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March 26, 2026

The television will not be revolutionised: HBO Max’s UK launch shows how streaming now resembles the TV it replaced

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Smith, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of Salford

The Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service HBO Max has launched in the UK. If you’re trying to work out the best way to access its content, you are faced with a choice that surely shouldn’t be this complicated.

You could subscribe to HBO Max Basic with Ads, which provides access to HBO shows like Euphoria and The White Lotus, and some films in Full HD. However, Warner Bros movies that have recently ended their theatrical run, such as the Oscar-winning Sinners and One Battle After Another, will not be available via this tier.

Alternatively, you could sign up to the Sky-owned Now platform’s new Entertainment & HBO Max Membership. This tier automatically includes the same HBO Max Basic content with ads, but displayed at a lower screen resolution. Want your Now service to match the picture quality of HBO Max’s cheapest tier? For that, you’ll need Now’s Boost add-on at an increased cost.

Neither option gives you everything, and both require you to read the small print to fully understand the restrictions they impose. And this is before you have even considered the other six monthly subscription plans HBO Max is offering at launch and the various price points available on Now. By the time you’ve weighed it all up, you might ask, wasn’t streaming supposed to make watching television simpler?

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is another prequel series to Game of Thrones on HBO Max.

The erosion of simple streaming

When the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) sector emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s with Netflix at its forefront, it was marketed as something liberating. It was presented as offering a clean break from the linear broadcast, cable and satellite television services it sought to replace. Viewers could watch what they wanted, when they wanted, free of commercial interruption, and at their own pace. The sector promised a personalised viewing experience free from broadcasters’ schedules.

Yet the range of options facing UK viewers at the launch of HBO Max appears to be at odds with the sector’s founding promise of convenience and autonomy. As my colleague Laura Minor and I argue in our book Television Goes Back to the Future: Rethinking TV’s Streaming Revolution (2025), streaming platforms have already begun eroding that promise.

For instance, many SVOD services now regularly adopt weekly episode releases for series rather than the full-season drops that once distinguished streaming from traditional broadcasters. A further example is the sector’s introduction of ad-supported tiers, reintroducing the commercial interruption that subscription platforms originally promised to leave behind.

HBO Max’s UK launch, however, generates a more specific kind of friction for consumers. That is, its arrival creates uncertainty over what viewers are getting, from whom, and at what cost – a confusion rooted in the shared history between HBO and Sky in the UK.

For 15 years, British viewers have associated HBO’s prestige programming with Sky. The channel Sky Atlantic was launched in 2011 largely as a vehicle for HBO shows after Sky secured exclusive UK rights to them. Series like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and Succession all had their UK home on Sky Atlantic. For many British viewers, HBO content has become synonymous with Sky programming.

Now, with HBO Max having arrived as a standalone service, that cultivated brand association has been distorted but not cleanly severed – Sky and Warner Bros Discovery struck an updated distribution agreement in 2024 ensuring an ongoing relationship between the two companies. This branding muddle was evident in the weeks leading up to HBO Max’s launch, when the hit Game of Thrones prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was identified on the Now platform as Sky Atlantic programming, while HBO Max’s own UK page branded it as an HBO Original.

Both descriptions were technically accurate, but for a viewer trying to make sense of the streaming landscape, the effect was disorientating. Now has since relabelled the show as HBO Max content to coincide with the HBO Max launch, but the example illustrates the deeper confusion about where HBO content now sits in the UK market, caught between a long-standing association with Sky and a new platform asserting its own identity.

Uncertainty about HBO Max’s future adds to the complexity of the platform’s launch. Paramount Global agreed to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in late February 2026, and Paramount’s CEO David Ellison has confirmed plans to ultimately merge HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming service.

How the combined service will operate and how the shift will affect existing UK subscriptions remains entirely unclear. HBO Max, then, has arrived in the UK as a platform that may not exist in its current form for long. Viewers are being asked to familiarise themselves with a new platform and navigate its relationship with Sky and Now, while its parent company simultaneously plans to fold it into something else.

The brand muddle stemming from HBO’s entanglement with Sky, and the corporate uncertainty over what Paramount Global intends to do with the HBO Max service are specific to this case.

However, the broader confusion surrounding HBO Max’s UK launch is symptomatic of a streaming sector that has come to resemble the television landscape it aimed to revolutionise. Viewers are now confronted by a sprawl of overlapping brands, tiers and add-ons that demands the kind of careful navigation more commonly associated with conventional cable and satellite TV packages.

This is a trend that looks set to continue, with analysts noting that streamers are becoming increasingly focused on bundling strategies and diversifying the range of subscription tiers they offer. This means the experience of subscribing to streaming services in 2026 feels more like a return to complexities it was supposed to move beyond – rather than a liberation from them.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Anthony Smith 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.

