How did that fear translate itself?
She couldn’t sleep very well. She was constantly afraid physically. She would tell me: “My god, is this going to burn around us? Are we going to have floods?”
And it’s that a nine year old cannot, of course, fully comprehend yet how these risks will unfold in the future. I think she was put in this state of fear and anxiety. So that’s why it was also hard to manage because it wasn’t anything concrete or anything that she could verbally express or phrase nicely.
And I couldn’t say, “Look darling, it’s not going to happen.”
And how did she manage to surface from that state of paralysis?
After a while, I think she understood that it wasn’t yet threatening her life. But all of my children are still concerned and many of them want to contribute to fighting climate change in some way.
For example, my eldest daughter was studying medicine, but after her second year, she spent the entire summer in tears. She was deeply passionate about climate action and believed there were only two paths forward. Either she could still save the planet by becoming an architect to design zero-energy buildings, or, if it was too late, she should focus on mitigating the damage by remaining in medicine. After two months of struggling with this dilemma, she abandoned her dream of architecture and decided to continue with medical school. It was heartbreaking for me to see how little hope they had of solving the climate crisis.
What would your advice be for parents whose children are suffering from eco-anxiety?
I think the best way is to turn anxiety into action — to explain to them that they have and we still have agency. Even though we are small, we have a very important impact. We can vote. We can choose a profession where we can change the world. We can be role models and we can influence our peers through social media and many other ways.
So if we tell them the five scenarios that the IPCC presents (investor, consumer, citizen, role model, professional) in the 6th Assessment Report as individual roles we can play to curb climate change, it’s not only through whether we choose to take a plastic bag or not. The future isn’t something that happens to us, but in our hands. We are all part of systems where each of us can influence more than we think.
If your children were to start striking for the climate, would you support them?
Yes, I think protests are one of the very important ways how we can have an impact. Besides, children often don’t have any other tools. And that’s why they also feel anxiety because they don’t yet have influence. They don’t have any money to spend, or any voting rights yet. They don’t yet have a profession through which they can influence the world. They feel powerless.
And often children’s only power is to protest. If we give them other means to where they can influence the processes, that’d be even better.
Diána Ürge-Vorsatz ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Danny Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria
The statistics are stark: 54 governments, of which 25 are African, are spending at least 10% of their revenues on servicing their debts; 48 countries, home to 3.3 billion people, are spending more on debt service than on health or education.
Among them, 23 African countries are spending more on debt service than on health or education.
While the international community stands by, these countries are servicing their debts and defaulting on their development goals.
It requires the debtor to first discuss its problems with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and obtain its assessment of how much debt relief it needs. Then it must negotiate with its official creditors – international organisations, governments and government agencies – over how much debt relief they will provide. Only then can the debtor reach an agreement – on comparable terms to the official creditors – with its commercial creditors.
Unfortunately, this process has been sub-optimal.
One reason is that it works too slowly to meet the urgent needs of distressed borrowers. As a result, it condemns debtor countries to financial limbo. The resulting uncertainty is not in anyone’s interest. For example, Zambia has been working through the G20’s cumbersome process for more than three and a half years and has not yet finalised agreements with all its creditors.
We propose a two-part approach that would improve the situation of sovereign debtors and their creditors. This proposal is based on the lessons we have learned from our work on the legal and economic aspects of developing country debt, particularly African debt.
First, we suggest that official creditors and the IMF create a strategic buyer of “last resort” that can purchase the bonds of debt distressed countries and refinance them on better terms.
Second, we recommend that all parties involved in sovereign debt restructurings adopt a set of principles that they can use to guide the debtor and its creditors in reaching an optimal agreement and monitoring its implementation.
The current approach fails to deal effectively and fairly with both the concerns of the creditors and all the debtor’s legal obligations and responsibilities. Our proposed solution would offer debtors debt relief that does not undermine their ability to meet their other legal obligations and responsibilities, while also accommodating private creditors’ preference for cash payments.
Our proposal is not risk-free. And buybacks are not appropriate for all debtors. Nevertheless it offers a principled and feasible approach to dealing with a silent debt crisis that threatens to undermine international efforts to address global challenges such as climate, poverty and inequality.
It uses the IMF’s existing resources to meet both the bondholders’ preferences for immediate cash and the developing countries’ need to reduce their debt burdens in a transparent and principled way.
It also helps the international community avoid a widespread default on debt and development.
Bondholders are a major problem
Foreign bondholders, who are the major creditors of many developing countries, have proven to be particularly challenging in providing substantive debt relief in a timely manner. In theory, they should be more flexible than official creditors.
