Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kelley Lee, Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance; Scientific Co-Director, Bridge Research Consortium, Simon Fraser University
The World Health Organization (WHO) raises awareness each year of the importance of equitable access to lifesaving and health-protecting vaccines. More than 154 million lives worldwide over the past 50 years have been saved by vaccines, excluding vaccines for COVID-19, malaria, influenza, human papilloma virus, and other deadly diseases.
Continued benefits from vaccines under threat in Canada
Supported by a universal health-care system, strong public health infrastructure, and publicly funded programs, Canada has enjoyed a century of decline in diseases such as measles, diphtheria and pertussis thanks to vaccines.
Recent trends, however, are cause for concern. A decline in vaccine confidence, worsening since the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges of access and the inclusion of vaccines in partisan political rhetoric have led to reduced vaccine uptake.
Canada must take stock of this changing landscape. Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam’s 2024 report, Realizing the Future of Vaccination for Public Health, sets out a clear framework for realizing the full potential of vaccination in Canada.
In addition to major investments in new vaccine development and biomanufacturing in Canada, this public health framework is designed to support a better co-ordinated national immunization system, concerted efforts to address public trust, and efforts to improve equitable access.
Need for a national immunization registry
The lack of integration of Canada’s fragmented immunization data across provinces and territories makes it more challenging to plan vaccine rollouts, identify coverage gaps or rapidly track adverse events after immunization. The Canadian Public Health Association and others have long called for a comprehensive and harmonized immunization registry as essential for a modern and responsive system.
A national framework for vaccine data collection would allow policymakers and practitioners to make evidence-informed decisions in real time.
Supporting public trust
Sustaining high vaccination coverage begins with public trust in science, government and public health. While most people still trust science and scientists, what constitutes trustworthy sources of information has become a serious problem.
Insufficient transparency around vaccine development, regulation and monitoring of adverse reactions needs addressing. Concerns about the rapid pace of scientific advances, including the 100-days mission to produce an effective vaccine for a future pandemic, must be recognized.
Initiatives during the pandemic to support equitable access — such as mobile clinics, culturally appropriate information and community-led initiatives — increased uptake. These approaches need to be extended to routine vaccination.
Moreover, building supportive environments means incorporating an “equity by design” approach, which applies regulatory tools and systems design to support vaccine equity, from discovery to rollout means that the ability to keep vaccines refridgerated cold chains or needle delivery, for example, do not contribute to disparities of access.
Bridge Research Consortium
The Bridge Research Consortium (BRC) is a multidisciplinary team of social scientists and humanities scholars established in 2024 to understand the social and behavioural factors that influence new vaccine uptake in Canada.
Bridging understandings across the “pipeline” for developing new vaccines and therapeutics, and the public health system, the BRC supports tailored and equity-informed strategies that enhance public trust and equitable access. We will hear directly from communities across the country, identify concerns in real-time, and co-develop approaches that reflect diverse perspectives. We plan to achieve this through demystifying how vaccines are developed and produced, holding deliberative dialogues that bring together diverse perspectives on challenging topics, and creating a travelling science exhibit. World Immunization Week is a timely reminder of the importance of this work to enable Canada to realize the potential benefits of vaccines.
Immunity and Society is a new series from The Conversation Canada that presents new vaccine discoveries and immune-based innovations that are changing how we understand and protect human health. Through a partnership with the Bridge Research Consortium, these articles — written by academics in Canada at the forefront of immunology and biomanufacturing — explore the latest developments and their social impacts.
Kelley Lee receives funding from the Canada’s Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund to support the work of the Bridge Research Consortium. The BRC is one of 19 projects funded to support Canada’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy. She also receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and New Frontiers in Research Fund to conduct research on pandemic preparedness and response. She currently serves as a Commissioner on the National University of Singapore-The Lancet Pandemic Readiness, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation (PRIME) Commission.
Ève Dubé receives funding from the Canada’s Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, to support the work of the Bridge Research Consortium. The BRC is one of 19 projects funded to support Canada’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy. She also receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de recherche du Québec to conduct research on vaccine acceptance.
Janice E. Graham receives funding from CIHR and PHAC.
Noni MacDonald receives funding from CIHR, CIRN grants related to immunization as well as PHAC and CPHA consultation fees related to immunization. She is a member of the Canadian Paediatric Society and the International Pediatric Society, a donor to Canadian Public Health Association and WHO, and on board of the journal Vaccine.
Harvard University took the extraordinary step of suing the Trump administration on April 21, 2025, claiming that the pressure campaign mounted on the school by the president and his Cabinet to force viewpoint diversity on campus violated the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech.
“Defendants’ actions are unlawful,” Harvard’s lawsuit states. “The First Amendment does not permit the Government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.’”
Trump issued the “Executive Order Restoring Free Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” on March 21, 2019. In it, he expressed the importance of free inquiry and open debate to education and directed federal officials to use the federal government’s funding of higher education to ensure that universities promote free inquiry.
Channeling free-speech champions Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, Trump wrote that “free inquiry is an essential feature of our Nation’s democracy.”
Free speech is fundamental to human progress. Scientific, medical, technological and social advancements all rely on the free flow of information. Robust discussion and disagreement are equally important to maintaining a healthy constitutional republic.
In the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
On the first day of his second term in office, Trump issued another free speech executive order. It affirms the administration’s commitment to free speech, directs that tax money is not used to abridge free speech and instructs federal employees to “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”
In a vacuum, Trump’s orders appear to bode well for free speech.
But what is important is free speech reality, not rhetoric. Three months into his second term, where does Trump stand?
The many interconnected orders, letters, statements and actions of Trump’s White House make an assessment of any positive effects difficult. On the other hand, the Trump administration has clearly violated and chilled free speech on many occasions.
At his second inauguration, Donald Trump promised to ‘stop all government censorship’ and ‘bring back free speech.’
Repression and retaliation
Attempts to silence the president’s adversaries are developing as a pattern.
Law firms and attorneys who have sued or prosecuted Trump, or represented his adversaries, have been targeted for retribution and concessions. It began with an executive order on March 6, 2025, directed at the U.S.-based global law firm Perkins Coie, which had once represented Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton. A second order was issued on March 14, 2025, against Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison because it once employed an attorney who investigated Trump. Subsequently, at least six other prominent law firms were also targeted.
Several law firms acceded to the president’s demands, agreeing to accept clients without regard to political beliefs, to eliminate DEI practices, and to perform pro bono work valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars for causes Trump supports.
The firms that didn’t accede to the president’s demands had their security clearances removed, access to federal buildings restricted, and were banned from working for federal agencies. A few of the firms that didn’t relent have won temporary injunctions barring the administration’s actions against them.
The nonpartisan free speech advocacy organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression decried the orders as threatening the foundations of justice and free speech. In one of several challenges to these orders, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote on March 12, 2025, that Trump’s order appeared motivated by “retaliatory animus” and concluded that it “runs head on into the wall of First Amendment protections.” Two other federal courts reached similar conclusions.
In the first three months of his second term, Trump withdrew Secret Service protection of several prominent critics who are former federal government officials, including John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his top aide, Brian Hook, and former high-level health official Anthony Fauci also lost their security protection.
It is hard to imagine that these decisions won’t have a profoundly chilling effect on potential critics of the president, especially since the revocations were publicly announced and each individual has been the subject of credible threats resulting from their governmental service.
Targeting the press
A similar pattern exists for journalists, where Trump is using his power to punish organizations whose reporting he doesn’t like.
AP journalists were banned from the White House and Air Force One on Feb. 11, 2025, for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the new name Trump had ordered for the body of water. On April 9, 2025, this ban was found to violate the First Amendment by a judge nominated by Trump during his first term.
Trump effectively closed Voice of America, after 83 years of continuous broadcasting, for being “anti-Trump” and radical in its views. By charter, the broadcaster represents “America, not any single segment of American society,” with “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” news and “a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions” through television, radio, internet, social media and satellite broadcasts to peoples around the world.
The Federal Communications Commission has initiated regulatory actions against the licenses of several television stations for broadcasts that have been accused by the President of being anti-Trump or biased in favor of Kamala Harris. Early in the process, the outcomes of these actions are to be determined.
Protesters in Somerville, Mass., on March 26, 2025, demand the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts University, whose recent arrest by federal agents is seen as an assault on free speech. AP Photo/Michael Casey
Pressuring universities and students
Other administration actions, I believe, raise serious free speech issues.
Harvard isn’t the only university feeling pressure.
The administration is threatening to withhold federal money from universities as a way to coerce many of them to comply with administration policies in ways that implicate free speech and in some instances violate legal processes for the withholding of federal support.
Some of the Trump administration’s recent immigration enforcement efforts have targeted international students who are in the U.S. lawfully but who participated in Palestinian rights protests and disagreed with Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza.
In the past decade, the U.S. has fallen in press freedom, rule of law and democratic governance, resulting in the classification of a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a democratic watchdog. Unsurprisingly, there has been a simultaneous rise in public support for authoritarianism. These changes make support for free speech increasingly important.
On March 4, 2025, Trump declared in a speech before a joint session of Congress that he “stopped all government censorship and brought free speech back to America.”
The record doesn’t support this claim.
Daniel Hall 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.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ruolz Ariste, Adjunct Professor, Industrial Relations, Université du Québec en Outaouais, and Adjunct Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University
In 2023, Canada ranked last in access to primary health care among 10 high-income countries. (Shutterstock)
Access to physician services remains a challenge in Canada, particularly in primary care. Though this reality has been often eclipsed by the tariffs issue during the 2025 federal election, it continues to be a fundamental concern for Canadians.
Moreover, public spending on physicians has systematically risen during the first quarter of this century. The two most common proposals to improve this access are: increasing the number of physicians and/or the payment per service to physicians.
As a health economist researcher, my focus is on health workforce planning and efficiency. Given limited resources and budget constraints, what is the best way for policymakers to improve access to heath care: Paying our physicians more, or increasing their numbers?
Minding physician spending
Total spending on physicians increased to $47.5 billion in 2023, from $13.2 billion in 2000, growing an average of 5.7 per cent per year (known as the average annual growth rate (AAGR)). This includes physicians on fee-for-service (FFS) plan — those who bill for each individual service or procedure they provide to a patient — and non-FFS plan, such as salary or capitation (payment per each enrolled patient) in which physicians don’t have to bill for each individual service or procedure to get paid.
The key policy question is whether this additional spending was used to buy more services (medical consultations, visits and procedures). It is important to understand if Canada paid more for the same number of medical services or if Canadians are getting more bang for their buck.
Using an accounting approach, this increase in spending can be broken down into increase in number of services, and increase in unit cost of service.
In the 2022-23 fiscal year, physicians provided a total of 359.1 million services versus 263.8 million in 2000 (assuming that physicians on non-FFS plans have similar productivity to those on FFS plans). This translates to an average growth rate of 1.4 per cent per year.
Meanwhile, cost per service increased to $90.42 in 2023 compared to $36.66 in 2000 — an average increase of four per cent per year. This suggests that most of the increase in spending (70 per cent) was used to cover increasing costs per service.
It should be noted that average annual growth in unit cost represents sector-specific inflation. As such, it includes two components: general inflation and a “health premium” defined as inflation above and beyond general inflation. Considering that general inflation for the period (as measured by the CPI-all items) was on average 2.2 per cent per year, growth in inflation-adjusted unit cost for physicians was 1.8 per cent per year. That would be the “health premium” for physicians.
Still, some of the increase in spending was used to buy more services throughout this period. How could the access issue be explained? That’s where one needs to factor in population growth and aging: two demographic factors responsible for increases in number of services.
During this period spanning over two decades, Canada’s population grew at 1.1 per cent per year; this results in a mere 0.3 per cent growth in number of services per person per year (9.16 in 2023 from 8.65 in 2000).
Because aging impact is estimated to be at least 0.8 per cent annually, factoring it in a full demographic adjustment would result in a decline of 0.5 per cent in number of services per capita over this period; which would explain a poorer access to medical services in Canada.
Does the number of doctors affect the equation?
We consistently learn that the number of physicians has been increasing. In fact, there were 82,184 physicians providing clinical services in 2023 as opposed to 49,281 in 2000, which represents average growth of 2.2 per cent per year.
However, possibly due to shifts in the demographic composition of the workforce and better work-life balance, each of these physicians provides fewer services. For example, the number of services per physician per year in 2023 was 4,370 compared to 5,353 in 2000, a decline of 0.9 per cent per year.
Other sources have reported that trends in weekly worked hours of Canadian physicians has declined from about 53 hours before 2000 to 46 hours in recent years.
Why access seems more challenging for primary care services
Family physicians are the gatekeepers and first point of contact of the Canadian health-care system. Over the 2000-2023 period, their numbers have increased less than specialists (AAGR of 2.1 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively). In other words, while in 2000, slightly more than half of physicians were family physicians, in 2023 the situation reversed, and slightly more than half of physicians were specialists.
Nurse practitioners emerged in the primary care setting in the last decade. This workforce grew from 3,768 in 2014 to 8,302 in 2023, increasing by an average of 9.2 per cent per year. Still, they are not enough to fully make up for the deficit.
An important consideration is that family physicians tend to benefit less from medical technological improvement than specialists. A few specific specialties, for example ophthalmology, profit the most from the huge productivity gains in the medical field. They could work fewer hours and still increase the number of services they provide and their income, which family physicians can do to a lesser extent.
In fact, for physicians who received at least $100,000 in fee-for-service payments per year, average gross FFS payments per ophthalmologist have grown almost three times more than that for a family physician between 2013 and 2023.
Implications for decision makers
Simply throwing more money into the system will not be enough to address the primary care access issue. It is important to ensure this additional money will buy mostly additional services, contrary to what we have shown in the past.
On the supply side, projections for the number of required physicians will need to account for the reduced number of hours worked. That means that more family physicians are needed just to provide the same number of services, let alone increase it.
On the demand side, the aging population translates into more services used per capita, but also increased severity of cases. The medical workforce itself is also aging, impacting both the supply and the demand sides. Policymakers need to work with institutions involved in physicians planning and training such as the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, the Medical Council of Canada to ramp up training of family physicians. Extending training and scope of practice of nurse practitioners would also help.
Finally, the family physician category could be made more attractive by offering a more balanced payment scheme between family physicians and specialists.
Ruolz Ariste 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.
It’s getting hard to figure out who all the US-sponsored talks over ending the conflict in Ukraine are supposed to benefit. Listening to Donald Trump over recent weeks, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all about him.
In the past 48 hours, the US president has berated both the Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelensky, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for apparently dragging their heels over an agreement.
At present it’s Putin who is on the naughty step (although as we know this can change quite rapidly). After Russia launched strikes against Kyiv overnight on Wednesday, killing eight people and injuring dozens more, Trump used his TruthSocial platform to give the Russian president a piece of his mind.
TruthSocial
But hours previously, the US president had been giving Zelensky both barrels after he rejected a peace proposal that included the US recognising Crimea as part of Russia. Trump wrote: “It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”
For the past week or so, US officials, including the president and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have been warning that if a deal isn’t done “in a matter of days” they could just decide to walk away.
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It’s hard to see how there is a credible pathway to peace at the moment, write Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko, international security experts at the University of Birmingham and the National University Odesa Law Academy, respectively. They point out that even if all sides can agree to a formula for a ceasefire (remembering that Russia couldn’t even hold to the agreed truce over the Easter holiday) then a lasting peace deal that is supposed to follow is even more difficult to imagine.
And, as the abortive attempts to end the war drag on and Russia’s attritional tactics continue, at a massive cost – both economically and in human lives – there are signs that western resolve and unity is coming under pressure. Partly it’s because many of Ukraine’s allies, particularly in Europe, are already scrambling to work out how they might adjust their own security arrangements in the eventuality of a new world order developing, dominated by the US, China and Russia, in which Washington’s friends find themselves on the outside.
Then there’s the inescapable question of whether Putin can be trusted to hold to any deal he strikes, given the likelihood of the US president’s attention wandering once he has been able to boast of brokering an “end” to the war. As Wolff and Malyarenko put it: “Given Russia’s track record of reneging on the Minsk ceasefire agreements of September 2014 and February 2015, investing everything in a ceasefire deal might turn out not just a self-fulfilling but a self-defeating prophecy for Ukraine and its supporters.”
As Trump 2.0 nears the 100-day mark (more of which next week), it’s worth pausing to ask what the American public thinks about the war in Ukraine. Paul Whiteley of the University of Essex has been looking at polling on the issue over the past six months or so and concludes that the US president looks out of step with the people when it comes to what Whiteley construes as Trump’s apparently Russia-friendly approach. Whiteley quotes a recent Economist/YouGov poll which finds that far more people see Ukraine as an ally that view Russia in the same light.
Meanwhile a much larger poll taken at the time of the US election last year, found that significant numbers of people support sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine and only a slightly smaller proportion of respondents backed providing military aid.
American attitudes to policy alternatives for dealing with the Ukraine War:
“A key point is that only 23% said the US should not get involved,” Whiteley concludes. “There is not much support among Americans for abandoning Ukraine.”
Tensions are high between India and Pakistan after at least 26 people were killed in the bitterly contested Kashmir region. The atrocity in a the picturesque resport of Pahalgam, targeted tourists – specifically Hindu men. Victims were told to recite verses from the Qur’an before being killed if they couldn’t.
A hitherto relatively unknown group, the Resistance Front (TRF) has claimed responsibility for the attack. But Sudhir Selvaraj, a specialist in religious nationalism at the University of Bradford, says that TRF is actually associated with, or a front for, the notorious Lashkar-e-Taiba (lET) which carried out the 2008 Mumbai massacre in which at least 176 people were murdered.
Selvaraj says TRF has deliberately chosen a non-Islamist sounding name. “By doing so,” he writes “it supposedly aims to project a “neutral” (read as non-religious) front, rather emphasising the fight for Kashmiri nationalism.“
Coming just as the tourist season is getting under way in Kashmir, the attack has undermined the strategy of the Modi government to portray the region as a major attraction for visitors. Nitasha Kaul, an expert in Hindu nationalism at the University of Westminster, says this is mainly aimed at the Indian public as a propaganda coup to show the success of the 2019 decision to split Kashmir in two and reduce it to the status of a “union territory” run from New Delhi.