– ref. The television will not be revolutionised: HBO Max’s UK launch shows how streaming now resembles the TV it replaced – https://theconversation.com/the-television-will-not-be-revolutionised-hbo-maxs-uk-launch-shows-how-streaming-now-resembles-the-tv-it-replaced-277932

March 26, 2026

The Sudanese revolution seven years on: undone but not defeated

Source: The Conversation – France – By Robert Kluijver, Visiting researcher at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, Leiden University

In 2019, a popular uprising in Sudan ended 30 years of Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist military dictatorship. Protesting masses brought down the regime and imposed a return to civilian rule. While a political settlement was being negotiated at the national level, local communities experimented with self-governance. But the armed forces seized power again, fell out among themselves, and plunged the country into war – producing one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent years.

What has become of the revolutionary impulse amid all this mayhem? What are the prospects for a return to civilian rule?

Despite the ongoing fighting, Sudanese civilians are starting to return home, pushed by dire conditions inside Sudanese displacement camps or driven back by hostility in neighbouring countries. Egyptian authorities have been expelling Sudanese refugees with or without papers.

Entrepreneur and women’s empowerment activist Randa Hamid describes a typical returnee’s experience: arriving at Port Sudan, the country’s only operational international airport, driving to a largely empty Khartoum, reduced to rubble and stripped of infrastructure, finding home and workplace thoroughly looted, and encountering local officials more interested in self-enrichment than in reconstruction. Sad, but safer than it has been the past years.

Since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) reconquered Khartoum in March 2025, a degree of stability has returned to parts of the country. The SAF now controls central, northern and eastern Sudan while the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hold the west; the south remains contested.

The SAF’s main political ally is the Muslim Brotherhood, whose networks provide fighting forces and governance experience to the military. Civilian positions are filled by old-regime figures: the corrupt oligarchy that provoked the revolution is reclaiming power uncontested.

Anniversary celebrations of the uprising last December were followed by the arrest of their organisers – while pro-democracy activists are hunted down by the SAF.

Current prospects for peace are bleak. The SAF is seeking total victory over the RSF rather than a negotiated settlement, presaging many more months or years of conflict. Any eventual deal between them would probably amount to Sudan’s division. Given the fragmented nature of both forces and ongoing contests over areas such as South Kordofan and Blue Nile, even that would be unstable.

From resistance to emergency response

The Sudanese resistance committees (RCs) that drove the revolution had formed as neighbourhood solidarity groups in the years before it.

IMF-mandated neoliberal policies under Omar al-Bashir had withdrawn the state from its social functions, forcing communities to rely on one another. Alongside trade unions and professional organisations, the RCs mobilised mass sit-ins that brought the regime down.

Crucially, they declined to join the transitional civilian-military coalition – the Forces for Freedom and Change – that governed briefly under former UN official Abdullah Hamdok. Their wariness of co-optation proved well founded when the military staged a coup in October 2021.

The committees instead maintained their horizontal, participatory approach, established a national charter and became incubators of cultural creativity, youth entrepreneurship and public life. With hindsight, the Sudanese revolution was an early instance of the Gen Z mobilisation now visible globally. It was remarkable for the full participation of women and the absence of the racism historically embedded in Sudanese public life.

When fighting erupted between the SAF and RSF in Khartoum in April 2023 and spread rapidly, the resistance committees became targets of both factions. Their members fled abroad if they could, to continue their civilian advocacy. Those who remained devoted themselves to setting up Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – virtual spaces, typically messaging groups, through which communities share information, needs and resources.

Jasour Abu Algasim was involved in the revolutionary movement from its earliest days and helped establish an ERR in Khartoum. He noted that state collapse allowed resistance committees to play a stronger public role. When war came, they pivoted from society building to survival.

Mohamed Younis, Director in Sudan of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, points out that solidarity initiatives unconnected to any political agenda – communal kitchens, volunteer brigades repairing infrastructure, community evacuations – emerged in nearly every affected community.

While international agencies struggled with security and logistical obstacles, local solidarity groups became the primary collective survival mechanism. Attention from abroad, however, was focused on the ERRs, which were twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The aid dilemma

Donors frustrated by the difficulty of reaching those most in need have begun insisting that NGOs channel funds through the response rooms, viewing them as the most authentically democratic forces available. The logic is appealing, but Younis identifies the following unintended consequences.

Donor accountability requirements – detailed documentation of recipients, bio-data, dedicated administrative capacity – consume the very resources ERRs need for direct assistance. Both volunteers and communities face danger if such records fall into hostile hands. The ERR’s role shifts from autonomous community actor to service provider for foreign donors, typically via chains of international and local NGOs that each add their own requirements and consume a share of the budget.

This leaves no room for local strategic input. Communities are reduced to “beneficiaries” of programmes designed elsewhere. The vertical control mechanisms that donors and NGO partners impose skew the horizontal decision-making that characterises self-governing bodies. Internal accountability to volunteers and community members is replaced by external accountability to funders. Finally, this chain of command causes the response rooms to be perceived – by combatant factions and potentially by local populations – as instruments of foreign political agendas.

The result, notes Younis, is a perverse taxonomy of “good” and “bad” ERRs, distinguished not by service to communities but by compliance with donor requirements. Meanwhile the vast landscape of grassroots solidarity activity outside the ERR label goes unrecognised. “Decolonisation of aid” has therefore become a priority for the Sudanese civilian sector. Yet the trend toward increasing donor control over shrinking aid flows is likely to intensify rather than abate.