Developing countries have been paying bondholders a premium to compensate them for providing financing to borrowers that are perceived to be risky. As a result, bondholders have already received larger payouts than official creditors. Therefore, they should be better placed than official creditors to assist the debtor in the restructuring processes.
However, despite having received large returns from defaulted bonds, bondholders have remained obstinate in debt restructurings.
Our proposal seeks to overcome this hurdle in a way that is fair to debtors, creditors and their respective stakeholders.
How it would work
First, the official creditors and the IMF should create and fund a strategic buyer “of last resort” who can purchase distressed (and expensive) debt at a discount from bondholders. The buyer, now the creditor of the country in distress, can repackage the debt and sell it to the debtor country on more manageable terms. The net result is that the bondholders receive cash for their bonds, while the debtor country benefits from substantial debt relief. In addition, the debtor and its remaining official creditors benefit from a simplified debt restructuring process.
This concept has precedent. In 1989, as part of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, the international community’s effort to deal with the then existing debt burdens of poor countries, the World Bank Group established the Debt Reduction Facility, which helped eligible governments repurchase their external commercial debts at deep discounts. It completed 25 transactions which helped erase approximately US$10.3 billion in debt principal and over US$3.5 billion in interest arrears.
Some individual countries have also bought back their own debt. In 2009, Ecuador repurchased 93% of its defaulted debt at a deep discount. This enabled the government to reduce its debt stock by 27% and promote economic growth in subsequent years.
Unfortunately, the countries currently in debt distress lack sufficient foreign reserves to pursue such a strategy. Hence, they need to find a “friendly” buyer of last resort.
The IMF is well positioned to play this role. It has the mandate to support countries during financial crises. It also has the resources to fund such a facility. It can use a mix of its own resources, including its gold reserves, and donor funding, such as a portion of the US$100 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the IMF’s own reserve currency, which rich economies committed to reallocate for development purposes.
Such a facility, for example, would have enabled Kenya to refinance its debts at the SDR interest rate, currently at 3.75% per year, rather than at the 10.375% rate it paid in the financial markets.
It is noteworthy that the 47 low-income countries identified as in need of debt relief have just US$60 billion in outstanding debts owed to bondholders. Our proposed buyer of last resort would help reduce the burden of these countries to manageable levels.
Second, we propose that both debtors and creditors should commit to the following set of shared principles, based on internationally accepted norms and standards for debt restructurings.
Guiding principles
1. Guiding norms: Sovereign debt restructurings should be guided by six norms: credibility, responsibility, good faith, optimality, inclusiveness and effectiveness.
Optimality means that the negotiating parties should aim to achieve an outcome that, considering the circumstances in which the parties are negotiating and their respective rights, obligations and responsibilities, offers each of them the best possible mix of economic, financial, environmental, social, human rights and governance benefits.
2. Transparency: All parties should have access to the information that they need to make informed decisions.
3. Due diligence: The sovereign debtor and its creditors should each undertake appropriate due diligence before concluding a sovereign debt restructuring process.
4. Optimal outcome assessment: The parties should publicly disclose why they expect their restructuring agreement to result in an optimal outcome.
5. Monitoring: There should be credible mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the restructuring agreement.
6. Inter-creditor comparability: All creditors should make a comparable contribution to the restructuring of debt.
7. Fair burden sharing: The burden of the restructuring should be fairly allocated between the negotiating parties.
8. Maintaining market access: The process should be designed to facilitate future market access for the borrower at affordable rates.
The G20’s current efforts to address the silent debt crisis are failing. They are contributing to the likely failure of low income countries in Africa and the rest of the global south to offer all their residents the possibility of leading lives of dignity and opportunity.
Danny Bradlow, in addition to his university position, is Co-Chair of the T20 task force on sovereign debt, and Co-Chair of the Academic Circle on the Right to Development.
Marina Zucker-Marques is a co-chair for the Brazil T20 Task Force 3 on reforming the International Financial Architecture
Kevin P. Gallagher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew J. Hoffman, Professor of Management & Organizations, Environment & Sustainability, and Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan
The U.S. has seen a large number of billion-dollar disasters in recent years.AP Photo/Mark Zaleski
Millions of Americans have been watching with growing alarm as their homeowners insurance premiums rise and their coverage shrinks. Nationwide, premiums rose 34% between 2017 and 2023, and they continued to rise in 2024 across much of the country.
There are a few reasons, but a common thread: Climate change is fueling more severe weather, and insurers are responding to rising damage claims. The losses are exacerbated by more frequent extreme weather disasters striking densely populated areas, rising construction costs and homeowners experiencing damage that was once more rare.