In reality, she writes Kashmiris – especially Kashmiri Muslims – have little say in their own affairs and are vulnerable to reprisals in response to any attacks by Pakistani or Pakistani-backed militants. Kashmir’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, was actually excluded from security briefings when India’s home minister, Amit Shah, visited Kashmir after the attack.
Meanwhile some of the noisier Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) voices in politics and the media are demanding reprisals against Pakistan. It’s a very dangerous moment, Kaul concludes.
We’ve had some standout stories about the life and times of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, better known to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics as Pope Francis I. We’ve covered his burning ambition to modernise the Catholic church, as well as his achievements in promoting women to more senior church positions than any potiff before him.
And we’ve considered his influence on the global environmental movement which, as Oxford theologian Celia Deane-Drummond writes, made her feel as if “something momentous was happening at the heart of the church”.
But the anecdote about the late pope which moved me the most was related by Sara Silvestri of City, who recalls meeting Pope Francis back in 2019. It was as part of a symposium at the Vatican at which migration, an issue she’d been deeply engaged with in her work, was the central issue for discussion. Silvestri recalls delivering a research paper and then being invited with to meet Francis in a room next to the Sistine Chapel.
“Francis made a speech and we greeted him one by one,” she recalled this week. “I had my 21 month-old daughter with me that day, thinking of the rare opportunity we would both enjoy. But I’d underestimated the length of the formalities involved. My daughter screamed ‘Open the doors, let me out!’ through the whole of the pope’s speech. I was distraught, but Francis responded very gently to the disruption.”
Francis she says, stopped what he was saying and “commented how sweet and lovely it was to hear the voice of a child. I could feel it was not just a platitude – he meant it.”
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Lang, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Fine Art , University of Lincoln
The Turner prize is the world’s most prestigious award for contemporary art. Named after the renowned British painter J.M.W. Turner, the prize used to be a huge media affair. After it relaunched in 1991, it had a full live feature on Channel 4 (back in the day when most people only had four television channels) presented by British art critic Matthew Collings, and the prize was announced over the years by major celebrities, such as Madonna.
Famous for courting controversy, the Turner prize shortlist was often featured on the front pages of tabloid newspapers – Tracey Emin’s “unmade bed” being a point in case. In more recent years, the prize has become less controversial and shifted towards more political themes, following certain trends such as new media and identity politics.
Originally, the prize was limited to a British artist under the age of 50, but the age limit was removed in 2017 to accommodate Lubaina Himid (then 63) who was seen as emblematic of overlooked artists (in particular women of colour).
Organised by the Tate which appoints a jury to select the shortlist, this year’s panel includes Andrew Bonacina (independent curator), Sam Lackey (director of the Liverpool Biennale), Priyesh Mistry (associate curator of modern and contemporary projects at the National Gallery, London), and Habda Rashid (senior curator of modern and contemporary art at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
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The criteria for selection are straightforward: the artist must be based in Britain and have had an outstanding exhibition in the last 12 months. Since this exhibition could take place anywhere in the world, it’s not uncommon for the British public not to have seen it, and this is the case this year. On the 250th anniversary of J.M.W. Turner’s birthday, the shortlist for the 2025 Turner Prize was announced at Tate Britain, with four artists shortlisted: Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa.
Nnena Kalu was selected for her show at Manifesta 15 in Barcelona, supplemented by work at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Kalu creates colourful cocoon-like hanging sculptures that are wrapped and woven, and respond to the architectural space in which they hang.
Much will be made of Kalu’s identity as a black, learning-disabled, female artist, but this doesn’t really need to come into the assessment of her work, which is really an exploration of colour, gesture and repetition.
Rene Matić was nominated for their show at CCA Berlin. Matić’s work addresses race, gender and class from personal experience, reflecting concerns that are so commonplace in contemporary art that – ironically for one of the youngest-ever Turner Prize nominees – they now seem behind the curve, like a pastiche.
Unlike Kalu, Matić’s installations and photography place identity front and centre, predictably from a personal point of view. This is supposed to make a powerful statement about the intersectionality of modern life, but is hardly an original position today.
Mohammed Sami was nominated for his exhibition at Blenheim Palace, which, while in England, was easily missed by art lovers.
Sami’s paintings depict interiors that evoke memory and loss. His use of shadows and the absence of human presence create a sinister atmosphere, adding depth to his exploration of personal and collective histories and to the genre of the interior.
Zadie Xa was nominated for her show at the Sharjah Biennial 16. Xa’s interdisciplinary approach combines sound, textiles and mural painting to delve into her Korean heritage, including themes like shamanism.
Her work pushes the boundaries of painting, integrating it with other media – such as sound, textiles and murals – to create immersive experiences.
This year’s Turner prize is notable for including painting for the first time since before the pandemic – perhaps a nod to Turner himself in this anniversary year. Sami’s oil on canvas contrast with Xa’s interdisciplinary methods, highlighting the diversity of contemporary art practices. Kalu and Matić provide installations, photography and text art diversifying the shortlist in terms of medium.
The four shortlisted artists will be exhibited together at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford in September, and the winner will be announced on December 9. While the line-up is stronger than others in recent years, it is still somewhat predictable and lacks the excitement and controversies of years gone by.
Mohammed Sami is by far the best artist on the shortlist and is already emerging as a clear favourite to win. Although the 2017 winner Lubaina Himid’s work included elements of painting, if Sami does win, he would be the first painter to win the prize since Tomma Abts in 2006.
Martin Lang 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.
In the sweltering summer of AD18, a desperate chant echoed across China’s sun-scorched plains: “Heaven has gone blind!” Thousands of starving farmers, their faces smeared with ox blood, marched toward the opulent vaults held by the Han dynasty’s elite rulers.
As recorded in the ancient text Han Shu (the book of Han), these farmers’ calloused hands held bamboo scrolls – ancient “tweets” accusing the bureaucrats of hoarding grain while the farmers’ children gnawed tree bark. The rebellion’s firebrand warlord leader, Chong Fan, roared: “Drain the paddies!”
Within weeks, the Red Eyebrows, as the protesters became known, had toppled local regimes, raided granaries and – for a fleeting moment – shattered the empire’s rigid hierarchy.
The Han dynasty of China (202BC-AD220) was one of the most developed civilisations of its time, alongside the Roman empire. Its development of cheaper and sharper iron ploughs enabled the gathering of unprecedented harvests of grain.
But instead of uplifting the farmers, this technological revolution gave rise to agrarian oligarchs who hired ever-more officials to govern their expanding empire. Soon, bureaucrats earned 30 times more than those tilling the soil.
And when droughts struck, the farmers and their families starved while the empire’s elites maintained their opulence. As a famous poem from the subsequent Tang dynasty put it: “While meat and wine go to waste behind vermilion gates, the bones of the frozen dead lie by the roadside.”
Two millennia later, the role of technology in increasing inequality around the world remains a major political and societal issue. AI-driven “technology panic” – exacerbated by the disruptive efforts of Donald Trump’s new administration in the US – gives the feeling that everything has been upended. New tech is destroying old certainties; populist revolt is shredding the political consensus.
And yet, as we stand at the edge of this technological cliff, seemingly peering into a future of AI-induced job apocalypses, history whispers: “Calm down. You’ve been here before.”
The link between technology and inequality
Technology is humanity’s cheat code to break free from scarcity. The Han dynasty’s iron plough didn’t just till soil; it doubled crop yields, enriching landlords and swelling tax coffers for emperors while – initially, at least – leaving peasants further behind. Similarly, Britain’s steam engine didn’t just spin cotton; it built coal barons and factory slums. Today, AI isn’t just automating tasks; it’s creating trillion-dollar tech fiefdoms while destroying myriads of routine jobs.
Technology amplifies productivity by doing more with less. Over centuries, these gains compound, raising economic output and increasing incomes and lifespans. But each innovation reshapes who holds power, who gets rich – and who gets left behind.
As the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter warned during the second world war, technological progress is never a benign rising tide that lifts all boats. It’s more like a tsunami that drowns some and deposits others on golden shores, amid a process he called “creative destruction”.
A decade later, Russian-born US economist Simon Kuznets proposed his “inverted-U of inequality”, the Kuznets curve. For decades, this offered a reassuring narrative for citizens of democratic nations seeking greater fairness: inequality was an inevitable – but temporary – price of technological progress and the economic growth that comes with it.
In recent years, however, this analysis has been sharply questioned. Most notably, French economist Thomas Piketty, in a reappraisal of more than three centuries of data, argued in 2013 that Kuznets had been misled by historical fluke. The postwar fall in inequality he had observed was not a general law of capitalism, but a product of exceptional events: two world wars, economic depression, and massive political reforms.
In normal times, Piketty warned, the forces of capitalism will always tend to make the rich richer, pushing inequality ever higher unless checked by aggressive redistribution.
So, who’s correct? And where does this leave us as we ponder the future in this latest, AI-driven industrial revolution? In fact, both Kuznets and Piketty were working off quite narrow timeframes in modern human history. Another country, China, offers the chance to chart patterns of growth and inequality over a much longer period – due to its historical continuity, cultural stability, and ethnic uniformity.
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Unlike other ancient civilisations such as the Egyptians and Mayans, China has maintained a unified identity and unique language for more than 5,000 years, allowing modern scholars to trace thousand-year-old economic records. So, with colleagues Qiang Wu and Guangyu Tong, I set out to reconcile the ideas of Kuznets and Piketty by studying technological growth and wage inequality in imperial China over 2,000 years – back beyond the birth of Jesus.
To do this, we scoured China’s extraordinarily detailed dynastic archives, including the Book of Han (AD111) and Tang Huiyao (AD961), in which meticulous scribes recorded the salaries of different ranking officials. And here is what we learned about the forces – good and bad, corrupt and selfless – that most influenced the rise and fall of inequality in China over the past two millennia.
Chinese dynasties and their most influential technologies:
Black text denotes historical events in the west; grey text denotes important interactions between China and the west. Peng Zhou, CC BY-NC-SA
China’s cycles of growth and inequality
One of the challenges of assessing wage inequality over thousands of years is that people were paid different things at different times – such as grain, silk, silver and even labourers.
The Book of Han records that “a governor’s annual grain salary could fill 20 oxcarts”. Another entry describes how a mid-ranking Han official’s salary included ten servants tasked solely with polishing his ceremonial armour. Ming dynasty officials had their meagre wages supplemented with gifts of silver, while Qing elites hid their wealth in land deals.
To enable comparison over two millennia, we invented a “rice standard” – akin to the gold standard that was the basis of the international monetary system for a century from the 1870s. Rice is not just a staple of Chinese diets, it has been a stable measure of economic life for thousands of years.
While rice’s dominion began around 7,000BC in the Yangtze river’s fertile marshes, it was not until the Han dynasty that it became the soul of Chinese life. Farmers prayed to the “Divine Farmer” for bountiful harvests, and emperors performed elaborate ploughing rituals to ensure cosmic harmony. A Tang dynasty proverb warned: “No rice in the bowl, bones in the soil.”
Using price records, we converted every recorded salary – whether paid in silk, silver, rent or servants – into its rice equivalent. We could then compare the “real rice wages” of two categories of people we called either “officials” or “peasants” (including farmers), as a way of tracking levels of inequality over the two millennia since the start of the Han dynasty in 202BC. This chart shows how real-wage inequality in China rose and fell over the past 2,000 years, according to our rice-based analysis.
Official-peasant wage ratio in imperial China over 2,000 years:
The ratio describes the multiple by which the ‘real rice wage’ of the average ‘official’ exceeds that of the average ‘peasant’, giving an indication of changing inequality levels over two millennia. Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
The chart’s black line describes a tug-of-war between growth and inequality over the past two millennia. We found that, across each major dynasty, there were four key factors driving levels of inequality in China: technology (T), institutions (I), politics (P), and social norms (S). These followed the following cycle with remarkable regularity.
1. Technology triggers an explosion of growth and inequality
During the Han dynasty, new iron-working techniques led to better ploughs and irrigation tools. Harvests boomed, enabling the Chinese empire to balloon in both territory and population. But this bounty mostly went to those at the top of society. Landlords grabbed fields, bureaucrats gained privileges, while ordinary farmers saw precious little reward. The empire grew richer – but so did the gap between high officials and the peasant majority.
Even when the Han fell around AD220, the rise of wage inequality was barely interrupted. By the time of the Tang dynasty (AD618–907), China was enjoying a golden age. Silk Road trade flourished as two more technological leaps had a profound impact on the country’s fortunes: block printing and refined steelmaking.
Block printing enabled the mass production of books – Buddhist texts, imperial exam guides, poetry anthologies – at unprecedented speed and scale. This helped spread literacy and standardise administration, as well as sparking a bustling market in bookselling.
Meanwhile, refined steelmaking boosted everything from agricultural tools to weaponry and architectural hardware, lowering costs and raising productivity. With a more literate populace and an abundance of stronger metal goods, China’s economy hit new heights. Chang’an, then China’s cosmopolitan capital, boasted exotic markets, lavish temples, and a swirl of foreign merchants enjoying the Tang dynasty’s prosperity.
While the Tang dynasty marked the high-water mark for levels of inequality in Chinese history, subsequent dynasties would continue to wrestle with the same core dilemma: how do you reap the benefits of growth without allowing an overly privileged – and increasingly corrupt – bureaucratic class to push everyone else into peril?
2. Institutions slow the rise of inequality
Throughout the two millennia, some institutions played an important role in stabilising the empire after each burst of growth. For example, to alleviate tensions between emperors, officials and peasants, imperial exams known as “Ke Ju” were introduced during the Sui dynasty (AD581-618). And by the time of the Song dynasty (AD960-1279) that followed the demise of the Tang, these exams played a dominant role in society.
They addressed high levels of inequality by promoting social mobility: ordinary civilians were granted greater opportunities to ascend the income ladder by achieving top marks. This induced greater competition among officials – and strengthened emperors’ authority over them in the later dynasties. As a result, both the wages of officials and wage inequality went down as their bargaining power gradually diminished.
However, the rise of each new dynasty was also marked by a growth of bureaucracy that led to inefficiencies, favouritism and bribery. Over time, corrupt practices took root, eroding trust in officialdom and heightening wage inequality as many officials commanded informal fees or outright bribes to sustain their lifestyles.
As a result, while the emergence of certain institutions was able to put a break on rising inequality, it typically took another powerful – and sometimes highly destructive – factor to start reducing it.
3. Political infighting and external wars reduce inequality
Eventually, the rampant rise in inequality seen in almost every major Chinese dynasty bred deep tensions – not only between the upper and lower classes, but even between the emperor and their officials.
These pressures were heightened by the pressures of external conflict, as each dynasty waged wars in pursuit of further growth. The Tang’s three century-rule featured conflicts such as the Eastern Turkic-Tang war (AD626), the Baekje-Goguryeo-Silla war (666), and the Arab-Tang battle of Talas (751).
The resulting demand for more military spending drained imperial coffers, forcing salary cuts for soldiers and tax hikes on the peasants – breeding resentment among both that sometimes led to popular uprisings. In a desperate bid for survival, the imperial court then slashed officials’ pay and stripped away their bureaucratic perks.
The result? Inequality plummeted during these times of war and rebellion – but so did stability. Famine was rife, frontier garrisons mutinied, and for decades, warlords carved out territories while the imperial centre floundered.
So, this shrinking wage gap cannot be said to have resulted in a happier, more stable society. Rather, it reflected the fact that everyone – rich and poor – was worse off in the chaos. During the final imperial dynasty, the Qing (from the end of the 17th century), real-terms GDP per person was dropping to levels that had last been seen at the start of the Han dynasty, 2,000 years earlier.
4. Social norms emphasise harmony, preserve privilege
One other common factor influencing the rise and fall of inequality across China’s dynasties was the shared rules and expectations that developed within each society.
A striking example is the social norms rooted in the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism, which emerged in the Song dynasty at the end of the first millennium – a period sometimes described as China’s version of the Renaissance. It blended the moral philosophy of classical Confucianism – created by the philosopher and political theorist Confucius during the Zhou dynasty (1046-256BC) – with metaphysical elements drawn from both Buddhism and Daoism.
Neo-Confucianism emphasised social harmony, hierarchical order and personal virtue – values that reinforced imperial authority and bureaucratic discipline. Unsurprisingly, it quickly gained the support of emperors keen to ensure control of their people, and became the mainstream school of thought in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
However, Neo-Confucianist thinking proved a double-edged sword. Local gentry hijacked this moral authority to fortify their own power. Clan leaders set up Confucian schools and performed elaborate ancestral rites, projecting themselves as guardians of tradition.
Over time, these social norms became rigid. What had once fostered order and legitimacy became brittle dogma, more useful for preserving privilege than guiding reform. Neo-Confucian ideals evolved into a protective veil for entrenched elites. When the weight of crisis eventually came, they offered little resilience.
The last dynasty
China’s final imperial dynasty, the Qing, collapsed under the weight of multiple uprisings both from within and without. Despite achieving impressive economic growth during the 18th century – fuelled by agricultural innovation, a population boom, and the roaring global trade in tea and porcelain – levels of inequality exploded, in part due to widespread corruption.
The infamous government official Heshen, widely regarded as the most corrupt figure in the Qing dynasty, amassed a personal fortune reckoned to exceed the empire’s entire annual revenue (one estimate suggests he amassed 1.1 billion taels of silver, equivalent to around US$270 billion (£200bn), during his lucrative career).
Imperial institutions failed to restrain the inequality and moral decay that the Qing’s growth had initially masked. The mechanisms that once spurred prosperity – technological advances, centralised bureaucracy and Confucian moral authority – eventually ossified, serving entrenched power rather than adaptive reform.