External factors

Sudan’s revolution alarmed the region’s autocracies much as the Arab Spring had eight years earlier. Containing democratic contagion remains a priority for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as more distant regional powers. They also support strongman rule to facilitate the control over Sudan’s mineral wealth – particularly gold – and its rich agricultural lands.

Western support for democratisation meanwhile has grown tepid. Multilateral bodies such as the African Union, the UN and the EU, unable to reach civilian forces inside Sudan, rely on exiled politicians and civil society leaders. The current coalition of civilian forces in exile, Sumoud (“steadfastness”), follows its predecessor Tagadum, which collapsed over the question of a government-in-exile.

Sarra Majdoub, a member of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, has witnessed successive civilian peace initiatives. She noted that efforts by exiled civil society leaders to reconnect with civilians inside the country are blocked by hostile authorities, unreliable communications, the dispersal of the population and material hardship.

Diasporic communities, by contrast, are readily mobilised online and end up occupying the entire bandwidth of “Sudanese civil society.” The question of how representative they are, or whether they can influence events on the ground, remains unresolved.

Civilian rule versus vertical governance

Sudan’s future will be determined by the clash between two colossal forces. On one hand, the military-landowning bloc, backed by regional powers and holding a monopoly on violence. It has ruled the country with few interruptions since independence in 1956. On the other, the mostly young Sudanese masses who tasted the promise that the revolution offered before the country was plunged back into war.

Hadia Hasaballah, a university professor in Omdurman who participated in the first wave of the uprising, now heads the women’s section of Sumoud. Rather than relying on existing political formations, she calls for the recognition of the youth-led mass movement in Sudan that embodies the values of the revolution: freedom, peace and justice. She is adamant that the regression to Islamist rule visible under the SAF – two women were sentenced to death by stoning in February 2026 – is no longer acceptable to Sudanese women, youth and minorities. They experienced the freedoms of the revolutionary period and will not simply relinquish them.

The Sudanese crisis reflects a wider tension in democratic politics between representational and participatory models. The resistance committees and emergency response rooms embody an emergent participatory politics being actively suppressed by actors with interests in vertical control.

Yet the Sudanese activists and analysts, on whose expertise this article draws, agree on one thing: the groundswell of young people of all backgrounds, united around freedom, peace and justice, constitutes a remarkable and durable foundation for genuine civilian rule. How they can wrest control from the military is, for now, nearly inconceivable – but eventually, they will.

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Robert Kluijver ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. The Sudanese revolution seven years on: undone but not defeated – https://theconversation.com/the-sudanese-revolution-seven-years-on-undone-but-not-defeated-278245

March 26, 2026

BBC gets a new director general: how others have fared in the hardest job in UK media

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol

Matt Brittin has been named the new director general of the BBC. He joins the broadcaster after almost two decades working at Google: he was its president in Europe, the Middle East and Africa before leaving in 2024. He is already on the board of the Guardian Media Group.

The director general is the most senior executive at the BBC. The first director general was John Reith (later Lord Reith), a near legendary figure who dominated the organisation during its foundational period in the 1920s and 1930s.

Reith played a key role in establishing broadcasting in Britain and creating the BBC. He had an obsession with controlling all elements of the BBC’s work and was determined to increase his own power at the expense of subordinates and of the BBC’s board of governors.

Reith made the director general the most powerful office in the BBC. That power has since been diluted over the decades, but in theory the director general still has oversight of all the varied aspects of the BBC’s work. They must also defend the corporation from public criticism and take responsibility when things go wrong. Given the amount of criticism that the BBC has faced in recent years, this may be the hardest job in the UK media.

Crucially, the director general is regarded as editor-in-chief of BBC news content, and ultimately carries the can when problems arise in its current affairs coverage. This has brought down several directors general in the past.

In 2011, George Entwistle resigned over revelations concerning the BBC and the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, and his mishandling of unfounded allegations broadcast by the BBC concerning Lord McAlpine. Entwistle only served 54 days in post.

Tim Davie resigned from the top job last year amid accusations that BBC current affairs coverage had breached its own editorial code on impartiality. Most notably, footage of a speech by Donald Trump had been misleadingly edited when shown on Panorama. The BBC still faces an unprecedented $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit from the US president.

Brittin will need to deal with these editorial issues. One of his first tasks will be to hire a new CEO of News, as Deborah Turness resigned along with Davie.

He will also have to lead the BBC into a brave new world. The TV licence system, which provides the BBC with most of its funding, is likely to be drastically reformed or abolished entirely. This may be accompanied with major changes in how the BBC is run and functions, as its royal charter is renewed over the coming year.

More and more of us are replacing analogue radio and live television with streaming. With his tech background, Brittin may be well placed to lead the BBC through this transition. He also faces the unenviable task of defending the BBC against inevitably escalating criticism during the charter review period. Candidates for the job do not seem to have been lining up at the doors of Broadcasting House.

Changing the BBC

How have previous directors general fared in times of profound change? The BBC struggled to find an effective leader during the second world war until William Haley, an experienced newspaper editor and director, was appointed. Haley expertly steered the BBC through the final stages of the war and into peacetime, navigating difficult questions about government intervention, possible commercial competition and, with the rise of TV, technological change.