Hurricane Ian, supercharged by warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane in October 2022 and caused an estimated $112.9 billion in damage. Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images
Just a decade ago, few insurance companies had a comprehensive strategy for addressing climate risk as a core business issue. Today, insurance companies have no choice but to factor climate change into their policy models.
Rising damage costs, higher premiums
There’s a saying that to get someone to pay attention to climate change, put a price on it. Rising insurance costs are doing just that.
Increasing global temperatures lead to more extreme weather, and that means insurance companies have had to make higher payouts. In turn, they have been raising their prices and changing their coverage in order to remain solvent. That raises the costs for homeowners and for everyone else.
The importance of insurance to the economy cannot be understated. You generally cannot get a mortgage or even drive a car, build an office building or enter into contracts without insurance to protect against the inherent risks. Because insurance is so tightly woven into economies, state agencies review insurance companies’ proposals to increase premiums or reduce coverage.
The insurance companies are not making political statements with the increases. They are looking at the numbers, calculating risk and pricing it accordingly. And the numbers are concerning.
The arithmetic of climate risk
Insurance companies use data from past disasters and complex models to calculate expected future payouts. Then they price their policies to cover those expected costs. In doing so, they have to balance three concerns: keeping rates low enough to remain competitive, setting rates high enough to cover payouts and not running afoul of insurance regulators.
But climate change is disrupting those risk models. As global temperatures rise, driven by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use and other human activities, past is no longer prologue: What happened over the past 10 to 20 years is less predictive of what will happen in the next 10 to 20 years.
The number of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. each year offers a clear example. The average rose from 3.3 per year in the 1980s to 18.3 per year in the 10-year period ending in 2024, with all years adjusted for inflation.
With that more than fivefold increase in billion-dollar disasters came rising insurance costs in the Southeast because of hurricanes and extreme rainfall, in the West because of wildfires, and in the Midwest because of wind, hail and flood damage.
Hurricanes tend to be the most damaging single events. They caused more than US$692 billion in property damage in the U.S. between 2014 and 2023. But severe hail and windstorms, including tornadoes, are also costly; together, those on the billion-dollar disaster list did more than $246 billion in property damage over the same period.
As insurance companies adjust to the uncertainty, they may run a loss in one segment, such as homeowners insurance, but recoup their losses in other segments, such as auto or commercial insurance. But that cannot be sustained over the long term, and companies can be caught by unexpected events. California’s unprecedented wildfires in 2017 and 2018 wiped out nearly 25 years’ worth of profits for insurance companies in that state.
To balance their risk, insurance companies often turn to reinsurance companies; in effect, insurance companies that insure insurance companies. But reinsurers have also been raising their prices to cover their costs. Property reinsurance alone increased by 35% in 2023. Insurers are passing those costs to their policyholders.
What this means for your homeowners policy
Not only are homeowners insurance premiums going up, coverage is shrinking. In some cases, insurers are reducing or dropping coverage for items such as metal trim, doors and roof repair, increasing deductibles for risks such as hail and fire damage, or refusing to pay full replacement costs for things such as older roofs.
Some insurances companies are simply withdrawing from markets altogether, canceling existing policies or refusing to write new ones when risks become too uncertain or regulators do not approve their rate increases to cover costs. In recent years, State Farm and Allstate pulled back from California’s homeowner market, and Farmers, Progressive and AAA pulled back from the Florida market, which is seeing some of the highest insurance rates in the country.
In some cases, insurers are restricting coverage. Roof repairs, like these in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., after Hurricane Ian, can be expensive and widespread after windstorms. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
State-run “insurers of last resort,” which can provide coverage for people who can’t get coverage from private companies, are struggling too. Taxpayers in states such as California and Florida have been forced to bail out their state insurers. And the National Flood Insurance Program has raised its premiums, leading 10 states to sue to stop them.
According to NOAA data, 2023 was the hottest year on record “by far.” And 2024 could be even hotter. This general warming trend and the rise in extreme weather is expected to continue until greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are abated.
In the face of such worrying analyses, U.S. homeowners insurance will continue to get more expensive and cover less. And yet, Jacques de Vaucleroy, chairman of the board of reinsurance giant Swiss Re, believes U.S. insurance is still priced too low to fully cover the risk from climate change.
Climate change is a major factor in the rising cost of insurance. Join us for a special free webinar with experts Andrew Hoffman of the University of Michigan and Melanie Gall of Arizona State University to discuss the arithmetic behind these rising rates, what climate change has to do with it, and what may be coming in your future insurance bills.
Andrew J. Hoffman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