When shocks like natural disasters and foreign invasions struck, the system could no longer respond. The collapse of the empire became inevitable – and this time there was no groundbreaking technology to enable a new dynasty to take the Qing’s place. Nor were there fresh social ideals or revitalised institutions capable of rebooting the imperial model. As foreign powers surged ahead with their own technological breakthroughs, China’s imperial system collapsed under its own weight. The age of emperors was over.
The world had turned. As China embarked on two centuries of technological and economic stagnation – and political humiliation at the hands of Great Britain and Japan – other nations, led first by Britain and then the US, would step up to build global empires on the back of new technological leaps.
In these modern empires, we see the same four key influences on their cycles of growth and inequality – technology, institutions, politics and social norms – but playing out at an ever-faster rate. As the saying goes: history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Rule Britannia
If imperial China’s inequality saga was written in rice and rebellions, Britain’s industrial revolution featured steam and strikes. In Lancashire’s “satanic mills”, steam engines and mechanised looms created industrialists so rich that their fortunes dwarfed small nations.
In 1835, social observer Andrew Ure enthused: “Machinery is the grand agent of civilisation.” Yet for many decades, the steam engines, spinning jennies and railways disproportionately enriched the new industrial class, just as in the Han dynasty of China 2,000 years earlier. The workers? They inhaled soot, lived in slums – and staged Europe’s first symbolic protest when the Luddites began smashing their looms in 1811.
During the 19th century, Britain’s richest 1% hoarded as much as 70% of the nation’s wealth, while labourers toiled 16-hour days in mills. In cities like Manchester, child workers earned pennies while industrialists built palaces.
But as inequality peaked in Britain, the backlash brewed. Trade unions formed (and became legal in 1824) to demand fair wages. Reforms such as the Factory Acts (1833–1878) banned child labour and capped working hours.
Although government forces intervened to suppress the uprisings, unrest such as the 1830 Swing Riots and 1842 General Strike exposed deep social and economic inequalities. By 1900, child labour was banned and pensions had been introduced. The 1900 Labour Representation Committee (later the Labour Party) vowed to “promote legislation in the direct interests of labour” – a striking echo of how China’s imperial exams had attempted to open paths to power.
Slowly, the working class saw some improvement: real wages for Britain’s poorest workers gradually increased over the latter half of the 19th century, as mass production lowered the cost of goods and expanding factory employment provided a more stable livelihood than subsistence farming.
And then, two world wars flattened Britain’s elite – the Blitz didn’t discriminate between rich and poor neighbourhoods. When peace finally returned, the Beveridge Report gave rise to the welfare state: the NHS, social housing, and pensions.
Income inequality plummeted as a result. The top 1%’s share fell from 70% to 15% by 1979. While China’s inequality fell via dynastic collapse, Britain’s decline resulted from war-driven destruction, progressive taxation, and expansive social reforms.
Wealth share of top 1% in the UK
Evidence for UK inequality before 1895 is not well documented; dotted curve is conjectured based on Kuznets curve. Sources: Alvaredo et al (2018), World Inequality Database. Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
However, from the 1980s onwards, inequality in Britain has begun to rise again. This new cycle of inequality has coincided with another technological revolution: the emergence of personal computers and information technology — innovations that fundamentally transformed how wealth was created and distributed.
The era was accelerated by deregulation, deindustrialisation and privatisation — policies associated with former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, that favoured capital over labour. Trade unions were weakened, income taxes on the highest earners were slashed, and financial markets were unleashed. Today, the richest 1% of UK adults own more 20% of the country’s total wealth.
The UK now appears to be in the worst of both worlds – wrestling with low growth and rising inequality. Yet renewal is still within reach. The current UK government’s pledge to streamline regulation and harness AI could spark fresh growth – provided it is coupled with serious investment in skills, modern infrastructure, and inclusive institutions geared to benefit all workers.
At the same time, history reminds us that technology is a lever, not a panacea. Sustained prosperity comes only when institutional reform and social attitudes evolve in step with innovation.
The American century
While China’s growth-and-inequality cycles unfolded over millennia and Britain’s over centuries, America’s story is a fast-forward drama of cycles lasting mere decades. In the early 20th century, several waves of new technology widened the gap between rich and poor dramatically.
By 1929, as the world teetered on the edge of the Great Depression, John D. Rockefeller had amassed such a vast fortune – valued at roughly 1.5% of America’s entire GDP – that newspapers hailed him the world’s first billionaire. His wealth stemmed largely from pioneering petroleum and petrochemical ventures including Standard Oil, which dominated oil refining in an age when cars and mechanised transport were exploding in popularity.
Yet this period of unprecedented riches for a handful of magnates coincided with severe imbalances in the broader US economy. The “roaring Twenties” had boosted consumerism and stock speculation, but wage growth for many workers lagged behind skyrocketing corporate profits. By 1929, the top 1% of Americans owned more than a third of the nation’s income, creating a precariously narrow base of prosperity.
When the US stock market crashed in October 1929, it laid bare how vulnerable the system was to the fortunes of a tiny elite. Millions of everyday Americans – living without adequate savings or safeguards – faced immediate hardship, ushering in the Great Depression. Breadlines snaked through city streets, and banks collapsed under waves of withdrawals they could not meet.
In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reshaped American institutions. It introduced unemployment insurance, minimum wages, and public works programmes to support struggling workers, while progressive taxation – with top rates exceeding 90% during the second world war. Roosevelt declared: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much – it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
In a different way to the UK, the second world war proved a great leveller for the US – generating millions of jobs and drawing women and minorities into industries they’d long been excluded from. After 1945, the GI Bill expanded education and home ownership for veterans, helping to build a robust middle class. Although access remained unequal, especially along racial lines, the era marked a shift toward the norm that prosperity should be shared.
Meanwhile, grassroots movements led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. reshaped social norms about justice. In his lesser-quoted speeches, King warned that “a dream deferred is a dream denied” and launched the Poor People’s Campaign, which demanded jobs, healthcare and housing for all Americans. This narrowing of income distribution during the post-war era was dubbed the “Great Compression” – but it did not last.
As oil crises of the 1970s marked the end of the preceding cycle of inequality, another cycle began with the full-scale emergence of the third industrial revolution, powered by computers, digital networks and information technology.
As digitalisation transformed business models and labour markets, wealth flowed to those who owned the algorithms, patents and platforms – not those operating the machines. Hi-tech entrepreneurs and Wall Street financiers became the new oligarchs. Stock options replaced salaries as the true measure of success, and companies increasingly rewarded capital over labour.
By the 2000s, the wealth share of the richest 1% climbed to 30% in the US. The gap between the elite minority and working majority widened with every company stock market launch, hedge fund bonus and quarterly report tailored to shareholder returns.
But this wasn’t just a market phenomenon – it was institutionally engineered. The 1980s ushered in the age of (Ronald) Reaganomics, driven by the conviction that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”. Following this neoliberalist philosophy, taxes on high incomes were slashed, capital gains were shielded, and labour unions were weakened.
Deregulation gave Wall Street free rein to innovate and speculate, while public investment in housing, healthcare and education was curtailed. The consequences came to a head in 2008 when the US housing market collapsed and the financial system imploded.
The Global Financial Crisis that followed exposed the fragility of a deregulated economy built on credit bubbles and concentrated risk. Millions of people lost their homes and jobs, while banks were rescued with public money. It marked an economic rupture and a moral reckoning – proof that decades of pro-market policies had produced a system that privatised gain and socialised loss.
Inequality, long growing in the background, now became a glaring, undeniable fault line in American life – and it has remained that way ever since.
Fig 5. Wealth share and income share of top 1% in the US
Sources: wealth inequality: World Inequality Database; income share: Picketty & Saez (2003). Dotted curves are conjectured based on Kuznets curve. Peng Zhou, CC BY-SA
So is the US proof that the Kuznets model of inequality is indeed wrong? While the chart above shows inequality has flattened in the US since the 2008 financial crisis, there is little evidence of it actually declining. And in the short term, while Donald Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to do much for growth in the US, his low-tax policies won’t do anything to raise working-class incomes either.
The story of “the American century” is a dizzying sequence of technological revolutions – from transport and manufacturing to the internet and now AI – crashing one atop the other before institutions, politics or social norms could catch up. In my view, the result is not a broken cycle but an interrupted one. Like a wheel that never completes its turn, inequality rises, reform stutters – and a new wave of disruption begins.
Our unequal AI future?
Like any technological explosion, AI’s potential is dual-edged. Like the Tang dynasty’s bureaucrats hoarding grain, today’s tech giants monopolise data, algorithms and computing power. Management consultant firm McKinsey has predicted that algorithms could automate 30% of jobs by 2030, from lorry drivers to radiologists.
The rise of AI isn’t just a technological revolution – it’s a political battleground. History’s empires collapsed when elites hoarded power; today’s fight over AI mirrors the same stakes. Will it become a tool for collective uplift like Britain’s post-war welfare state? Or a weapon of control akin to Han China’s grain-hoarding bureaucrats?
The answer hinges on who wins these political battles. In 19th-century Britain, factory owners bribed MPs to block child labour laws. Today, Big Tech spends billions lobbying to neuter AI regulation.
Meanwhile, grassroots movements like the Algorithmic Justice League demand bans on facial recognition in policing, echoing the Luddites who smashed looms not out of technophobia but to protest exploitation. The question is not if AI will be regulated but who will write the rules: corporate lobbyists or citizen coalitions.
The real threat has never been the technology itself, but the concentration of its spoils. When elites hoard tech-driven wealth, social fault-lines crack wide open – as happened more than 2,000 years ago when the Red Eyebrows marched against Han China’s agricultural monopolies.
To be human is to grow – and to innovate. Technological progress raises inequality faster than incomes, but the response depends on how people band together. Initiatives like “Responsible AI” and “Data for All” reframe digital ethics as a civil right, much like Occupy Wall Street exposed wealth gaps. Even memes – like TikTok skits mocking ChatGPT’s biases – shape public sentiment.
There is no simple path between growth and inequality. But history shows our AI future isn’t preordained in code: it’s written, as always, by us.
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Peng Zhou 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 M. Sudhir Selvaraj, Assistant Professor, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford
India is in mourning after 26 tourists were killed on April 22 in a resort in picturesque Pahalgam. The massacre is considered to be the deadliest attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir since 2000.
The attack happened during peak tourist season as thousands flocked to the popular tourist destination. Most of those killed were Indians, with the exception of one Nepalese national. All the victims were men.
Pakistan has denied any involvement, but there are serious fears of escalation between the two nuclear powers. India’s defence minister, Rajnath Singh, openly accused Pakistan and threatened: “We will not only target those who carried out the attack. We will also target those who planned this act in the shadows, on our soil.”
India has shut a key border between the countries, expelled Pakistan’s diplomats and suspended the landmark Indus waters treaty which allows the sharing of water between the two countries.
The timing of these attacks is noteworthy as it coincides with major international and domestic events. The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, had arrived the day before with his Indian-American wife Usha and their three children, seeking closer India-US relations against the backdrop of a burgeoning trade war between the US and China. Notably, Pakistan considers China historically as an all-weather friend and ally.
The attack also comes a few weeks after the Indian government passed the Waqf (Amendment) Act which seeks to change how properties worth billions donated by Muslims, including mosques, madrassas, graveyards and orphanages, are governed. This act is also accused of diluting the rights of India’s Muslim communities by permitting the appointment of non-Muslims to their boards and tribunals.
Resistance Front
The Resistance Front (TRF) has claimed responsibility for the attack. A hitherto lesser-known armed group in the Kashmir region, TRF emerged in 2019 with the aim to fight for Kashmir’s secession from India. In 2023, it was designated as a terrorist organisation by the Indian government under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and the group’s founder, Sheikh Sajjad Gul was declared a terrorist.
TRF was formed largely in response to the Indian government’s move to strip Kashmir (India’s erstwhile only Muslim-majority state) of its semi-autonomous status in 2019. At this point, the Modi split Kasmhir into two union territories – Jammu & Kashmir – and brought it under more direct federal control.
The move also paved the way for the extension of land-owning rights and access to government-sponsored job quotas to non-locals. These changes could deprive locals of much-needed opportunities, and radically alter the demographics of the region.
In a message on messaging app Telegram, the group said: “Consequently, violence will be directed toward those attempting to settle illegally.” This tends to support the idea that the influx of “outsiders” was the justification for the attack.
In its short life, TRF has been responsible for numerous attacks targeting civilians, security forces and politicians in the region. The group took shape using social media and continues to rely on it to organise and recruit members.
Notably, the name TRF breaks from traditional rebel groups operating in the region, most of whom bear Islamic names. By doing so, it supposedly aims to project a “neutral” (read as non-religious) front, rather emphasising the fight for Kashmiri nationalism.
Was Pakistan involved?
The group is also reported to be linked to the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pakistan has denied these links. But analysts fear that any retaliation could escalate and threaten the tenuous peace along the border between the two countries.
Importantly, the TRF is believed to be an offshoot of, – or perhaps simply a front for – the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based armed group. The LeT was involved in many terrorist attacks on Indian soil, most significantly, the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in which an estimated 176 people were killed. The perpetrators of the atrocity are believed by many – including the US government – to have involved help from the ISI.
While not explicitly stated as a link to the Pahalgam attack, it is noteworthy that the suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistan-born Canadian citizen was extradited to India from the US on April 10. The US Embassy in New Delhi has confirmed that Rana will stand trial in India on ten criminal charges.
In contrast to the supposed “neutral” ostensibly non-Islamist nature of the TRF, the LeT (which translates as Army of the Righteous/Pure), is a Sunni terrorist group. Its aim is to to establish an Islamic state in south Asia and parts of central Asia – with Kashmir being integral to its plans.
To achieve this, since its formation in the early 1990s, the group’s focus has been on attacking military and civilian targets in Kashmir, supporting Pakistan’s claim to the region.
In the late 1990s, the then US president, Bill Clinton, described south Asia as the most dangerous place on Earth. Given the chance of a rapidly escalating India-Pakistan standoff, this could well be the case once again.
M. Sudhir Selvaraj 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 Lauren Bridgstock, Research Associate, Healthcare Communication, Faculty of Health and Education, School of Nursing and Public Health, Manchester Metropolitan University
In the emotionally complex world of dementia care, communication is more than just what we say – it’s how we say it. Terms of endearment like “darling”, “my lovely” and “sweetheart” are often used by healthcare staff with the best intentions: to comfort, connect and show warmth. But some people believe that elderspeak may sound patronising.
In my research, I focused on the use of elderspeak – a style of speech often directed at older adults. It typically involves a higher-pitched tone, simplified grammar and sentence structure and the use of terms of endearment.
Some people compare elderspeak to the way someone might speak to a young child, which is why it’s often viewed as patronising. Terms of endearment – like love, sweetheart, or darling – are particularly controversial and frequently debated in healthcare settings.
Some people have strong opinions about ‘elderspeak’ and assume it’s patronising.
Yet, despite these concerns – and that healthcare professionals are discouraged from using terms of endearment during training – the data showed that experienced healthcare professionals were using the terms regularly, suggesting that they might actually serve a valuable purpose in communication. When I closely analysed a range of real-life hospital interactions where terms of endearment were used, that’s exactly what I found. Three key themes emerged from the data.
1. Mirroring
First, healthcare professionals weren’t the only people using these terms. Terms of endearment were used responsively – so both patients with dementia and staff used them, reflecting or mirroring each other’s language.
This resulted in positive interactions. For example, a patient saying “OK duck” when a doctor asked them if they could sit the hospital bed up higher, and the doctor responding with “all right mate”. These examples shows that terms of endearment can be helpful for building rapport and trust between staff and patients.
2. Signposting
Second, terms of endearment were used at the beginning and end of conversations between staff and patients. In this case, terms of endearment were helpful for signposting and giving information about context to patients. Previous work has shown that people living with dementia can struggle with recognising cues in conversation. So, a term of endearment could help to signal that a conversation is coming to an end, such as a nurse saying: “Alright darling, it’s lovely to speak to you.”
This is not surprising since people use terms of endearment to signal the end of conversations in many social settings. For example, in a shop, a cashier might say “Thanks very much, love!” to signal the end of the transaction.
Terms of endearment were also used regularly when conversations began, signalling that the healthcare professional who has come to speak to the person with dementia is someone familiar or friendly. Although in this case, the healthcare professional would need to show caution depending on context and whether they’re familiar to the patient.
For example, one doctor opened a conversation with: “Hello my dear, you haven’t seen me for a while, have you?” The conversation continued with no issue. Another doctor used a very similar opening of: “Hi darling, I’m Ethan I’m the doctor for today.” In this case some conversational trouble followed. The difference here is that in the first example the doctor’s words demonstrate he has met the patient before. In the second, the words show they are unfamiliar.
3. Mitigation
A third way terms of endearment are used is to mitigate or minimise an imposition on a patient. Examples of this are:
• When a healthcare professional asks a patient to repeat something if their words were hard to interpret or unclear. For example: “What my lovely? Say that again.”
• When a healthcare professional is giving an instruction during a healthcare task. For instance: “Just bend this knee my love.”
• When a healthcare professional is responding to a patient expressing unease or discomfort – often when an unpleasant but medically necessary medical task is occurring, such as a blood test. For instance: “I won’t be a second darling.”
In these cases, the terms of endearment work to soften whatever the healthcare professional is doing. This can help to save face – avoid or reduce embarrassment on the part of the patient – particularly in cases where the healthcare professional has to ask them to repeat a comment or question. It can also aid in minimising whatever the professional is doing – similar to if someone said “We’re just going to do xyz,” rather than “We are going to do xzy.” Terms of endearment also acknowledge the sensitivity of the healthcare situation.
While there were many examples of terms of endearment being used successfully in healthcare settings, they are not a magic bullet that can improve every situation. There were a couple of examples in the data of patients rejecting terms of endearment. In both cases, patients were particularly distressed about the healthcare activity at hand – a painful injection, for example.