Haley significantly altered the BBC’s radio offering to provide listeners with more choice, and set out to reestablish its television service, fending off the threat of commercial competition for almost a decade.

In the 1960s, Hugh Carleton Greene (brother of the novelist Graham Greene), shook up British broadcasting yet again, helping the BBC adapt to the possibly existential challenge posed by a young and feisty ITV. Greene focused on providing crowd-pleasing entertainment, but also pushed the boundaries of taste and opinion by establishing the political satire show That Was The Week That Was, and supporting hard-hitting dramas like Cathy Come Home and Up The Junction.

Haley and Greene both demonstrated what a confident director general, intent on securing the changes that would allow the BBC to survive, could achieve.

Old BBC microphone — Past directors general have navigated the BBC through times of peace, and war.
seeshooteatrepeat/shutterstock

A more divisive figure was John Birt, later Baron Birt, who held the post from 1992 to 2000. Birt had made his name working for the BBC’s competitors in commercial TV. He was a devotee of new ideologies of corporate leadership and change. At the BBC he was determined to break up the dominance of its powerful departmental leaders and to impose central control.

In the wake of scandals over public affairs coverage that toppled one of his predecessors, Alasdair Milne, Birt demanded adherence to a new editorial code. And in order to prevent Margaret Thatcher’s government privatising the BBC, he set up a complex system of internal markets and external programme commissioning. Business consultants and highly-paid senior managers were recruited from the private sector to spearhead reform. Over 10,000 staff were laid off. Some people thought that Birt saved the BBC, but the playwright Dennis Potter likened him to a Dalek.

Brittin, like Birt, is an outsider to the BBC. Will he be a Dalek, or The Doctor that the BBC needs to vanquish its political and commercial adversaries? Appointing a leader from the world of big tech might give the BBC a valuable weapon in a media landscape dominated by the US-based streaming giants.

Brittin may also have the corporate leadership skills needed to bring a large, fiendishly complex organisation full of independently minded people through the massive changes that seem necessary if the BBC is to survive and flourish. Whether he has the equally crucial skills needed to be the public face of the BBC, defending it on-air and in the press against its many assailants, remains to be seen.

Simon Potter 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.

– ref. BBC gets a new director general: how others have fared in the hardest job in UK media – https://theconversation.com/bbc-gets-a-new-director-general-how-others-have-fared-in-the-hardest-job-in-uk-media-279263

March 26, 2026

Waste being used to tackle erosion poses a health risk – an anthropologist explains the dilemma

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Declan Murray, Research Associate, Anthropology, University of Manchester

A field of waste fills in the gully that has formed between houses on either side in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Declan Murray, CC BY-NC-ND

I was standing with a waste management supervisor – let’s call him David – at the back of a major fruit and vegetable market in Dar es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania. David and I watched as his team raked the market’s waste from a holding bay into the back of a big, yellow tipper truck.

“We’re not taking this to Pugu,” David said. “We’re taking this to an illegal site”.

Pugu is Dar es Salaam’s only official landfill site. All of the rotten produce, peel, leaves, water bottles, soft plastic and cardboard being loaded into the truck should have been sent there. But Pugu is a two-hour drive away. Fuel costs are expensive and there will probably be a queue of trucks waiting to dump through the site’s single entrance. People also have to pay to dump waste at Pugu.

By going to an illegal site, David can save time and money.

“No photos,” David said as we neared the illegal site. I put my phone away. We drove down a steep, compressed sand track riven with dried-up channels. Ahead of us, the ground levelled out into a field of many colours; a field of waste.

I could make out the outlines of popular white plastic milk packets and blue plastic pouches used to package snacks around the city. These were tangled up with old clothes and used nappies. On the far side, the land rose steeply again, populated with houses overlooking the site.

While the team dumped the waste from the market, I introduced myself to some locals sat watching nearby. They were at pains to tell me that this was not a valley. It was a gully, they said. There is no river here. Instead, they told me that heavy rain had caused the land to give way and several houses to collapse. In order to stem the erosion they had asked local leaders to bring waste to fill in the gully, to literally fill in the land, and so protect the remaining houses from collapse.

In my 2025 study, I defined this practice as “literal landfilling”. It’s apparently widespread and longstanding in the city, yet it has been curiously missing from official and academic discussions of the waste management system in the city. Until now.

big yellow truck backs into building to fill up with waste — A tipper truck gets filled up at the market in Dar es Salaam.
Declan Murray, CC BY-NC-ND

A waste win?

Between 2022 and 2024, I spent nine months studying the waste management system in Dar es Salaam as part of a wider research programme on plastic waste in developing countries. That residents welcomed the waste of contractors like David made the literal landfill seem like a win-win-win for contractors; local authorities and residents. Markets, streets and neighbourhoods are cleared of waste, contractor profits are maintained and no more residents lose their homes. But at what cost?

Colleagues of mine found that pathogens like cholera and E. coli can thrive on plastic surfaces for three to four weeks. Plastic waste might even be driving the emergence of new diseases.