In these cases, the terms of endearment were not enough to excuse the action that the healthcare professional was trying to do. This is therefore an example of where context and sensitivity to the individual situation are important.
Lauren Bridgstock received funding from an ESRC Midlands Graduate School DTP collaborative PhD studentship between the University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (ES/P000711/1). The data discussed in this article were collected as part of the NIHR funded VOICE (13/114/93) and VOICE2 (NIHR134221) research projects. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the ESRC, NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
My ongoing PhD research is analysing masculinity, class and nationalism and exploring how these narratives appear in the everyday lives of men. I argue that responding to the harm that stems from these online communities requires an understanding of the manosphere as a product of a global, neoliberal, capitalist system built on inequality and division.
Neoliberalism can be described as “capitalism on steroids”. It’s a hyper-individualistic and market-driven ideology that fosters a culture of competition.
Neoliberalism encourages us to see ourselves as isolated individuals, responsible for our own success or failure. Among many other things research has shown that one of its outcomes is a profound loneliness. This is something that the manosphere exploits.
Role models are important, but the disconnect felt by so many today won’t be fixed by better role models within the same system. For example, black feminist thought, which recognises the way racism and sexism intersect and can offer extensive structural critiques, shows us that efforts to end violence against women must take place alongside work to change wider systems. So to start preventing violence we must first deal with root causes, such as poverty and inequality.
Measuring people by ‘value’
The manosphere picks up on messages around failing. Alongside hate-filled and misogynistic content, shame-based narratives from the manosphere suggest that boys and men are losers, weak and lazy if they aren’t “succeeding”. This is deeply damaging to all who find themselves drawn to such messages.
The concept of self-worth regularly appears in the manosphere, but it’s largely in relation to wealth or productivity: hustle harder, rise and grind, make money. These ideas don’t just exist in these online spaces. Similar language – self-investment, output, productivity, personal growth, efficiency – has become part of our everyday way of talking about ourselves and others.
The wellness industry promises us we can “glow up”. Self-help books and hustle culture encourage us to be better and produce more. Lifestyle influencers demonstrate how to turn our everyday existence into a marketable product.
This way of thinking turns people into products. It’s not about who you are – it’s about what you produce. Today’s far-right (of which the manosphere is part) capitalises on these ideas and the obsession with economic value.
There are versions of this aimed at women and girls, such as “cleanfluencers”, who reframe housework not only as a consumable personal brand but also as glamorous and fun.
But the hustle culture messaging central to the manosphere is particularly distinct in its hypermasculine messaging centred on “self-improvement” which advocates working harder and longer while being ruthless and dominant.
A focus on domination and individual success encourages young boys and men to see their self-worth tied up in that and that alone. This message extends beyond the manosphere and is part of the very system with which we all exist.
Resisting the system
Those captivated by manosphere narratives are victims as well as perpetrators. This doesn’t excuse their actions, or mean they shouldn’t be held accountable. How we care for each other within a capitalist society isn’t easy or straightforward.
Too often, though, discussion focuses solely on punitive responses, such as advocating for longer prison sentences. If we only focus on punishment, we miss the bigger picture. We need to find more inclusive ways of talking about, and responding to, harm – while rethinking what it means to truly care for each other.
Abolitionist movements strive to create systems which improve people’s health and safety and build a future without prisons. They seek to build responses to harm that are founded on education and community accountability – where communities take responsibility for identifying issues they need to address.
Abolitionist approaches advocate for expanding support networks and investing in resources deemed appropriate by survivors. Proposals like this work towards preventing violence. Their community focus means they address the isolating effects of neoliberalism at the same time.
We also can’t convince ourselves that once the likes of Andrew Tate and others involved in the manosphere disappear, women and girls will no longer suffer such extreme levels of misogyny and violence at the hands of boys and men.
This is because we exist within a system built on inequality and violence. It’s a system which rewards competition over cooperation, greed over care and one which is harmful to us all.
Sophie Lively receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council as part of Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jason Hawreliak, Associate Professor, Game Studies. Department of Digital Humanities., Brock University
While some film adaptations of video games achieve commercial success, others struggle to replicate the ‘feel’ of a video game for cinema audiences.(Warner Bros.)
Video game adaptations are having a moment. On television, shows like HBO’s The Last of Us and Amazon Prime’s Fallout — each based on popular game franchises — have been gigantic hits. On the big screen, 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Moviebroke box office records, and at the time of writing, A Minecraft Movie looks to be well on its way to generating one billion dollars in ticket sales.
With these recent successes, it can be hard to remember that movie adaptations of video games have historically been notoriously bad, typically failing to win over audiences and critics alike.
My first experience with adaptation disappointment came from the 1993 adaptation of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., starring Hollywood legend Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as his brother, Luigi.
Movie studio executives can perhaps be forgiven for trying to capitalize on the popularity of video games. With billions of players worldwide and a market valuation surpassing Hollywood and the music industry combined, video games are seemingly low-hanging fruit for commercial success. So why, with a few notable exceptions notwithstanding, are video game adaptations so difficult to pull off?
A trailer for A Minecraft Movie. (Warner Bros.)
The problem with adaptations
One key issue is that video games and movies are two very different media with different functions and different representational strengths and weaknesses. At their most basic, video games are meant to be interactive. They provide players with goals to achieve and challenges to overcome through some combination of strategy, skill and luck.
Sometimes, these goals and challenges are clear and direct. When a player sees a Goomba approach in Super Mario Bros., for example, they must press a button to jump on its head and defeat it; otherwise, the player takes damage and may have to start the level again.
Other times, the goals and challenges are less direct. In open-world or “sandbox” games like Minecraft, players are given a high degree of freedom in how they interact with the game world. There are ways to “win” in Minecraft, but the true pleasure of the game lies in giving players freedom to explore a vast world and create unique structures, villages, or even functional computers.
Interacting with a game world — its goals, rules and aesthetics — is a fundamentally distinct process from watching a film or reading a novel. Minecraft’s motto of “Create. Explore. Survive.” is not readily applicable in media like film and books though these media have experimented with interactivity too.
Game worlds on the big screen
So why have adaptations like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie been successful, at least commercially? Part of the reason is that these are massive franchises with instant brand recognition. Even people who do not play video games know who Mario is, and Minecraft is among the most popular games of all time.
However, as we have seen with recent unsuccessful adaptations like Warcraft and Borderlands, brand recognition alone is not sufficient.
One reason why The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie have done well is that they get the “feel” of their respective worlds right. When Mario transports into the Mushroom Kingdom in the 2023 film, it looks and sounds like the Mushroom Kingdom players encounter in the games.
The colours, shapes and sounds in the film closely match the colours, shapes, and sounds in the games. The Goombas look like Goombas, the power-ups look like power-ups and the film retains the whimsical nature of the games.
Although the radical freedom afforded to players of Minecraft is difficult to replicate in a film, A Minecraft Movie nevertheless retains the look, sound and feel of the game. The Creepers look and behave like Creepers and the Piglins look and behave like Piglins.
When Steve (played by Jack Black) first learns to build his first structures, the audience watches as he joyfully creates whatever he can imagine, gradually learning to build larger and more complex structures, just as players do in the game.
Finally, it should be noted that while these films were commercial successes, they have failed to win over critics. On Metacritic, The Super Mario Bros. Moviesits at 46 (though the user score is a healthy 8.2) while A Minecraft Movie has a similarly paltry 45. As the Los Angeles Times puts it in their review, “A Minecraft Movie is a block of big dumb fun.”
So no, it is unlikely the film will win an Oscar for best picture. But its ability to capture the essence of Minecraft is clearly enough for audiences, many of whom have spent countless hours exploring virtual mines, fending off zombies and creating their own fantastical worlds.
Jason Hawreliak receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since mid-2002, and in the past two decades, the number of reported cases has risen sharply. In 2003, only 236 cases were recorded, but by 2023, this had increased to 3,423. This means that euthanasia now accounts for around 3% of all deaths. But what explains this increase? And does it suggest a worrying trend, as some critics fear?
In a new study published in Jama Network Open, my colleagues and I analysed trends in all reported euthanasia cases between 2002 and 2023. Our findings show that the rise in euthanasia cases can be attributed to two factors: “regulatory onset” (the time required for both the medical community to adapt its practices and protocols to the new law, and for the public to become informed about its availability and implications) and demographic change, including population ageing.
We saw a sharp rise in cases during the 15 years following the law being introduced, followed by a period of stabilisation. About one-third of the increase can be explained by demographic changes – mainly population ageing. Euthanasia is indeed most common among people in their 70s and 80s, who often suffer from terminal cancer or several conditions. The number of people in those age categories has steadily increased.
A common point of contention in the euthanasia debate is the inclusion of psychiatric disorders as a valid reason. In Belgium, euthanasia for psychiatric conditions has been permitted since the law was first introduced. However, despite concerns that this might lead to a rapid expansion of cases, our study finds that psychiatric euthanasia remains extremely rare.
Between 2002 and 2023, psychiatric conditions accounted for just 1.3% of all euthanasia cases, and this figure has remained stable over time. The strict criteria mean that these cases typically involve long-standing conditions where all treatment options failed. In all cases, the person seeking to end their life underwent an extensive assessment before euthanasia was approved.
Euthanasia for dementia, however, has increased slightly in recent years. While cases remain low – under 1% of total euthanasia cases – there has been a gradual rise, partially reflecting the ageing of Belgium’s population.
There are also regional differences. Historically, euthanasia rates have been higher in the Flemish region than in French-speaking Wallonia and Brussels. However, our study shows that this gap has narrowed in recent years. This may reflect shifting cultural attitudes or changes in access to end-of-life care, but, overall, the trend points to a growing alignment in practices across the country.
One of the biggest concerns around euthanasia laws is the so-called slippery slope argument – the idea that legalisation could lead to a broadening of criteria, eventually allowing euthanasia for non-terminal conditions, mental health issues or even socioeconomic reasons. However, our study finds no evidence to support this claim.
Slippery slope argument explained.
The increase in euthanasia cases has largely followed demographic trends and legislation implementation, rather than any broadening of legal criteria or changes in medical practice. Over time, both the regional and gender gaps have decreased, showing a more consistent pattern across the population rather than diverging trends.
Belgium’s approach differs significantly from the assisted dying bill currently being debated in the UK. With assisted dying, the patient ends their own life but a doctor prescribes the life-ending medication. With euthanasia, a doctor administers the life-ending medication. The proposed UK legislation would allow assisted dying only for terminally ill patients with a short life expectancy, whereas Belgium’s law permits euthanasia even when death is not expected in the near future.
This is particularly relevant for patients with psychiatric disorders or dementia, who may suffer unbearably for years before meeting the UK’s proposed eligibility criteria. Another key distinction is decision-making: in Belgium, the final decision is made by doctors, whereas the UK is mooting judicial oversight.
Data gaps
One thing that countries allowing assisted dying need to think about is how to track and collect euthanasia data. Belgium has a national system for reporting, but there are still gaps – especially in connecting euthanasia data with people’s social and economic backgrounds. It’s important to understand who asks for euthanasia and why, to assess the long-term effects of the law.
As more countries consider assisted dying laws, Belgium’s experience offers valuable lessons – not only on regulation but also on the importance of robust data monitoring from the outset.
Jacques Wels receives funding from the Belgian National Scientific Fund (FNRS) and the European Research Council (ERC).
Natasia Hamarat reports participating in the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia (FCCEE).
Donald Trump has threatened to walk away from the Ukraine peace talks if there is no progress soon. The implicit threat here is that the US will no longer get involved, perhaps withdrawing arms shipments and even humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
It is understood that the proposed plan the Trump team has been working on has involved Ukraine giving up territory including Crimea and giving up any possibility of joining Nato. The plan favours Russia’s recent demands and Trump has recently said he has found Russia much easier to deal with than Ukraine.
But which country do US voters feel closer to and which do they feel is more of an ally to their nation?
An Economist/YouGov poll conducted on March 17 asked Americans whether they thought Russia and Ukraine were allies or enemies. Some 2% thought Russia was an ally, compared with 46% who saw it as an enemy. In the case of Ukraine, the figures were 26% ally and 4% enemy. Given these figures, Trump’s Russia-friendly policy looks unpopular.
Meanwhile, the Cooperative Election Study data in the US has just been released. This project involves a large group of researchers who conducted a survey of 60,000 Americans at the time of the presidential election last year. This very large sample provides an accurate picture of US public opinion.
American attitudes to policy alternatives for dealing with the Ukraine war
The survey included the following question: “As you may know Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. What should the U.S. do about the situation in Ukraine?”
Respondents were asked to choose as many of the options shown in the above chart which they favoured, with some choosing one or two and others several.
This technique means that failing to choose an option does not mean they disagreed with it, since they may not have thought about it, were indifferent to it, or did not believe it would work.
It is clear from the chart that Americans do not want their troops to get involved in combat in the Ukraine, since only 5% chose this option. However, 22% agreed with the idea of sending military support staff, 33% agreed with sending military aid and 51% favoured sending humanitarian aid.
A key point is that only 23% said the US should not get involved. There is not much support among Americans for abandoning Ukraine.
Can President Trump abandon Ukraine?
This raises the question as to whether the US can simply walk away from the war as the president suggested. However, this could cause political problems for the Trump administration.
The US has already provided US$66.5 billion (£49.9 billion) of aid to the Ukraine. Abandoning the country would call into question Trump’s much vaunted negotiation skills and mean that achieving a peace deal, supported by 41% in the survey, had clearly failed.
When former president Joe Biden withdrew US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, he was heavily criticised by Republicans in the US Congress, despite the fact that the previous Trump administration had negotiated the agreement to withdraw. Rapid withdrawal now from Ukraine could attract even stronger criticisms in light of his earlier claims that he would settle conflict in 24 hours.
The chart below, based on questions in the survey, shows that American voters are not that reluctant to send troops abroad if they agree with the reasons for doing it. They were asked to choose as many of five policy alternatives relating to military interventions abroad.
Once again, different respondents chose different numbers of alternatives. The chart makes clear they are not enthusiastic about using military force to assist in the spread of democracy, or to ensure that the US has a regular supply of oil.
American support for using US military forces abroad
At the same time, it shows that 38% support using troops to prevent a genocide happening and 46% support using them to protect allies being attacked, or as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. Finally, a majority support the idea of destroying a terrorist camp, a response probably influenced by the elimination of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces when Barack Obama was president in 2011.
There is no contradiction between a generalised willingness to use force in various circumstances and a reluctance to do this in Ukraine. Americans fighting in Ukraine would mean involvement in a war with Russia with all the risks that would entail.
But there was a strong willingness to support Ukraine prior to Trump’s second term and these attitudes suggest that if he tried to withdraw from Nato or continues to put forward a pro-Putin deal large numbers of American voters would be unhappy with this, and it could affect his support.
There has been global criticism of the Trump administration’s introduction of high tariffs and warnings of the consequences of these for the world economy. And what might be seen by many Americans as an abandonment for Ukraine would also alienate many international allies of the US, but so far Trump has not shown many signs of worrying about that.
Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anastasia Vayona, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Science and Policy, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth University
Have you ever thrown something in the recycling bin, hoping it’s recyclable? Maybe a toothpaste tube, bubble wrap or plastic toy labelled “eco-friendly”?
This common practice, known as “wishcycling”, might seem harmless. But my colleagues and I have published research that shows misleading environmental claims by companies are making recycling more confusing – and less effective.
This kind of marketing leads to greenwashed consumer behaviour — when people believe they are making environmentally friendly choices, but are being misled by exaggerated or false claims about how sustainable a product is.
We surveyed 537 consumers from 102 towns across the UK to explore a simple question: is there a link between greenwashed consumer behaviour and wishcycling? We wanted to find out whether they feed into each other, what drives them both, and how consumers perceive the connection.
What makes this issue particularly interesting is its psychological foundation. We argue that modern consumers have been burdened with a responsibility that may be beyond their capacity: deciding what to do with product packaging after use.
Many people are unprepared, undereducated or simply unaware of the full effect of their choices — and why should they be? This is a burden that should not rest on their shoulders. Into this gap has stepped recycling, presented as the solution. Consumers are led to believe that by recycling, they are doing their part to help the environment.
However, when products carry environmental claims or symbols — even vague ones like a green leaf, green banner or “earth-friendly” label — consumers often fall prey to what we call the “environmental halo effect”. This cognitive bias causes people to attribute positive environmental qualities to the entire product, including how it’s disposed of, even when those claims may not be accurate.
Surprisingly, our study reveals that environmentally conscious consumers can be most susceptible to this effect. Their strong environmental values may make them more inclined to trust green marketing claims, even when those claims are vague or misleading.
Driven by their desire to make sustainable choices, these consumers often accept green marketing claims at face value, assuming that environmental claims reflect genuine efforts toward sustainability.
Even more intriguingly, we found that people with higher levels of education tend to trust companies’ environmental claims more readily, especially when these companies present themselves as environmentally responsible.
This all leads to more wishcycling, not less. When companies talk about their environmental ethos and social responsibility, we’re more likely to believe their packaging is recyclable – even when it isn’t.
Our research also suggests that younger consumers, despite being generally more environmentally aware, are more likely to wishcycle. While millennials and generation Z often express strong environmental values, they’re also often more likely to contaminate recycling streams by throwing in non-recyclable items.
The future is circular
The solution is not to stop caring for the environment, but to channel that care more effectively. At the heart of this approach is the concept of a circular economy, where products and materials are reused, refurbished and recycled, rather than discarded.
The answer isn’t just better recycling – it’s better packaging design and corporate responsibility from the start. While we as consumers should continue doing our part, the primary burden should rest with manufacturers to create packaging that’s genuinely recyclable or reusable, not just marketed as “eco-friendly”.
This means implementing clear, standardised labelling that leaves no room for confusion, using packaging made from single, easily recyclable materials, and designing for reuse and refill systems.
On February 11 2025, the EU enacted a new packaging and packaging waste directive. This is designed to reduce packaging waste and support a circular economy by setting rules for how packaging should be made, used and disposed of throughout its lifecycle.
Until these systemic changes are fully implemented, we need to be both environmentally conscious and critically aware consumers. But it’s important to remember: while our daily choices and actions matter, the key to real change lies in pushing for corporate and policy-level transformation of our packaging systems.
By designing out waste, the circular economy offers a sustainable model that can guide these changes and reduce our dependence on single-use packaging. Hopefully, this can inspire us to improve current practices and keep finding better ways to do things, leading to a more sustainable and resilient future.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Anastasia Vayona 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.
The early morning light spills over the raised beds of a thriving community garden in Harlem, New York. It’s a Saturday, and people of all ages move among the plants – harvesting collard greens, making compost and packing bags of fresh vegetables.
A community initiative called Harlem Grown began in 2011 as a single urban farm on an abandoned neighbourhood lot. It has since become a lifeline for the people who live there.
The project combats food insecurity, provides fresh produce to local families – 150,000 servings of food in 2023 alone – and teaches the next generation how to nourish themselves and their communities. As one long-term female volunteer told me: “Healthy habits start young.” That’s why their programmes involve schoolchildren as young as five.
Across the boroughs of New York City, a lively ecosystem of urban farmers, non-profit leaders, dietitians and chefs work together to localise food systems. This helps communities to become more self-sufficient and less reliant on ultra-processed foods, all while ensuring support reaches the most vulnerable.
While healthy food options are readily available in affluent areas such as in upper east side Manhattan, lower-income neighbourhoods – dominated by fast-food establishments – face a far greater need. In the Bronx, residents are establishing community gardens to encourage access to fresh, organic produce that people would otherwise require to travel outside the borough to find.
Some young, female urban farmers from minority communities in New York believe that “like fashion, farming is political too”. Some have built their capacity through courses at the Farm School NYC, which provides them with the tools needed to become effective leaders in the food justice movement.
Localising food systems involves growing and foraging for food in urban settings to reduce food miles and reclaim diverse, locally rooted food traditions long-displaced by industrial systems. This is one of the key lines of work explored by women in my book, What if Women Designed the City?
I’ve been investigating how women as experts of their neighbourhoods engage with local food movements – organising community gardens, coordinating cooperatives and managing farmers markets – viewed through a transatlantic lens that connects efforts in North America with those alive in the UK.
My research adopts a regenerative perspective on urban development, viewed through the eyes of women from diverse backgrounds who uncover untapped potential rooted in the uniqueness of their neighbourhoods. For instance, I conducted walking interviews with 274 women from both affluent and hard-to-reach areas in three Scottish cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth.
A participant from the modernist housing estate of Wester Hailes in Edinburgh observed that locals often favour convenience foods: “People in this area like hamburgers, pizzas, mashed potatoes and stuff like that.” In her view, encouraging more community gardens could provide healthier alternatives while also reconnecting residents with fresh, seasonal produce.
Another resident recognised the social benefits such spaces could bring, helping to counter isolation. Regular meals at the Murrayburn and Hailes Neighbourhood Garden, for instance, attract people who live alone, providing a welcoming space – even for those who don’t feel like talking. As one participant put it, these meals are especially “good for people who are slightly depressed”.
Research suggests that getting our hands into the soil stimulates the release of serotonin, a natural antidepressant, triggered by the soil bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae, which can help people to feel more relaxed and happier. This aligns with compelling evidence on the benefits of “green care” – including social and therapeutic horticulture, care farming and environmental conservation – which has been shown to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression.
Growing native
At the heart of this community-led food justice movement is the belief that both herbalists and everyday gardeners should prioritise cultivating native plants that naturally thrive in their surroundings, rather than relying on plants from distant regions, that require harvesting, processing and transportation over long distances using fossil fuel energy.
This ethos underpins the work of a growing network of women from the Grass Roots Remedies workers cooperative, who meet regularly at the community-led Calders Garden in Edinburgh to exchange experiences while growing, foraging and making their own herbal medicines.
The vital role of communities as growers and foragers in urban resilience has largely been overlooked by city officials, urban planners and developers. Yet, these community-led efforts are bringing more life and vitality to urban spaces, fostering biodiversity, regenerating soil health and reducing the carbon footprint embedded in industrial food systems.
Several of the women I interviewed believe that being thoughtful consumers involves also taking part in producing what they eat, while reducing food waste at all stages of production. Women are also leading the way by repurposing vacant lots and development sites for community gardening and herbal medicine kitchens while integrating local food production into urban planning and building codes.
Regulatory measures that tie planning approval of new developments to the provision of open space for garden cultivation – either on-site or within the neighbouring area – can ensure that urban agriculture becomes an integral part of city planning. In cities, growing and foraging together deepens social links, encourages more diversified diets, reduces food miles and fosters a regenerative approach to community healthcare.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
May East 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 Nitasha Kaul, Professor of Politics, International Relations and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Westminster
The horrific targeted attack by militants in Kashmir on April 22, which killed at least 25 Indian tourists and one Nepalese national and injured many more, bears all the hallmarks of terrorism. The timing of the attacks during the high-profile visit of the US vice-president J.D. Vance to India, highlights that this was calculated to achieve maximum impact.
The attack came at the beginning of the peak tourist season, right before a major annual Hindu Amarnath Yatra pilgrimage that attracts thousands each year. It also happened soon after provocative statements from Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir. In a recent speech, Munir said: “No power in the world can separate Kashmir from Pakistan. Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein.”
The attack was made by gunmen who identified Hindu men by demanding they recite verses from the Qur’an before killing them, while sparing women and children.
Kashmir is a site of multiple competing claims, entrenched conflict and intense militarisation. The political dispute has further been used to divide Kashmiris along religious lines, resulting in a discourse of competing victimhoods between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus.
Against the backdrop of already normalised Islamophobia in India, such an attack creates greater prospects for repression and violence against Muslims.
The reaction in the Indian media has followed a predictable script. Amid the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) ratcheting up of anti-Muslim sentiment in the country, some people took to social media to demand the annexation of Pakistan Administered Kashmir (known as “PoK” – or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir by many in India). Kashmiri Muslims in India are reportedly now facing Hindutva groups threatening to target them.
Hindu majoritarianism in India has long relied on constructing a narrative of the beleaguered majority under attack from a Muslim minority. So this attack becomes part of a selectively retold and lengthy history where Muslims have always been aggressors and Hindus always victims.
Indian Muslims then often have to prove their patriotism. A Muslim member of India’s Congress Party even called for the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi to be “flattened”.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, held an emergency meeeting of the (all-male) security cabinet and immediate measures were announced after the meeting included a condemnation of Pakistan for encouraging “cross-border terrorism”. Barely a day later, he is already on the campaign trail in the Indian state of Bihar for the upcoming elections there.
There is a continuing clamour on social media for cross-border military strikes and a desire to go after Pakistan (#AvengePahalgam). These two countries have a long history of conflict. With an ongoing spiral of tit-for-tat responses, a de-escalation cannot be guaranteed and a more general irrational miscalculation between the nuclear-armed neighbours cannot be ruled out.
A question of accountability
In the cacophony of jingoist calls for revenge, what is being ignored completely by the mainstream nationalistic media – often satirically referred to in rhyme as Modi’s “godi” (lapdog) media – is the question of accountability.
In 2019 Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded from a state to a “union territory”, since which all matters of security have been the responsibility of the Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor and central home ministry. So when the home minister Amit Shah – Modi’s right-hand man – went to the region after the attack, the local chief minister, Omar Abdullah, a veteran political leader, was excluded from security briefings and meetings.
Voices calling for accountability and even Shah’s resignation (he was the architect of downgrading Jammu and Kashmir in the name of greater security and integration) are being ignored and termed “anti-national” or traitorous. This contrasts with the reaction after the Mumbai attacks of 2008 under the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance. Following that terror attack, the Indian home minister resigned.
By contrast, Shah and India’s current national security advisor, Ajit Doval have remained in post over many such attacks, the last major one being in Pulwama in 2019 when 40 central reserve police force (CRPF) personnel were killed, also in the Kashmir region.
Before the most recent attack there, despite the heavy tourist presence, there was no security deployment on the main road from Pahalgam to Baisaran, another major tourist resort.
Important questions need to be answered. What were the lapses in security and who is responsible? What are the policy failures in Jammu and Kashmir that allowed this to happen? Who in government should be accountable and what lessons can we take from the attack?
In a democracy, elected leaders are held accountable and those who speak truth to power can do so without being punished. Yet, in an environment of censorship on dissent, any questioning of Indian ruling party leaders, especially Modi and Shah, is branded as hostile to India’s national interest.
The problem with tourism as a political solution
Modi’s policy towards Kashmir has been to encourage tourism in response to terrorism. This makes the people there dependent on the centre, as well as presenting the idea of post-conflict normality as a propaganda coup.
But anyone who knows Kashmir will tell you that official platitudes about “normality” mean very little. The conflict in Kashmir has a complex history in which the idea of Kashmiri self-determination has long been the most important factor. Now the region is without autonomy and only held an election last year – for the first time in a decade – after the Indian Supreme Court ordered it.
In today’s India, where authoritarianism is ascendant and Hindu nationalism poses a threat to Muslim rights and security, questions of Kashmiri people’s rights are almost impossible to address.
Meanwhile they are vulnerable to attacks in the name of revenge for whatever Pakistani or Pakistani-backed militants do. And any acts of solidarity by Kashmiri Muslims, such as vigils and shutdowns tend simply to be ignored by a narrative that points the finger at Muslims.
Rather than focus on the shared grief, the risk is that Modi’s Hindu nationalist government will adopt a narrow and aggressive stance, making tensions in the region worse. Calls for a vendetta may fail to distinguish between Indian Muslims or Kashmiri civilians and terrorists. This will only make the entire south Asian region less secure and more violent.
Nitasha Kaul 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 Chantal Gautier, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Sex and Relationship Therapist, University of Westminster
Warning: contains minor spoilers for Dying for Sex.
When Molly (Michelle Williams) learns that her breast cancer has returned and time is now slipping through her fingers, she decides she isn’t ready to write off her ending. Not before living the chapter she’d never dared to start: the one about self and sexual discovery.
The Disney+ series Dying for Sex opens with a couples’ therapy moment that, as a sex and relationships therapist, I know well. Molly is craving more sex but her husband Steve (Jay Duplass) just isn’t feeling it. After one final attempt to elicit sex, Molly gives Steve a blow job, but when she moves his hand to her chest, he breaks down. “When I touch your breasts,” he explains, “it makes me think about the mastectomy and then I think about losing you”.
It’s not uncommon for partners like Steve to share these feelings. Studies have shown that the physical and emotional toll of care-giving and desire to protect the patient, can sometimes lead partners to withdraw from intimacy.
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Still, it doesn’t land well. Watching Molly’s reaction is painful but it marks a turning point. She decides to divorce, firmly declaring that she “doesn’t want to die with him” and longs to be seen beyond the lens of her illness.
In pursuit of unlocking her true sexual self, Molly navigates her way through the wilds of dating apps, embarking on a string of sexual escapades from hook-ups to experimentation with sex toys. But it hits her that she doesn’t know what she really likes or dislikes.
This isn’t unusual. Many people don’t have a clear sense of their turn-ons or preferred pleasures at first. In my private practice, it’s actually a frequent theme. Clients often come feeling unsure or disconnected from their desires, and together we explore what’s sometimes called their “erotic template”.
In pursuit of her “yums”, Sonja (Esco Jouley), her palliative-care specialist, invites Molly and best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate) into the sex-positive world of the “play party”, a space where like-minded people into kink, BDSM, and other forms of consensual play can hang out, connect and explore.
It’s here that something in Molly awakens. She allows herself to fully embrace new aspects of her sexuality as she discovers a preference for dominance and a strong desire to have others submit to her sexually. We get an early glimpse of this power dynamic between Molly and her neighbour Guy (Rob Delaney), setting the stage for their unique relationship.
The trailer for Dying for Sex.
Despite taking naturally to her newfound proficiency at dom/sub dynamics, Molly is still held back in seeking her own pleasure, specifically, her quest for an orgasm with another person. It’s only when we delve into her history that we truly see how profoundly haunted Molly is in moments of sex and her struggles to stay connected.
This kind of disconnect or dissociation is a common response to trauma, a way the mind tries to protect itself when things feel unsafe or too overwhelming. When the body senses a threat – even if there is no real threat, but a reminder of past trauma – it can shoot us outside our window of tolerance, meaning we disconnect.
Realising that she has spent most of her life locked out of her own body pushes Molly to revisit her childhood and subsequent sexuality. Perhaps sex and dominance is a language her nervous system can understand – a way to heal. In dom/sub spaces, everything is based on clear consent, safety and mutual respect. Here Molly can decide who touches her and how.
And so, we find Molly at a crossroad where something deeper quietly begins to take root: agency. Molly starts to feel in charge of her life, her body and her choices – including how she navigates her cancer. She makes her own choices about which treatments feel right for her: when to stop chemo, when to be sedated for pain management and even who she wants by her side when she dies. Not out of fear, but from a place of clarity and ownership, because she has found her power.
Dying for Sex takes viewers on a roller coaster of emotions – laughter, surprise, tenderness, sadness, even hope. Boldly provocative and deeply moving it weaves together themes of sexuality, love, a complex maternal relationship and enduring friendships.
What emerges is not just a story about dying for sex – but a powerful celebration of what it means to truly live.
Chantal Gautier 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.
Immigrants and diaspora communities make up a growing segment of Canada’s population. In 2021, a record 23 per cent of the Canadian population, more than 8.3 million people, were current or former immigrants, the highest share since 1921. People from Asia constituted 51.4 per cent of this immigrant population.
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education. My doctoral research focused on the integration practices of South Asian immigrants from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh living or working in northeast Calgary.
Using the Canadian Index for Measuring Integration, I explored how they engaged with Canadian society across economic, social, health and political dimensions. Much of this engagement is driven by multilingualism and ethnic networks, increasingly mediated by platforms like WhatsApp, X and Facebook.
Researching political integration in a multilingual digital world
Since the federal election was called in late March, I’ve been conducting a digital ethnography of social media pages run by South Asian community influencers. Digital ethnography involves observing how people use internet technologies to communicate, engage and make meaning in online spaces.
The influencers in my study are individuals who manage digital platforms, such as Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats and other community networks, and play a key role in shaping how community members access, discuss and act on political information. The pages I examined — mostly on WhatsApp, Facebook and X — continue to show how multilingualism and ethnic networks shape political awareness and influence voter behaviour.
Too often, political engagement is narrowly defined by voter turnout. But my research with the South Asian diaspora in Calgary shows that political integration extends far beyond the ballot box. It happens on social media, at mosques, temples and gurdwaras, through multilingual volunteering and in community spaces where language, culture and civic life intersect.
Crucially, it also extends to transnational issues. Many community members discuss global events — such as the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Russia-Ukraine war or United States trade policies — as well as Canadian issues like immigration.
For my research, I interviewed 19 first-generation South Asians from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, living in Calgary. Participants in my study described the wide range of civic and democratic activities they take part in: volunteering, joining online discussions and attending cultural or religious events where political issues were discussed — mostly in both English and their heritage languages.
Participation spans both formal volunteering, often in English-dominant spaces, and informal volunteering at religious institutions, festivals or on social media. Many preferred to volunteer where they could speak Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla or Urdu or sometimes a mixture of multiple languages, referred to as translanguaging.
One participant, a banker and social media influencer who runs a Pakistani Facebook group, said:
“I often volunteer on Facebook. I also join politicians in their campaigns. My entire social media work is based on Urdu. It allows me to connect with people.”
During digital ethnography, this participant was observed combining artificial intelligence (AI) generated images with multilingual postings to campaign for a political party.
Beyond voter turnout
South Asians are Canada’s largest visible minority group and their civic participation offers a vital lens into how democracy functions in a multicultural, multilingual society. There’s a widespread belief that if people aren’t engaging with politics in the dominant language, then they must not be engaging at all.
However, my research shows otherwise. Societal multilingualism — the ability to use both English and heritage languages — is protected under Canada’s Multiculturalism Act and supports more inclusive participation. A participant who works for a settlement agency explained that multilingual political activities help “in communication, explaining policies, responding to people’s questions, understanding their concerns and addressing them.”
There’s also a common misconception that nominating a candidate from a specific ethnic background guarantees community support. While that may influence local elections, federal voting decisions are often more complex. Participants in my research emphasized party platforms, past performance and national and international issues alongside identity. Ethnic concentration alone does not determine electoral success.
Ethnic networks — made up of extended family, faith groups, digital communities and neighbourhood ties — act as civic incubators. They are not isolated enclaves but dynamic platforms where newcomers develop political literacy and trust.
Rethinking political participation
Canada’s official languages are English and French, but multilingualism plays a central role in immigrant communities. In my research, language is dynamic — a social and cultural resource that fosters identity and engagement.
Participants translated political materials, explained policies to others and used multilingual platforms to discuss topics like housing, health care and immigration. These practices are visible in this election cycle too, as South Asian community members use language, digital tools, artificial intelligence and hot-button issues to engage voters. Language in these settings is cultural capital. It enables participation through familiarity, emotional connection and social belonging.
Faith-based spaces like gurdwaras, mosques and mandirs are civic forums. Candidates visit during campaigns and community leaders help shape political dialogue and participation. These institutions offer cultural fluency and language access that mainstream systems often lack.
As immigration reshapes Canada’s demographics, political integration is more than a trend — it’s essential to a functioning democracy. While some parties provide translations or host cultural events, they often miss how deep civic engagement already exists within these communities.
Immigrants are not passive recipients anymore. They are active participants, shaping conversations in their own languages and networks. Ahead of the 2025 election, it’s time to move beyond ethnic voting myth and recognize the full civic ecosystem — from WhatsApp groups to mosque courtyards.
Political parties must go beyond hiring translators or leaning on community leaders. Multilingual civic participation is not an afterthought — it’s foundational. It’s time to engage people in the languages they speak, in the spaces they trust.