I asked some of the local residents whether they were worried about the health consequences of living right next to this open landfill site. Most conceded they get ill but this was a minor inconvenience relative to the possibility of losing the concrete home they have built.

Rather than being a happy alignment of interests, my research shows that literal landfilling is a trade-off between short-term, visible economic gain and longer-term, unknowable losses to human and environmental health.

In 2023, the World Bank launched the Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Development Project (DMDP), a US$438 million (£330 million) initiative to improve urban services in the city.

Joining a long history of initiatives and plans to solve the city’s waste management problems, the DMDP hopes to modernise Pugu to improve access and reduce waiting times. It also promises the introduction of transfer stations around the city where contractors can deposit waste for sorting and then return quicker to collection than having to drive out to Pugu.

If realised, these plans could resolve the supply side of the literal landfill equation – contractors will no longer be incentivised to dispose of waste in gullies. However, the DMDP makes no mention of gully erosion in the city nor are there any other schemes to address it.

Until the literal landfill is recognised in official and academic discussions of waste management in Dar es Salaam, residents will still look to protect their assets unfortunately at a cost to their health. The demand for waste will remain.

Declan Murray 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.

– ref. Waste being used to tackle erosion poses a health risk – an anthropologist explains the dilemma – https://theconversation.com/waste-being-used-to-tackle-erosion-poses-a-health-risk-an-anthropologist-explains-the-dilemma-277101

March 26, 2026

God on their side: how the US, Israel and Iran are all using religion to garner support

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Toby Matthiesen, Senior Lecturer in Global Religious Studies, University of Bristol

America’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, sports an array of tattoos with Christian messaging, including one which reads “Deus Vult”, God wills it, and is associated with the medieval crusades. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, while leading a Christian service at the Pentagon on March 25, Hegseth reached for biblical language to describe the war against Iran.

He called on God to “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them”. In other words, for Hegseth this is a holy war in which he calls on god to “grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence”.

This war is not primarily about religion. But leaders on all sides have used religion to justify their actions. Not for decades have political leaders of all three major Abrahamic faith traditions invoked parts of their respective traditions to legitimise war in this way. The way faith and religious scripture and doctrine have been used by the US and Israel to justify launching their war in Iran is a worrying development, and one that highlights the growing relationship between religion and authoritarian nationalism.

It has also deepened the animosity with Iran, where politicians and religious leaders have themselves invoked religious and messianic narratives. But Iran is an Islamic Republic in which religion has a significant constitutional role.

The Israeli prime minister used religious imagery on February 28 while announcing the start of the war. He invoked the Jewish holiday of Purim, which fell on March 2-3 this year, and which celebrates the Jewish escape from a plot by Haman, an evil Persian official, to annihilate the Jews in the ancient Persian Empire. He said:

My brothers and sisters, in two days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim. 2,500 years ago, in ancient Persia, an enemy rose against us with the exact same goal of completely destroying our people. But Mordechai the Jew and Queen Esther, with their courage and resourcefulness, saved our people. In those days of Purim, the lot was cast, and the wicked Haman fell along with it. Even today on the holiday of Purim, the lot was cast, and the end of the evil regime will also come.

Netanyahu has also compared Iran to the biblical Amalekites (a theme he has used to refer to Hamas in Gaza, drawing criticism from the United Nations). The Amalekites were arch enemies of the Jewish people, who the Old Testament God ordered to be completely destroyed, “men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”. Netanyahu’s government rests on an alliance with religious Zionists, who frequently invoke religious references to justify Israel’s policies.

American evangelism

The first amendment of the US constitution, meanwhile, guarantees freedom of religion and effectively prevents one faith being favoured over any others. That said, about 70% of Americans identify with a religious faith (the vast majority are Christians) and there is evidence of the growing influence of evangelical Christianity on the Maga movement and the Trump administration.

On March 5, the US president was joined for prayers in the Oval Office by a group of evangelical pastors. Placing their hands on him, prayed “for your grace and protection over him…and over our troops”. The video of the American president engaging in a group prayer while engaged in a major war went viral.

At the start of the war, hundreds of US troops reported being told by their commanders that the war was “part of God’s divine plan” and that: “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

Evangelical movements have vastly increased their political influence in the US and across the world. They often support right-wing politicians domestically and Israel internationally, believing in Christian Zionism or that the strengthening of the state of Israel will ultimately lead to the erection of the Temple in Jerusalem and hasten the arrival of the day of judgement.

Challenged by evangelical movements, the Catholic church, in contrast, has condemned the war as “immoral” and “unjust”, and denounced Israel’s attacks on Christians in Lebanon. Pope Leo, himself an American, has called the war a “scandal to the whole human family”.

Iranian martyrdom

The Israeli killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke a norm in international relations in more ways than one. It is the first assassination of a head of state by a foreign country in many decades. And it is the first time in centuries – perhaps ever – that one of Shi’ism’s most senior Grand Ayatollahs has been killed by a foreign power.

Many other senior Shia clerics – some of whom had had a difficult and sometimes even antagonistic relationship with Khamenei and the system he represented – declared him a martyr. Assuming his father’s role as supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei delivered remarks that heavily emphasised martyrdom and messianism – including an opening reference to the “Hidden 12th Imam”, who is meant to return on the day of judgement, according to Shia doctrine.