If we want a truly inclusive democracy, we must meet people where they are linguistically, culturally and locally. Ethnic networks are not detours from political life. They are on-ramps. And multilingualism is not a barrier to participation. It’s the language of democracy.
Kashif Raza receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.
In the heart of New York City’s Times Square, a popup by British tech startup, Hypervsn, showcases life-size holograms in a health supplement store. From behind the glass, a virtual humanoid avatar with spunky pink hair waves to passersby. She is just one sign of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution in marketing taking place.
Down the street, H&M — the Swedish fast-fashion giant — offers a new kind of immersive shopping experience. The flagship store showcases a room covered in mirrors equipped with virtual environments, encouraging shoppers to make social media content while they try on merchandise.
These AI-generated replicas sparked global excitement and debate. But as digital replicas of real people become more common, especially in image-based industries like fashion, urgent ethical questions are emerging. These include conversations about the future of work, compensation and identity in the cultural economy.
H&M AI models. One is real, one is an AI generated model. H&M
Digital twins, explained
In New York’s bustling AI startup scene, where tech, fashion and finance collide, the potential of digital twins is being met with optimism.
Developers, investors and brands believe that by cloning our human bodies and personalities, we can reach a future in which we live in “double time.” That time would look something like us sinking back into our couch for some rest while our identical avatars show up to work on our behalf. But is it really that simple?
What does it mean for workers whose identities are being cloned without clear guidelines on compensation, ownership and rights?
Digital twin production is a meticulous process that begins with a person’s unique identity. This includes their voice, personality, body and face, all things considered to be their intellectual property (IP).
When someone signs off to be cloned with a digital twin startup, they agree to the use of generative AI replicating everything about their physical body: personal identity, distinct features and skills.
The ethical framework around digital twins
The emergence of digital twins has forced the development of new ethical frameworks, still in flux. Industry leader Natalie Monbiot, former co-founder of HourOne, has coined the term “Virtual Human Economy” to describe this growing sector.
Companies like HourOne, Synthesia and Soul Machines are competing to dominate this space. They offer digital twins for applications that range from fashion modelling to corporate training videos and online education.
The ethical challenges are significant, particularly regarding ownership.
The human half of the H&M digital twin models, for example, will receive “fair compensation,” including continued payment for the use of their digital replicas beyond initial creation. The company has said models will retain some rights to how their likenesses are used, but industry standards for such contracts remain inconsistent.
Most digital twin companies establish contracts where the human “original” receives initial compensation for the creation process. This typically involves extensive scanning, voice recording and movement capture.
But such arrangements remain inconsistent across the industry, and the long-term value proposition of these digital likenesses is still unclear.
Some companies offer royalty structures, while others purchase full rights upfront. This raises questions about the fair valuation of a person’s digital likeness.
Traditional image rights contracts, borrowed from the entertainment industry, don’t account for AI’s ability to generate novel content using a person’s likeness. The industry is essentially creating its ethical standards in real time, with some companies adopting more transparent approaches than others.
‘Jackpot’ economy means those at the top take all
For workers in image-based industries, like models and photographers, the rise of digital twins brings a fundamental shift in how labour and compensation are structured. While modelling has always been hyper-competitive, social media has dramatically intensified that and is now playing a large role in how opportunities are allocated.
American labour scholar Andrew Ross pinpoints these dynamics as a “jackpot economy,” where intellectual property becomes “the glittering prize for the lucky few” while the majority face increased precarity.
U.S. fashion scholar Minh-Ha Pham has also written about how digital technologies amplify the winners-take-all economic structures within the fashion and blogging industries. She describes concentrated opportunities and rewards among an elite minority.
To add to this, New Zealand scholars Rachel Berryman and Misha Kavka have demonstrated how the rise of “parasocial” relationships has become increasingly central to career success in these fields. A parasocial relationship describes the sense of intimate connection followers feel toward influencers and celebrities.
In other words, those successful digital twins could further concentrate power among models who already possess substantial followings and cultural cachet. This cachet allows them to multiply their earning potential while those with less visibility struggle to compete against both humans and AI-generated alternatives.
While digital twins based on actual humans may provide more authentic representation than fully synthetic avatars, they still risk reinforcing existing inequalities in who receives visibility and compensation.
On the other hand, digital twinning could potentially offer improvements over purely synthetic virtual models.
By maintaining a connection to real human subjects who can negotiate their representation and compensation, digital twins might provide a more equitable approach than computer-generated avatars created entirely at a corporation’s discretion.
Behind the digital glamour are real-life issues
Our collective fascination with technology and the new AI-driven digital twins may be distracting us from a more pressing (but also old) issue. Let’s not forget to look at the economic structures that govern work cultures, human creativity and labour norms.
The debate isn’t just about banning or regulating AI, which enable phenomena such as digital twins; it’s also about how we ensure fair compensation and equitable access to these new forms of labour.
The “jackpot economy” often benefits only a select few, leaving the majority in precarious positions. As digital twins technology continues to evolve, we must develop regulatory frameworks to ensure fair compensation for workers in creative industries.
While we focus on the capabilities and potential of AI, we also need to shift the conversation towards the economic systems and power structures in which these technologies operate.
Jul Parke receives funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
The Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network today condemned the Fiji government’s failure to stand up for international law and justice over the Israeli war on Gaza in their weekly Black Thursday protest.
“For the past 18 months, we have made repeated requests to our government to do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel,” said the protest group in an open letter.
“We have been calling upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes.
“We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained.
“We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”
The open letter said:
“Dear fellow Fijians,
“As we gathered tonight in Suva at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre compound, Israel has maintained an eight-week blockade on food, medicine and aid entering Gaza, while continuing to bomb homes and tent shelters.
“At least 52,000 people in Gaza have been killed since October 2023, which includes more than 18,000 children. The death toll means that one out of every 50 people has been killed in Gaza. We all know that the real number of those killed is far higher.
“Today, at least 13 people were killed in Israeli attacks. Among the dead were three children in a tent near Nuseirat in central Gaza, and a woman and four children in a home in Gaza City.
“Also reportedly killed in a recent attack was local journalist Saeed Abu Hassanein, whose death adds to at least 232 reporters killed by Israel in Gaza in this genocide.
“For the past 18 months, we have made repeated requests to our government to do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel. We have been calling upon the Fiji Government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes.
“We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained. We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.
“Instead our leaders met with Israeli Government representatives and declared support for a country accused of the most heinous crimes recognised in international law.
“Fijian leaders and the Fiji Government must not be supporting Israel or planning to set up an Embassy in Israel while Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, kill journalists and medics, and block the delivery of aid to a population under relentless siege.
“No politician in Fiji can claim ignorance of what is happening.
“Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.
“Many more have been maimed, traumatised and displaced. Hospitals, clinics, refugee camps, schools, universities, residential neighbourhoods, water and food facilities have been destroyed.
“We must loudly name what’s happening in Gaza – a GENOCIDE.
“We should name the crime, underline our government’s complicity in it, and focus our efforts on elevating the voices of Palestinians.
“We know that our actions cannot magically put an end to the GENOCIDE in occupied Palestine, but they can still make a difference. We can add to the global pressure on those who have the power to stop the genocide, which is so needed.
“The way our government is responding to the genocide in Gaza will set a precedent for how they will deal with crises and emergencies in the future — at home and abroad.
“It will determine whether our country will be a force that works to uphold human rights and international law, or one that tramples on them whenever convenient.
“There are already ongoing restrictions against protests in solidarity with Palestine including arbitrary restrictions on marches and the use of Palestine flags.
“We have had to hold gatherings in the premises of the FWCC office as the police have restricted solidarity marches for Palestine since November 2023, under the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2014.
“Today, we must all fight for what is right, and show our government that indifference is not acceptable in the face of genocide, lest we ourselves become complicit.
“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment.
“Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of always standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.
“We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.”
In Solidarity Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sonja Dümpelmann, Professor of Environmental Humanities, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Window-box gardening has been a Philly tradition since the 1800s.Sonja Dümpelmann, CC BY-SA
It’s that time of year when Philadelphia row home owners with a green thumb fastidiously attend to their window boxes – selecting new plants to design an artful blend of colors, shapes and textures.
Dümpelmann recently published an article on this history in the architectural journal Buildings & Landscapes. She spoke with The Conversation U.S. about what she learned.
Some homeowners change out their plants throughout the year. Sonja Dümpelmann, CC BY-SA
How did you become interested in window boxes?
When I first moved to Philadelphia from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 2019, I was immediately struck by the window boxes. The lushness and freshness of the plants in many of the boxes, and sometimes in sidewalk planters, made walking more pleasant and interesting. This was especially the case in the hot summer months when I would often see plants from subtropical and tropical climates in the Rittenhouse Square, Fitler Square and Graduate Hospital neighborhoods.
I noticed that there were three categories of window boxes. Many were visibly cared for, often freshly planted and decorated several times a year in accordance with the changing seasons. Some were derelict and had spontaneous growth of saplings and different grasses. And a third category were boxes outfitted with plastic plants, perhaps signaling absentee owners or landlords who seek to simulate care.
What makes them landscape architecture?
Window boxes – especially the planted boxes, but also painted boxes that are empty – change outdoor space and building exteriors. They make them more colorful and interesting, and they break up plain vertical walls by protruding from the facade.
You could say that the window boxes “greet” passersby. They connect private indoor space with the public realm of the street. As one early window-box promoter observed in 1903, “The man in the street gets as much enjoyment out of them as its owner.”
“Gardens in a box,” as they were also referred to by early promoters, can make homes and entire neighborhoods look and feel different. They forge distinct identities with their plant selection and the style and color of the boxes.
Window gardens are a way to greet passersby on the street. Sonja Dümpelmann, CC BY-SA
How did window gardening begin?
Window gardening became popular in Victorian England and continental Europe in the 19th century. It began as an indoor activity and was practiced especially by women, but it soon also moved outdoors. There it became part of what American women in the late 19th century called “municipal housekeeping.” It extended their conventional female roles as housekeepers and mothers into the larger “household” of the community.
Window gardening became a means of female social reform during the Progressive Era. During this period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when industries and cities were growing fast, women sought to improve education, public health and living conditions, especially for poor and immigrant communities. By offering plants, flowers and entire window boxes, the women supported homemakers of lesser means.
However, these boxes were also a way to make sure that order in and outside of homes was maintained. Window gardens became cultural symbols of cleanliness and good housekeeping. Furthermore, reformers considered window gardening as a practice that could help immigrants assimilate into American society.
When did they become political?
In Philadelphia there were two big window-gardening movements. The first occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I describe it as window-box charity. The second, which I call window-box activism, began in the 1950s.
Window-box charity was carried out primarily by white philanthropists and social workers who would distribute plants and goods sent from outside the city to the urban poor and sick, especially immigrants and Black Americans. Sometimes the window boxes were ready to be installed outside the windows. Other times recipients built and planted boxes themselves.
Several decades later, in the mid-20th-century, plants became a vehicle for white suburban garden club ladies and Black inner-city residents to counter urban decay resulting from racism and public disinvestment. On annual planting days, the garden club ladies brought plants into the city and joined residents in planting and installing window boxes to brighten up their neighborhood blocks.
Plants were key in both window-box charity and window-box activism. People came together to care for plants, creating friendships among neighbors and ties between low-income and wealthy neighborhoods. The women used plants and window boxes to protect private space and increase the safety of public space. In the 1960s, the Philadelphia police reported less crime on streets with window boxes.
Of course, window boxes and plants alone could not solve larger urban social problems such as poor housing conditions and racial discrimination. So while they could be catalysts of neighborhood change, they also helped to camouflage and quite literally naturalize larger social problems that required political responses.
Are they still linked to urban renewal?
Like a smaller version of public parks, community gardens and street trees, window gardens can contribute to green gentrification. This occurs when the construction of parks or the planting of trees contributes to an increase in property values that leads to the displacement of long-term residents in low-income neighborhoods.
Window gardening did help save some of Philly’s old row house neighborhoods from demolition during urban renewal beginning in the 1950s. However, quite a few of these neighborhoods – such as Washington Square West and Graduate Hospital – have since been gentrified, and families who once window gardened to turn their neighborhoods into more beautiful and safer places could no longer afford to live there.
The 20th century window-box activism drew the attention of sociologists and other national and international observers, especially because it brought white and Black residents together during the tensions of the Civil Rights Movement. It also raised public awareness about unequal access to urban green spaces.
In gentrified parts of Center City today, new and restored row houses often include fixtures and built-in irrigation pipes for window boxes. Many owners outsource window-box planting and maintenance to paid service providers.
But for lower-income residents, the costs in both time and money to install and maintain window gardens can be prohibitive.
Sonja Dümpelmann 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.
Many school districts have adopted an evidence-based literacy curriculum called the “science of reading” that features phonics as a critical component.
Phonics strategies begin by teaching children to recognize letters and make their corresponding sounds. Then they advance to manipulating and blending first-letter sounds to read and write simple, consonant-vowel-consonant words – such as combining “b” or “c” with “-at” to make “bat” and “cat.” Eventually, students learn to merge more complex word families and to read them in short stories to improve fluency and comprehension.
In practice, Louisiana used a variety of science of reading approaches beyond phonics. That’s because different students have different learning needs, for a variety of reasons.
Yet as a scholar of reading and language who has studied literacy in diverse student populations, I see many schools across the U.S. placing a heavy emphasis on the phonics components of the science of reading.
If schools want across-the-board gains in reading achievement, using one reading curriculum to teach every child isn’t the best way. Teachers need the flexibility and autonomy to use various, developmentally appropriate literacy strategies as needed.
This was the case with my own child. He had been a proficient reader from an early age, but struggles emerged when his school adopted a phonics program to balance out its regular curriculum, a flexible literature-based curriculum called Daily 5 that prioritizes reading fluency and comprehension.
I worked with his first grade teacher to mitigate these challenges. But I realized that his real reading proficiency would likely not have been detected if the school had taught almost exclusively phonics-based reading lessons.
Another weakness of phonics, in my experience, is that it teaches reading in a way that is disconnected from authentic reading experiences. Phonics often directs children to identify short vowel sounds in word lists, rather than encounter them in colorful stories. Evidence shows that exposing children to fun, interesting literature promotes deep comprehension.
Balanced literacy prompts children to learn words encountered in authentic literature during guided, teacher-led read-alouds – versus learning how to decode words in word lists. Teachers use multiple strategies to promote reading acquisition, such as blending the letter sounds in words to support “decoding” while reading.
Another balanced literacy strategy that teachers can apply in phonics-based strategies while reading aloud is called “rhyming word recognition.” The rhyming word strategy is especially effective with stories whose rhymes contribute to the deeper meaning of the story, such as Marc Brown’s “Arthur in a Pickle.”
The rhyming structure of ‘Arthur in a Pickle’ helps children learn to read entire words, versus word parts.
After reading, teachers may have learners arrange letter cards to form words, then tap the letter cards while saying and blending each sound to form the word. Similar phonics strategies include tracing and writing letters to form words that were encountered during reading.
There is no one right way to teach literacy in a developmentally appropriate, balanced literacy framework. There are as many ways as there are students.
What a truly balanced curriculum looks like
The push for the phonics-based component of the science of reading is a response to the discrediting of the Lucy Calkins Reading Project, a balanced literacy approach that uses what’s called “cueing” to teach young readers. Teachers “cue” students to recognize words with corresponding pictures and promote guessing unfamiliar words while reading based on context clues.
A 2024 class action lawsuit filed by Massachusetts families claimed that this faulty curriculum and another cueing-based approach called Fountas & Pinnell had failed readers for four decades, in part because they neglect scientifically backed phonics instruction.
The intention here is for learners to acquire words in the context of engaging literature. But critics of Calkins contend that “cueing” during reading is a guessing game. They say readers are not learning the fundamentals necessary to identify sounds and word families on their way to decoding entire words and sentences.
Here are five evidence-based tips to promote reading for all readers that combine phonics, balanced literacy and other methods.
1. Maintain the home-school connection. When schools send kids home with developmentally appropriate books and strategies, it encourages parents to practice reading at home with their kids and develop their oral reading fluency. Ideally, reading materials include features that support a diversity of learning strategies, including text, pictures with corresponding words and predictable language.
K. Dara Hill 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Todd L. Ely, Associate Professor of Public Administration; Director, Center for Local Government, University of Colorado Denver
Prospective students tour Georgetown University’s campus in Washington in 2013.AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
With the Trump administration seeking to cut federal funding for colleges and universities, you might be wondering whether the endowments of these institutions of higher education might be able to fill those gaps. Todd L. Ely, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, explains what endowments are and the constraints placed on them.
What’s an endowment?
Endowments are pools of financial investments that belong to a nonprofit. These assets produce a revenue stream, typically from dividends, interest and realized capital gains. The funds endowments hold usually originate as charitable donations made to support an institution’s mission.
In most cases with higher education endowments, this wealth, which helps buoy a nonprofit’s budget, is supposed to last forever.
Contributions to endowments are tax-deductible for donors who itemize their tax returns. Once these funds are invested, they grow generally tax-free. But beginning in 2018, the federal government imposed a 1.4% excise tax on dozens of higher education institutions with relatively large endowments.
Few colleges or universities have a single endowment fund.
That’s because the donors who provide gifts large and small to the school over the years direct their donations to different funds reserved for specific purposes.
People pose for photos in front of the iconic Tommy Trojan statue on the campus of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2019. AP Photo/Reed Saxon
In 2024, nearly half of all higher education spending paid for with endowment revenue funded scholarships and other kinds of aid for students, while almost 18% supported academic programs. Just under 11% paid for professors’ compensation, and almost 7% helped pay for running and maintaining campus facilities.
More broadly, endowments can help shield schools from financial hardships and maintain their long-term reputations.
This long-term focus suggests that endowments aren’t just rainy-day funds or financial reserves.
Why can’t endowment funds be spent freely?
At the end of the 2023 fiscal year, U.S. higher education endowments held a total of more than $907 billion. That is a lot of money, but it’s still less than the combined wealth of America’s five richest people.
Like individual wealth, endowment assets are heavily concentrated in the U.S.
And even when schools have large endowments, the individual funds that compose them are bound by a wide array of restrictions. Some of that money can be spent however the school would like. Other funds are dedicated to a clearly defined purpose.
When endowment funds are restricted, the school gets little discretion in how to spend them.
At Harvard, for example, there’s a Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard University. It was established in 1721 through a gift from a London merchant. Based on the terms of that long-ago donation, the earnings and growth of the donated funds continue to honor the donor’s intent by supporting the position, regardless of what the university needs.
Alternatively, endowments may receive donations that are temporarily restricted. Known as “term” endowments, the assets they hold can be used once donor-imposed conditions are fulfilled.
Institutions frequently designate some of their unrestricted funds as “quasi” endowments, usually earmarked for specific strategic purposes. This board-designated quasi-endowment does not carry legal restrictions and can be spent more freely.
About 40% of higher education endowment assets are subject to permanent restrictions, 30% are temporarily restricted, and 29% are reserved for quasi-endowment use.
People walk past the Ray and Maria Stata Center on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019. AP Photo/Steven Senne
How are decisions over endowment funds made?
The decision-making authority over endowments typically rests with a college or university’s governing board. Those boards establish endowment payout policies that guide how much of the endowment and its earnings can be spent each year, while attempting to preserve the purchasing power of the investments over the long term.
The policies take expectations regarding investment earnings and inflation into account, while smoothing annual payouts by using a percentage of the value of the endowment over multiple years as opposed to a single point in time. This payout tends to amount to about 5% of all assets. That share averaged 4.8% in 2024.
Colleges and universities that depend more heavily on their endowment funds to cover their current obligations may choose to invest more conservatively. In recent years, many higher education endowments have obtained more complex investments, such as private equity, real assets and stakes in hedge funds.
Endowments of nonprofit colleges and universities are also governed in most states by a state law known as the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. This law encourages cautious investments and restrained spending.
These restrictions mean that annual payouts are generally modest. That leaves endowments ill-equipped to respond to abrupt and large shifts in their funding needs.
The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School, is a member of The Conversation U.S.
Todd Ely works for a university that has an endowment and receives federal research funding.
Above the Arctic Circle, oil producers on Alaska’s North Slope send an average of 465,000 barrels of crude oil south each day for shipping to refineries and users around the country and the world.
As a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage who studies the economics of natural resources, I can see this apparent contradiction has a straightforward cause but no simple solution.
But that is just the beginning: The North Slope also has the potential for another 200 trillion cubic feet that remains undiscovered. And improving technologies and techniques may be able to extract another 590 trillion cubic feet, according to the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a company owned by the state of Alaska that is trying develop a project to extract and sell the state’s natural gas.
For decades, there have been numerous proposals to develop Alaska’s gas. State agencies and the petroleum industry have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this effort.
The concept that’s closest to reality is Alaska Gasline Development Corp.’s proposal to build a plant on the North Slope to remove gas impurities, a liquefaction plant near Anchorage that could export 20 million tons of liquefied gas each year – around a trillion cubic feet – and an 807-mile pipeline to connect the two.
Since his first day in office, President Donald Trump has touted this pipeline as part of efforts to expand the nation’s production of fossil fuels. He told a joint session of Congress it was a near-ready project, with Japan and South Korea ready to invest “trillions of dollars each.” In February 2025, he stood alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to announce a “joint venture” to develop the pipeline project, but no specific details have been announced.
There is a growing need to address Alaska’s domestic energy shortfall.
South-central Alaska relies on natural gas for more than 70% of its electric and heating needs. But the gas reserves closest to Anchorage, in the Cook Inlet, which have provided energy to the area since the 1960s, are dwindling, and prices are rising. In 2005, wholesale gas prices were $3.75 per 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas. By 2024, the price had more than doubled, to $8.75. By contrast, the rest of the U.S. has seen natural gas prices cut in half over that period, thanks in part to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.
In 2022, Hilcorp, the company responsible for roughly 85% of the Cook Inlet gas production, reported that by 2027 it might not be able to supply enough gas for utilities that serve the region.
Solutions other than the pipeline are also slow and expensive. Local utilities estimate that improving energy efficiency and developing renewable power could reduce gas demand by around 10% over the next several years and by as much as 15% after a decade. But retrofitting the area’s aging and energy-inefficient homes will not be fast or cheap.
More than just economics
What remains for Alaska are two main options: get gas from the North Slope to Anchorage, or import liquefied gas from the global market.
Building the pipeline could both meet the needs of Alaska’s people and bring in money from global sales – though how much revenue depends on how global gas markets change over time and how competitive Alaska gas prices would be relative to other suppliers.
Any delays from financial, legal, technical or environmental challenges would balloon costs. But if it succeeded, Anchorage-area customers could see prices drop as low as $2.23 per 1,000 cubic feet – a 75% drop from current prices and 40% lower than in 2005. The savings could significantly bolster the region’s economy.
Importing is a costly option. A study commissioned by the Alaska Legislature found that imported gas would cost $13.72 per 1,000 cubic feet. That’s 60% more than current prices and especially burdensome for Alaska families and businesses, which already pay far higher energy bills than typical American customers.
Beyond the economic questions, there’s something symbolic at stake: the state’s identity. Could a state synonymous with energy production become an energy importer? Many Alaskans see the prospect as an embarrassing paradox – akin to Hawaii importing pineapples or New Mexico importing green chiles.
Independence and globalization
Alaska is not alone in grappling with the tension between energy self-sufficiency and economic efficiency.
Across the U.S., states rich in resources have wrestled with the question of whether to prioritize local production or integrate into global markets. Texas produces more oil than any other state, yet it continues to import crude oil due to mismatches between its production and refining capacity.
Shaped by globalization, few regions can truly isolate themselves from market forces. Energy production and consumption are increasingly interconnected, meaning pursuit of local self-sufficiency comes at a steep economic cost. That’s the question facing Alaska: whether to invest in domestic infrastructure to maintain energy independence, or embrace the flexibility – and potentially lower cost – of global markets.
Brett Watson receives funding from First National Bank Alaska to conduct research on the Alaska economy, including energy issues. He has previously received funding from Power the Future for work on Alaska mineral issues.
It sometimes seems like some patients are able to stay alive out of sheer willpower. But for many people, behind the scenes are a village of people and an ongoing series of conversations that help patients be able to celebrate their child’s graduation or travel to a place they’ve always wanted to go.
We asked Dr. Michelle Riba, director of the psycho-oncology program at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, to explain how meaning matters just as much as medicine at the end of life.
What factors come into play at the end of life?
Psychosocial factors that affect a person’s mental health and well-being – such as stress, social support, depression and anxiety, and socioeconomic status – play an important part of all parts of life, but especially at the end of life. End of life refers to the days, weeks or months after somebody is told that they have a disease that can be fatal.
Questions about meaning and what’s important to a patient and their family are important at all times. But when somebody is diagnosed with a grave illness, these questions become particularly important to acknowledge in medical conversations. As many doctors like to say, patients aren’t the disease, they have a disease.
We want to give patients control about how they want to live their lives in the most meaningful way, especially at the end. And this includes how they want to use their time, energy and resources, who they want to spend their time with and where they want to be.
How does the ‘will to live’ affect treatment and survival?
There was a new movement starting in the 1960s to 1970s that believed a person’s attitude and outlook on life could affect their health and longevity. People like minister Norman Vincent Peale promoted the idea that a positive mindset could help improve outcomes. Psychologist Martin Seligman developed the field of positive psychology that focused on subjective well-being by promoting resilience and human flourishing. The idea that you could do better if you were optimistic resonated with many people, including physicians.
Then surgeon Bernie Siegel proposed the specific idea that staying positive after a cancer diagnosis could extend your life, and that became a major focus of the movement. However, there was little to no data to support his claims. The studies researchers conducted to figure out whether it was true that people who were more positive lived longer or had a lower prevalence of cancer than those who did not were either flawed or did not consistently show this effect.
Eventually Siegel’s ideas were disproved. But for a long time, they affected how patients felt about themselves and how their families addressed illness. My own patients would tell me, “How can I be positive? I can’t eat, I’m in pain and I’m sick.” They felt guilty that they couldn’t feel positive and optimistic, and that caused extra stress and reduced their quality of life.
Additionally, the social determinants of health – such as a patient’s environment, race, education and wealth – are also very important to their health and longevity. Having a good social life, money and not being discriminated against makes it easier to stay positive and do better in life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were less likely to do well if you didn’t have money, or if you were a certain race.
Research shows that patients who have severe mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder often live about 20 years less than somebody who doesn’t. And it’s not just because of the disease. Having a severe mental illness means that you probably can’t work, you probably don’t have financial means, and you may not have family support.
How can doctors help patients feel like they have more control?
In studying how patients could feel more confident, physicians like me realized that having control over their destiny, if you will, didn’t necessarily mean patients had to stay positive. Rather, it meant understanding the things that gave them joy and meaning before their diagnosis, and how clinicians could help them continue to do these things.
For example, a patient who could no longer work because of their cancer or their treatments might miss their sense of routine. Working with them to make a schedule of all their medical appointments and enjoyable activities might help them take control over their days. The structure may provide meaning and help them cope better.
A marathon runner who loses their ability to balance due to a brain tumor is another example. If this patient found meaning and pleasure in running but could no longer run, what could we do to help them regain some of this joy? This might look like starting physical therapy and rehab, or finding alternative activities they can do.
If going to their place of worship is important to a patient but they’re no longer able to, we could see if their rabbi, imam or minister could see them at their home.
Additionally, helping patients continue doing what’s meaningful for them also gives them hope. It helps them know that their physicians feel they’re worth doing that for, and that there’s a life beyond cancer treatment.
How do a patient’s goals factor into their treatment plan?
When doctors give patients hope, patients tend to have better outcomes. That doesn’t mean we’re telling patients something false, or that they’re going to live a longer time. Rather, doctors can help patients improve or maintain their quality of life and achieve certain goals.
For example, a patient may be thinking of attending their child’s graduation two months from now. Their care team can talk to them about how they might be able to do this, or think of other ways they can celebrate.
My mother passed away from cancer a month after I graduated high school. I remember she couldn’t participate in a lot of senior prom activities, like helping me get a dress or do my hair. But my date and I and another couple were allowed to go to her hospital room just before the prom so she could see us all dressed up. And it was one of the most meaningful moments of my life. Though she couldn’t be there for graduation or all the other preparations and celebrations, it mattered to my mother and me that she was able to see my friends and me before prom. Also, very meaningfully, my friends were so kind and thoughtful to make that effort on our behalf.
There have been observations that some patients with terminal illness manage to hold on until after a certain holiday or date. A 1988 study found that the number of Jewish people who died before Passover was lower than expected, and the number of deaths after Passover was higher than expected. While this study had flaws and limitations, other researchers have made similar observations for deaths for specific groups after holidays like Christmas, the Mid-Autumn Festival and birthdays.
But these studies don’t address whether those specific holidays were actually what these patients really cared about. It may be that people made it through something else important to them. It may be that they were able to be with the people they loved at the end. It may be something else entirely. We don’t really know what’s important for someone unless we ask.
Allowing patients and their families to think about what matters most to them and how we can help them achieve their goals is part of our job as physicians.
How do you balance a patient’s medical care with their goals?
Being diagnosed with a terminal illness can be a traumatic event. Patients often can remember where and when they heard the news about a certain illness or scan or problem. How to help people process, understand and live with this to the best of their ability is really the key to having the best quality of life. This means giving them choices and helping them see some ways to address it for themselves and their families.
Sometimes that can be really hard. For patients who really want to travel somewhere, we might figure out a way to defer specific treatments or procedures, or set up appointments for them to be done at the local hospital or clinic. But there’s not much we can do for a patient who wants to attend their young child’s wedding when that won’t be for decades in the future. The medical team does everything it can within reason, and it tries to make sure the patients and their loved ones understand the risks and benefits.
Doctors and patients may also have different goals that can be difficult to meet at the same time. Figuring out how to juggle these agendas and listening to each other during these conversations can be challenging but important.
Everybody is trying to do what they think is right and best for the patient. This means taking care of the whole person, not just the disease. Whether that means reaching a certain holiday or special event, or just gathering together with the people they love, taking the time and effort to understand what is important for the patient and their family is key to good care.
Michelle Riba chairs the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Distress Guidelines.
How then do we practice gratitude during such times?
I am a social psychologist who runs the Positive Emotion and Social Behavior Lab at Gonzaga University. I teach courses focused on resilience and human flourishing. I have researched and taught about gratitude for 18 years.
At the best of times, awareness of the positive may require more effort than noticing the negative, let alone in times of heightened distress. There are, however, two simple ways to work on this.
Generally, negative information captures attention more readily than the positive. This disparity is so potent that it’s called the negativity bias. Researchers argue that this is an evolutionary adaptation: Being vigilant for life’s harms was essential for survival.
Yet, this means that noticing the kindnesses of others or the beauty the world has to offer may go unnoticed or forgotten by the end of the day. That is to our detriment.
Gratitude is experienced as a positive emotion. It results from noticing that others − including friends and family certainly, but also strangers, a higher power or the planet − have provided assistance or given something of value such as friendship or financial support. By definition, gratitude is focused on others’ care or on entities outside of oneself. It is not about one’s own accomplishments or luck.
Thus, it may assist in counteracting the negativity bias by helping us find and remember the good that others are doing for us every day − the good that we may lose sight of in the best of times, let alone in times when Americans are deeply stressed.
But it’s also clear that gratitude can be cultivated through practice. People can improve their ability to notice and feel this positive emotion.
One way to do this is to try a gratitude journal. Or, if the idea of journaling is daunting or annoying, perhaps call it a daily list instead. If you have given this a try and dislike it, skip to the second method below.
Gratitude lists are designed to create a habit in which you scan your day looking for the positive outcomes that others have brought into your life, no matter how small. Writing down several experiences each day that went well because of others may make these positive events more visible to you and more memorable by the end of the day − thus, boosting gratitude and its accompanying benefits.
While the negative news − “The stock market is down again!” “How are tariffs going to affect my financial security?” − is clearly drawing attention, a gratitude list is meant to help highlight the positive so that it doesn’t go overlooked.
The negative doesn’t need help gaining attention, but the positive might.
A second method for practicing gratitude is expressing that gratitude to others. This can look like writing a letter of gratitude and delivering it to someone who has made a positive impact in your life.
When my students do this exercise, it often results in touching interactions. For instance, my college students often write to high school mentors, and those adults are regularly moved to tears to learn of the positive impact they had. Expressing gratitude in work settings can boost employees’ sense of social worth.
In a world that may currently feel bleak, a letter of gratitude may not only help the writer recognize the good of others but also let others know that they are making a beautiful difference in the world.
Monica Y. Bartlett 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.
Imagine a country with deep political divisions, where different groups don’t trust each other and violence seems likely. Now, imagine a flood of political images, hateful memes and mocking videos from domestic and foreign sources taking over social media. What is likely to happen next?
The widespread use of social media during times of political trouble and violence has made it harder to prevent conflict and build peace. Social media is changing, with new technologies and strategies available to influence what people think during political crises. These include new ways to promote beliefs and goals, gain support, dehumanize opponents, justify violence and create doubt or dismiss inconvenient facts.
At the same time, the technologies themselves are becoming more sophisticated. More and more, social media campaigns use images such as memes, videos and photos – whether edited or not – that have a bigger impact on people than just text.
It’s harder for AI systems to understand images compared with text. For example, it’s easier to track posts that say “Ukrainians are Nazis” than it is to find and understand fake images showing Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols. But these kinds of images are becoming more common. Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, a meme is worth a thousand tweets.
Our team of computer and social scientists has tackled the challenge of interpreting image content by combining artificial intelligence methods with human subject matter experts to study how visual social media posts change in high-risk situations. Our research shows that these changes in social media posts, especially those with images, serve as strong indicators of coming mass violence.
Surge of memes
Our recent analysis found that in the two weeks leading up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine there was a nearly 9,000% increase in the number of posts and a more than 5,000% increase in manipulated images from Russian milbloggers. Milbloggers are bloggers who focus on current military conflicts.
These huge increases show how intense Russia’s online propaganda campaign was and how it used social media to influence people’s opinions and justify the invasion.
This also shows the need to better monitor and analyze visual content on social media. To conduct our analysis, we collected the entire history of posts and images from the accounts of 989 Russian milbloggers on the messaging app Telegram. This includes nearly 6 million posts and over 3 million images. Each post and image was time-stamped and categorized to facilitate detailed analysis.
Media forensics
We had previously developed a suite of AI tools capable of detecting image alterations and manipulations. For instance, one detected image shows a pro-Russian meme mocking anti-Putin journalist and former Russian soldier Arkady Babchenko, whose death was faked by Ukrainian security services to expose an assassination plot against him.
The meme features the language “gamers don’t die, they respawn,” alluding to video game characters who return to life after dying. This makes light of Babchenko’s predicament and illustrates the use of manipulated images to convey political messages and influence public opinion.
This is just one example out of millions of images that were strategically manipulated to promote various narratives. Our statistical analysis revealed a massive increase in both the number of images and the extent of their manipulations prior to the invasion.
Political context is critical
Although these AI systems are very good at finding fakes, they are incapable of understanding the images’ political contexts. It is therefore critical that AI scientists work closely with social scientists in order to properly interpret these findings.
Our AI systems also categorized images by similarity, which then allowed subject experts to further analyze image clusters based on their narrative content and culturally and politically specific meanings. This is impossible to do at a large scale without AI support.
For example, a fake image of French president Emmanuel Macron with Ukrainian governor Vitalii Kim may be meaningless to an AI scientist. But to political scientists the image appears to laud Ukrainians’ outsize courage in contrast to foreign leaders who have appeared to be afraid of Russian nuclear threats. The goal was to reinforce Ukrainian doubts about their European allies.