In Iran, Twelver Shia messianism and Iranian nationalism have long been interwoven, especially since the revolution of 1979. Now, Iran’s Shia clerics have declared the defence of the homeland as a sacred duty.

What the other branches of Islam think of the war is more complicated. Some senior non-Shia clerics, including the mufti of Oman – a prominent scholar of the Ibadi branch of Islam – declared Khamenei a martyr. The Sunni mufti of Iraq even argued that all Muslims should support Iran. There have been protests denouncing the war in Pakistan, India, Yemen, Indonesia and beyond.
But other major Sunni clerical institutions or movements have not been so vociferous in their condemnation for the death of Khamenei or the need to support Iran. This – quite apart from the at times bitter antagonism between Sunnism and Shi’ism – also has to do with the fact that Iran swiftly started attacking major Sunni-majority countries that host American military bases.

Messianic and apocalyptic elements of all three major Abrahamic faith traditions have been instrumentalised by increasingly authoritarian leaders in a global confrontation. While there are voices in all three traditions criticising this use of religion, it is setting a dangerous precedent. And while the war has been criticised as being in breach of international law, the reckless use of religion to support this war has not. This should change.

Toby Matthiesen 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.

– ref. God on their side: how the US, Israel and Iran are all using religion to garner support – https://theconversation.com/god-on-their-side-how-the-us-israel-and-iran-are-all-using-religion-to-garner-support-279337

March 26, 2026

Sovereignty over stereotypes: The data behind false Cherokee identity claims in Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daniel Heath Justice, Cherokee Nation citizen, Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English, University of British Columbia

From writers and academics to politicians and even convicted murderers, why are people who claim to be Cherokee so prominent in Canadian “pretendian” cases?

Although Métis, Mi’kmaq and Abenaki communities are the Nations most often targeted by unsubstantiated and false claims to Indigenous heritage in Canada, the controversies involving Cherokee claimants may surprise many Canadians.

This is not unexpected. In the United States, it’s so common for non-Native people to claim Cherokee heritage that a family history myth has taken root — one so pervasive that even Ancestry.com warns users against it.

The “Cherokee syndrome” is a phenomenon in which someone claims an unverified distant Cherokee ancestor as the sole foundation on which they build a shallow Indigenous identity.

The roots of ‘Cherokee syndrome’

Most discussions of this phenomenon point to a mix of motivations for these heritage claims.

They include the desire for white settler descendants to distance themselves from their heritage’s history of colonial violence, co-opting Indigeneity for personal or political purposes — often to support right-wing white grievance politics — and basic greed for resources and opportunities belonging to Indigenous Peoples.

In all cases vague, essentialist claims to supposed “blood” are asserted as being more important and more “real” than actual Indigenous cultural belonging, verifiable kinship or confirmed political status.

As a globally recognized Indigenous Nation with a long history of intercultural exchange and intermarriage with newcomers, Cherokees feature prominently in these questionable family mythologies more frequently than other Nations, but only because of stereotypes and visibility, not because of actual relations.

This is increasingly reflected in available data, including national census figures in the U.S. and Canada.

A mismatch between identity and reality

The U.S. Census Bureau has tracked Indigenous heritage claims for decades, and Cherokee is overwhelmingly the group identity most commonly appropriated by Americans.

For example, from 1970 to 2020, Cherokee identification on the U.S. census increased by 2,221 per cent — an astonishing rate far exceeding the general population increase of 63 per cent. This can only be attributed to significant changes in self-identification.

In 2020, “Cherokee” was the top-cited Indigenous affiliation in 35 states, although the three federally recognized Cherokee Tribal Nations and reservations are in only two: Oklahoma and North Carolina. In fact, in 2020, there were more than a million additional Americans who self-declared as Cherokee than there were actual Cherokee tribal citizens.

This is true on the local level as well. The Cherokee National Research Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, provides extensive genealogical support for those seeking evidence of Cherokee heritage. Of 4,005 total research requests from 2022 to 2024, only 80 people — two per cent — had any confirmed evidence of Cherokee heritage.

Legitimate Cherokee relations aren’t particularly obscure or difficult to trace. Actual Cherokee scholars like me know that we’re one of the best-documented peoples in the world, with an extensive and detailed documentary archive, as well as community genealogists and researchers who can assess relations with high reliability.

Collating available data from national, tribal and institutional sources indicates that only three to seven per cent of people in the U.S. who assert a public Cherokee identity have any verifiable relationship to living or historical Cherokee communities; 93 to 97 per cent of claimants do not.

This troubling pattern repeats in Canadian census figures as well. In the 2021 census, 10,825 people in Canada identified as being Cherokee. Of the three Cherokee Tribal Nations, the Cherokee Nation has the most inclusive citizenship criteria and the most comprehensive records for genealogical confirmation, yet our own official citizenship data show only 145 Cherokee Nation citizens in Canada.

Figures from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) were unavailable, but would likely be 20 to 30 at most, given their significantly smaller base populations. Even accounting for potential EBCI and UKB figures and a small number of verifiable non-citizen descendants, we would find at most about two per cent of people who claimed Cherokee heritage in Canada having any substantiated relationship with actual Cherokees, past or present.