This manipulated image combines French president Emmanuel Macron with Ukranian governor Vitalii Kim. It requires the expertise of political scientists to interpret the creator’s pro-Russian meaning. William Theisen et al.
Meme warfare
The shift to visual media in recent years brings a new type of data that researchers haven’t yet studied much in detail.
Looking at images can help researchers understand how adversaries frame each other and how this can lead to political conflict. By studying visual content, researchers can see how stories and ideas are spread, which helps us understand the psychological and social factors involved.
This is especially important for finding more advanced and subtle ways people are influenced. Projects like this also can contribute to improving early warning efforts and reduce the risks of violence and instability.
Tim Weninger receives funding from the US Department of Defense and the US Agency for International Development.
Ernesto Verdeja 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tony Milligan, Research Fellow in the Philosophy of Ethics, King’s College London
People pay tribute to Pope Francis in the Cathedral of Se, after his death was announced by the Vatican, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 21, 2025. Cris Faga/Shutterstock
When a significant international public figure like Pope Francis dies, the world seems to pause. Tributes pour in, flags lower, candles flicker in city squares. The sadness is palpable. But is this real grief, or something else entirely?
Widespread mourning can look and feel genuine. And in many ways, it is. Most people aren’t faking their sorrow. But public grief often lacks depth and duration – it fades almost as quickly as it appears.
For those who knew Francis personally, the loss will be profound and lasting. For the rest of us, we are witnesses to the passing of a beloved figure, not mourners in the intimate sense.
The world saw this after the deaths of Princess Diana and Pope John Paul II. Both were enormously popular and the global reaction was immense. Yet, weeks after their funerals, the emotional tide began to recede.
This time, the public response to Pope Francis feels more restrained. Less swept away by the moment. Less inclined toward what some psychologists refer to as false emotion – emotions that appear sincere but don’t reflect deep personal experience.
Partly, this is due to Pope Francis himself. He was not one for drama. Partly, it’s a quiet recognition: feeling sad about his death is not the same as being grief-stricken.
Still, the absence of a one-to-one relationship doesn’t necessarily make our feelings inauthentic. Millions may grieve for Francis without having met him. For devout Catholics and others inspired by his leadership, he was a symbol of hope, a voice for justice, humility and reform within an often troubled institution.
His life carried a transformative power, and for those who pinned their hopes on him – on what he represented – his passing may leave a genuine and lasting void. That looks a lot like real grief.
Longing and hope
Every Catholic I’ve ever known has had a “favourite pope.” The new one rarely feels the same. That attachment, though deeply symbolic, is emotionally real.
My father used to tell a story – likely embellished – about growing up in a Catholic neighbourhood in Bridgeton in the east end of Glasgow. When a neighbour’s home caught fire, she pleaded with firemen: “Save him! Save my darlin’!” They rushed in, expecting a person. All they found was a picture of the pope.
Even if exaggerated, the point holds: people feel a real longing for these figures. And that’s what grief is, in essence – a yearning for the impossible return of someone we’ve lost. It’s not just sadness. It’s the ache of a love that can no longer be reciprocated.
Priests who experience crises of faith describe something similar – a desire to return to a state of belief that now feels unreachable. It’s not just about loss; it’s about longing without resolution.
But when the new pope is announced, the atmosphere in St Peter’s Square is not one of despair. It’s a return to hope, not an immersion in grief. People may mourn Francis, but they’re also swept up in collective emotion – a desire to be part of history, part of the moment. That sense of unity can be powerful and real, even if it isn’t grief.
Atheists can feel it as much as believers. We sense it at funerals of people we didn’t really know. We cry because everyone else is crying. Then, days later, we carry on as if nothing happened.
Impossible desire
So, what makes false grief false? It’s not deception or performance – it’s the absence of impossible desire. In true grief, we yearn for what can never return. Most of us, when mourning a figure like Pope Francis, may want something – meaning, comfort, community. This is at the heart of what makes a false emotion false, rather than the real thing.
A false emotion lacks the desire that sits at the heart of its genuine counterpart. In the case of false grief, we may desire something. We usually do. The crowds who gather in St Peter’s Square and those of us who watch events unfold on TV clearly want something. But in most cases we do not have the right kind of impossible desire for our feelings to count as grief. Even if we do think of ourselves as grief stricken, we are mistaken.
Saying this is not at odds with Francis’s own religious tradition. In his biographical Confessions, St Augustine notoriously claimed that we always want unity with God, and we are restless until we achieve it: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
But Augustine also claimed that this longing comes disguised as a desire for all sorts of other things: fame, alcohol, intoxication and the warm pleasures of the flesh. Augustine was a little on the puritanical side about these matters, but his idea of disguised longing may be close to the truth.
The point is that an emotion which presents misleadingly as one thing, may be a real instance of something else. In the case of Pope Francis, this may be this may be closer to spiritual longing rather than actual grief.
And whether or not we believe in a god, and however we want to describe it, longing of this sort is a deep and familiar experience. One that shifts our attention from object to object, or from one public figure to the next, without ever being satisfied.
In a sense, this is also the point of having a pope, or rather a succession of popes. It is easier to attach our longings onto someone human than it is to come to grips with deeper and often unmanageable desires.
Tony Milligan 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 Sara Silvestri, Senior Lecturer & UG Programme Director, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London
I met Pope Francis in 2016. It was part of a symposium of the former Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People (now recast by Francis as the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development). I presented some of my work on migration – as attention to migrants and refugees was a central theme of his pontificate, more prominently than for his predecessor, whom I had also met a few years earlier.
After the conference proceedings, we had an official audience, next to the Sistine Chapel: Francis made a speech and we greeted him one by one. I had my 21 month-old daughter with me that day, thinking of the rare opportunity we would both enjoy.
But I’d underestimated the length of the formalities involved. My daughter screamed “Open the doors, let me out!” through the whole of the pope’s speech. I was distraught, but Francis responded very gently to the disruption. He stopped in the middle of the speech and commented how sweet and lovely it was to hear the voice of a child. I could feel it was not just a platitude – he meant it.
In the disarray that is current global politics, with the world wracked by conflict and injustice, the papacy of Francis I has been a beacon of hope.
In a world that appears to be rearranging itself around the principle that might is right, where the whims and the prejudices of strongmen leaders are blindly followed by millions, he represented the most important ethical helm there is. He did this not by taking on ideological positions but by sticking in a steadfast manner to his message that mercy trumps bullies and that compassion will always prevail over hatred.
The image of Francis delivering a sermon from a pulpit designed to look like a ship’s helm when he visited the island of Lampedusa in 2013 strikes me as very symbolic of his papacy. In his first official trip as pope, Francis drew attention to the marginalised, migrants and refugees inspired by the parable of the good Samaritan. But he did so not in a way that patronised migrants as victims or reduced the church to a humanitarian agency.
He launched into a loud condemnation of the economic and political structures that forced those people on to boats. He railed against the people and conditions that effectively enabled those deaths in the huge cemetery that the Mediterranean has become. Expressing his “closeness” to migrants and determined to “challenge our consciences” and the “globalisation of indifference”, he warned we are all complicit in Cain’s killing of his brother.
Critics may carp that he hasn’t really effected any significant change within or outside the church. That while moves were made towards reforms of church attitudes towards women priests and LGBTQ+ issues, real progress has still to be achieved.
That despite his appeals, death keeps swallowing human lives in the Mediterranean and in conflict zones. Despite his championing of environmental causes, forests are still burning.
But it was not his job to run global politics. While he was, technically, a head of state of Vatican City, he did not see himself as a politician. The instructions for his funeral reiterate this: simple, “as a disciple of Christ” and not like “the powerful of the world”.
He saw his role as a spiritual shepherd trying to serve and protect his flock. His vision of Christianity was about mercy and freedom of conscience, with the church’s place close to the “existential peripheries” of the world, not to the centres of power.
His final message, delivered on Easter Day 2025, is particularly telling. It states: “Evil has not disappeared from history; it will remain until the end, but it no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day.”
This in my view sums up the enormous power that Francis unstintingly asserted among Catholics: the power of unconditional love and mercy – not in an idealised form, but well aware of the presence of evil in the world and respectful of individual freedom.
Reaching across faiths
Because of his courage and the political-but-non-political position that enabled him to speak of ethical issues at the heart of political decisions, Francis became widely respected by religious and political leaders. He was loved by ordinary people from all walks of life and, importantly, belief systems, although some were puzzled by his informal style.
In 2019 he made a joint declaration with the imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, entitled Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. This, and his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, which is subtitled “on fraternity and social friendship”, gave impetus to inter-faith dialogue. As he put it: “God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters.”
The last push Francis gave to the Church between 2021 and 2024 was the Synod on Synodality. This was a major enterprise which aimed to revive the sense of global community of believers and witnesses. It stressed the importance of praying together and exercising discernment in important decisions by acknowledging diversity, listening to each other and to the Holy Spirit.
Interpersonal communication and embracing mercy in order to achieve the common good were two key themes of Francis’ pontificate. He was concerned with the dangers of our individualistic “throwaway culture” and aware of the contradictions of a globalised world where loneliness prevails.
Francis did not solve the problem of carbon emissions, he did not stop wars in Ukraine, Palestine or Yemen. He did not make women priests or deacons, and did not fully embrace the LGBTQ+ community, despite some initial inching towards this.
But he made a space to reflect about all those issues, removing the church from a pedestal, centring it on the joyful message of the Gospel and “bringing it out” to all the people – Catholics and non Catholics alike.
That, in itself, is an immense achievement in the long history and slow transformation of the church.
Dr Sara Silvestri is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at City, St George’s University of London where she teaches religion and politics and runs the Europe research cluster. She is also a Bye Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge University, is affiliated with the Interfaith Research Programme in the Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge, and is a Trustee of the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament. Sara Silvestri has received funding from ESRC, British Academy, Luce Foundation, the King Baudouin Foundation, the Plater Trust, Caritas Internationalis, the European Commission.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol
Running a marathon is no small feat. Athletes can expect to cover between 50-60,000 steps, burn over 3,000 calories and expel multiple litres of sweat to keep cool.
Marathons and other long distance events can be associated with several dangers – including dehydration, electrolyte imbalances and heatstroke. All important reasons as to why it’s crucial to train adequately for the big day, and come prepared.
But there’s another condition that can affect long distance runners – one that can be more than a little embarrassing.
It comes under many guises: runner’s trots, runner’s gut, runner’s stomach, runner’s runs. What we’re referring to is the overactive gastrointestinal tract brought on by the whole-body effects of running. This results in urgent, sometimes explosive diarrhoea.
Runner’s diarrhoea is actually a triad of symptoms: diarrhoea, cramping abdominal discomfort plus a heightened urge to open your bowels. It’s actually more common than you think – with up to 96% of endurance runners reportedly experiencing some sort of gastrointestinal symptom during a race.
In most cases, runner’s trots are not considered concerning, especially if the condition is adequately managed as you would any episode of acute diarrhoea – with fluid and electrolyte replenishment. But in some extreme cases, there have been signs of blood in the runner’s faeces. This suggests that in some people, the condition may be caused by mechanical damage to the bowel – perhaps as a result of this organ being sloshed around in the abdomen during a long run.
Why it happens
But what causes it in the first place? We aren’t entirely sure, but most experts have established several different causes which might play a role in generating these symptoms.
The first clue may lie within the blood supply. When you start to exercise, your body shifts its attention away from resting and digesting, and diverts blood to tissues and organs that need it more – namely the heart, lungs and muscles. Prolonged reduced blood flow to the gut could irritate and inflame its lining. This might also affect the bacterial colonies that reside within the gut. This may explain why a recent study suggests probiotics may work as a treatment.
Other studies have considered the effect of nutrition upon gut activity. Certain foods are associated with increased gut activity and fermentation, such as protein, fat and fibre. This is why most runners avoid foods high in these before a long run, often consuming a breakfast which is higher in simple, easily digestible carbohydrates.
There are many reasons why you might develop an overactive gastrointestinal tract while running a marathon. Michael Mong/ Shutterstock
In addition, some of the other nutrients and substances we commonly use as a welcome boost for heavy exercise might be culprits. Take caffeine, for instance. These stimulants might boost our energy, but they can also have a laxative effect in some people.
And carbs are not entirely without blame. Evidence suggests that some carbs can not only increase the speed at which foods move through the gastrointestinal tract, they can also cause fluid retention and fermentation within the gut, making diarrhoea and gas more likely. These include the lactose in cow’s milk products and high fructose fruits, such as apples, pears and grapes.
Finally, it’s possible that an attack of the nerves may be (in part) to blame for the runs. Not only do stress and mood have associations with irritable bowel syndrome, it has also been suggested that psychological factors, such as anxiety, may be associated with runner’s diarrhoea.
What can you do?
Is there anything you can do to avoid needing the loo somewhere on your marathon route?
Nutrition does seem to be key. Eat an energy-rich and familiar breakfast (one you know won’t bother your stomach) with the minimum of fibre, fat and protein. It’s not good to choose the day of a big event to challenge your gut with unfamiliar foods. One example might be a toasted bagel (or indeed plain white toast), or a low-fibre breakfast cereal, that’s based on rice or corn rather than bran. Fruits lower in fructose include strawberries, raspberries and bananas.
Ideally, give your chosen breakfast a test drive before a training session to see what the effect is. In addition, separating your meal and the starting line by 2-3 hours gives the gut some time to get going on digestion, and to mobilise fuel for action.
Hydration is important. Make sure not only to drink water, but replenish electrolytes as well since both water and sodium are easily lost in sweat. Consuming water or sports drinks in small but regular bursts can help alleviate the problem of needing the toilet.
Perhaps one of the best ways to recognise and prevent runner’s diarrhoea is to sit back, observe and listen to your own body. Yet another reason why preparation is so important. Training for a marathon should take place over months, not days or weeks. This gives ample time to recognise gut symptoms, but also what might be triggering them.
Some athletes find it useful to keep a diary, detailing symptoms and activity for the day, in order to spot trends more easily. You can also trial simple tactics, such as specific nutrition, hydration and training plans to see what effect they have. Everyone is different, and will respond to exercise and diet in different ways.
In any event, if you get caught foul (sometimes quite literally) of runner’s trots, try to take a break, slow down and rehydrate. Also remember that most marathons have toilets at frequent intervals, in case the moment should grab you.
Dan Baumgardt 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.
Even if you’re a runner, you may not have heard the term “Jeffing” before. It’s a method of alternating between running and walking and it’s become a popular way to train for long-distance races.
It’s particularly timely, as we appear to be in the middle of a second running boom, the first having taken off in the 1970s and 80s. You can see it in the popularity of parkrun, the rise in mass participation events, and the seemingly endless market for running shoes, watches and other gear.
But despite all this enthusiasm, the idea of running can still be off-putting for many people. Some believe that unless they can run continuously at a certain pace or distance, they aren’t a “real runner”, especially when they find themselves comparing their progress with others.
That’s where Jeffing comes in. This walk-run technique allows people to keep moving forward at their own pace. It balances effort and recovery in a way that makes endurance running more accessible to a wider range of people and abilities.
The concept was invented by American Olympian and coach, Jeff Galloway in the 1970s. It’s a strategic way of combining walking and running, sometimes with jogging too.
Galloway describes it as a revolutionary approach that reduces fatigue, prevents injuries and makes running more enjoyable. “By alternating between running and walking runners can go farther, recover faster, and feel stronger during and after their workouts,” he says.
In this sense, Jeffing shares some similarities with “fartlek”, which is Swedish for “speed play”. Fartlek is a training method that was developed in 1930s Sweden by cross-country runners looking to improve their performance. It also involves alternating bursts of fast and slow running.
Research shows that there were significant improvements in cardiovascular and speed endurance in just 12 weeks of fartlek training.
The difference is that Jeffing operates at a lower intensity, and the walking breaks allow the body to recover more fully.
What are the benefits of Jeffing?
One of the biggest advantages of Jeffing is that it can help you go further. Because the body’s energy stores aren’t being depleted all at once, many runners find they can cover longer distances than they may have managed with continuous running. Studies show that this may have more benefits than shorter and more intense exercise.
It also lowers the risk of injury because the reduced intensity puts less stress on joints and muscles. This makes Jeffing a popular option for people returning from injury or illness, or anyone keen to stay injury-free while training.
Recovery tends to be quicker, too. Since the body is under less strain, runners often report feeling less fatigued afterwards. This may make it easier to stick to a training plan without burning out.
Jeffing is especially welcoming for beginners. Galloway originally developed the method in 1974 while coaching a group of new runners. After ten weeks of following the walk-run approach, every one of them completed either a 5k or 10k race. The technique is still used by runners of all abilities, including those tackling full marathons.
Jeffing also helps shift the focus away from pace and distance and onto how your own body feels. Galloway’s advice in the early years included the “huff and puff” rule: if you can hear yourself breathing hard, take more frequent walk breaks.
On the other hand, for people who prefer structure, the method can be done with a stopwatch. A run can be chopped up into manageable segments, such as 30 seconds running and 30 seconds walking, as Galloway explains:
By going to a 30 second run / 30 second walk … they run faster without any extra effort because they are only walking for 30 seconds. If that feels good, use it for a while then start creeping up the amount of running while keeping the walking at 30 seconds. After several weeks, you may settle in on something like 45 seconds run/30 seconds walk, or you may just run faster during your 30 seconds of running.
Although popular, this approach to running won’t appeal to everyone. Some runners may feel that breaking up a continuous run with walk breaks interrupts their rhythm or makes them feel like they’re not really running. But from my perspective as a runner and athletics coach, anything that helps more people participate in exercise should be welcomed.
Many marathon runners will be using Jeffing as a way to prepare for their next event. They may use the technique in a structured way or just instinctively walking when they need to, to help them reach the finish line.
So whether you increase the running time or just stick with short bursts, Jeffing may let you run in a way that suits your body – and that’s what really counts.
James Thie 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.