Tellingly, of the 10,825 “Cherokee” respondents, 5,660 — 52 per cent — are Canadians whose families have been in Canada for three or more generations. Entrenched claims to Cherokee heritage therefore run deep in a surprising number of Canadian families — troubling histories that are only just coming to light in an analysis of the impacts of self-Indigenization and pretendianism.

False claims undermine Indigenous sovereignty

Pretendianism is a direct attack on Indigenous sovereignty and the rights of Native Nations to determine their own protocols of citizenship and belonging.

Believing a quaint family story is one thing, but it becomes deception — and even criminal fraud — when used to unethically access Indigenous relationships and resources, and becomes violence when used to attack Indigenous rights and undermine policies meant to improve Indigenous lives.

The arts, politics, and academia are increasingly sites of fierce debate and even chilling litigation as questionable claims to Indigenous heritage come under increasingly scrutiny from communities, activists and researchers.

The number of Canadians who have used such claims in troubling ways is not insubstantial, and neither are their impacts. Long-celebrated Canadian writer Thomas King and the libertarian Alberta premier, Danielle Smith, are prominent “Cherokee” examples, but they are by no means alone. (Incidentally, Smith is also on record claiming “Métis from America’s Midwest” heritage while consistently pandering to reactionary anti-Indigenous attitudes.)

Cherokee sovereignty and Cherokee people experience real harm when the overwhelming majority of people who insist their unsupported claims are genuine have no actual relationship to Cherokees, no familiarity with or understanding of histories, cultures, languages, struggles or hard-fought rights; no investment in our Nation’s well-being, no respect for our Nation’s political sovereignty and legal orders and no care for or commitment to our actual families or relations.

Using unsubstantiated claims to assert a public Cherokee identity not only misrepresents the ongoing reality of legitimate Cherokee experience, but also deforms how Cherokee belonging and sovereignty are understood in the non-Indigenous cultural imagination, as well as in law and politics. And this, like all the poisonous fruits of colonial violence, is harmful to all Indigenous peoples, not just Cherokees.

Cherokee relations are profound, abiding and verifiable realities. They are far from the self-serving extraction fantasies of colonizers and their claimant descendants, regardless of which side of the 49th parallel they call home.

Daniel Heath Justice has received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. Sovereignty over stereotypes: The data behind false Cherokee identity claims in Canada – https://theconversation.com/sovereignty-over-stereotypes-the-data-behind-false-cherokee-identity-claims-in-canada-275903

March 26, 2026

The raccoon raiding your garbage bin might just be solving a puzzle — for the fun of it

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Hannah Griebling, PhD Candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Stewardship, University of British Columbia

Ever woken up to find that a crafty raccoon has overturned your garbage bin and spread the discarded contents of your life across the street?

Raccoons — sometimes referred to as “trash pandas” — are renowned as excellent innovators and problem-solvers who can often find their way through the trickiest barriers in their search for food.

A raccoon stands on a clear box, leaning their paws over the side to fiddle with a puzzle. — A raccoon working on opening a multi-solution puzzle box.
(Hannah Griebling)

So how do raccoons adapt their problem-solving strategies as tasks become more difficult? And will they still engage in problem solving even if it doesn’t lead to a food reward? We designed a research experiment to find out.

We were startled to discover that raccoons were intrinsically motivated to solve multiple puzzles within a 20-minute trial, even when finding a solution did not directly lead to an irresistible marshmallow.

Innovative brains, like primates

Raccoons often engage in problem-solving when foraging in human-dominated areas, and have several adaptations that allow them to do this.

First, they have a high number of neurons packed into a relatively small brain. Their neuronal density is more similar to that of primates than other carnivores.

They also have highly dexterous forepaws adapted for foraging in streams, and a generalist diet that allows them to eat nearly everything we throw away.

A raccoon perched on a water fountain, drinking water. — Raccoons frequently use human household equipment and technology for their own purposes.
(Unsplash/Fr0ggy5)

As researchers, we were curious to discover whether raccoons change their strategies as problems become more difficult. For example, what does a raccoon do if the garbage bin is open, versus if it has a lid or if that lid is locked?

We were also curious whether their problem-solving follows what we call an exploration-exploitation trade-off.

An irresistable marshmallow reward

To explore these questions, we gave raccoons a multi-access puzzle box. These boxes are used in animal cognition research to study problem solving and innovation. They have multiple problems to solve so the animal can access a single food reward.

Typically, researchers give the animal a multi-access box and let the animal solve a puzzle of their choosing to access the reward. Then, the researcher locks that solution and the animal must innovate a new way into the box.

Instead of locking the solutions on the box we asked a simple question: What would happen if we left the box unlocked and let the raccoons freely interact with it? Would they keep going back to the same solution type that they already knew how to use, or would they explore and open new solution types?

Would they open the box once, get their food reward — a single marshmallow — and be done? Or would they keep playing with the box even after the food
reward was gone?

A raccoon tries to open a box with turn knobs and padlocks. — A raccoon has successfully opened a turn knob solution on the multi-solution puzzle box and is working on removing an unlocked lock from the hasp latch.
(Hannah Griebling)

Raccoons solve problems for fun

What the raccoons did was surprising. We expected them to find multiple solutions on the box. We did not expect them to continue looking for solutions after they found the single marshmallow inside the puzzle box.

They seemed to be intrinsically motivated to open multiple solutions within a 20-minute trial, even when solving the puzzle didn’t directly lead to a marshmallow reward.

In fact, the raccoons were discovering multiple solutions on the puzzle box even when the problems got more difficult to solve, and they could see and feel with their forepaws that there wasn’t another marshmallow in the box.

When the going gets tougher

As those problems became more difficult, the raccoons began to quickly hone in on a single solution to keep returning to.

This follows an exploration-exploitation trade off, where it’s more beneficial to exploit a single solution when the problems are more difficult, since solving them takes more time and effort from the raccoon.

Racoon stands behind a puzzle box, trying to find a way in. — A raccoon works on a medium difficulty solution.
(Hannah Griebling)

Imagine standing on a city street, feeling hungry. You see your favourite restaurant, where you love the food, and you see an interesting new one next door. Where do you choose to eat?

Humans and non-human animals are faced with these decisions all the time: when to “explore” and try a new thing, and when to “exploit” our own knowledge.

If that new restaurant down the street is expensive, you might be less inclined to try it over your favourite dish served at your usual place.

Success in ever-changing cities

This propensity to innovate and problem-solve, even when it doesn’t directly lead to an extrinsic reward like food, might be familiar to most of us. It’s what drives our desire to solve a crossword puzzle or conquer a new video game.

This intrinsic motivation could help raccoons succeed in urban environments. In cities, resources are often changing rapidly — one night a raccoon might get into someone’s garbage, and the next night there’s a brick on top of the garbage bin to try and keep the raccoon out.

The more problems raccoons learn to solve, the more they might be able to access resources in ever-changing cities. Of course, that might annoy some of us, but we can admire raccoons’ ability to thrive alongside us.

Sarah Benson-Amram receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, the University of British Columbia, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund.

Hannah Griebling 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.

– ref. The raccoon raiding your garbage bin might just be solving a puzzle — for the fun of it – https://theconversation.com/the-raccoon-raiding-your-garbage-bin-might-just-be-solving-a-puzzle-for-the-fun-of-it-277942

March 26, 2026

Millions are protesting – but boycotts might be key to changing government policies

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Lisa Schirch, Professor of the Practice of Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

The ‘No Kings’ protests have drawn millions of Americans and may grow even larger. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

The organizers of the estimated 3,000 “No Kings” protests, rallies and other events planned for March 28, 2026, say they expect that the protests will be the largest such mass mobilization in U.S. history.

As scholars of peace studies and social movements, we investigate how ordinary people press their governments to change their policies.

An estimated 7 million Americans took part in the 2,100 “No Kings” protests on Oct. 18, 2025, breaking all previous records. But research that we and other scholars have conducted indicates that massive turnouts at protests may not be enough to achieve the goals of a protest movement, such as bringing about changes in government policies.

We believe that protest movements can be more effective when they place more emphasis on boycotts of corporations that support a government’s agenda than on increasing the size and scope of these protests.

That’s because history suggests that boycotts are uniquely suited to expand public participation and reach the scale necessary for political change. Boycotts attract first-time activists with simple “buy this, not that” instructions. They offer easy ways for people to feel heard with little investment of time, money or risk.

Rise of the ‘No Kings’ movement

The “No Kings” movement has been holding nonviolent protests across the U.S. since June 2025 to express mass opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.

Its organizers include a range of nonprofits. They include those supporting civil rights, such as the American Civil Liberties Union; LGBTQ+ rights, like the Human Rights Campaign; progressive political groups, including Indivisible and MoveOn; and unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers.

The protests’ organizers are harnessing growing public opposition to President Donald Trump’s second administration. Gallup’s final presidential poll, for example, conducted in December 2025, found that only about 1 in 3 Americans approved of his performance.

In March 2026, Fox News found that 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement effort, and a CBS poll found that 6 in 10 oppose the U.S. war with Iran.

The “No Kings” movement from the start has objected to harsh federal immigration enforcement tactics, including the rapid growth in the number of immigrants being detained and deported. The March 28 protests will also make the widespread opposition to the costly Iran war more visible.

“No Kings” organizers cite other reasons for their protests, such as the White House’s threats to intervene in elections, health care spending cuts and the cessation of many environmental protections.

Four protesters, some in costumes, stand next to a huge American flag. — Many of the ‘No Kings’ events on Oct. 18, 2025, took place in small towns, like Shelburne, Vt., pictured here.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

Opposition to Trump is spreading

The “No Kings” protests have spread to more parts of the United States than ever before.

Protests have taken place in every state – in large cities like Dallas, Philadelphia and Phoenix, as well as thousands of smaller towns like Corydon, Indiana, and Hamilton, Montana. The protests even drew thousands of people in some GOP strongholds.

Researchers find that only a small part of the population needs to protest, boycott or strike to create strong pressure. If 3.5% of a population participates in nonviolent protests or boycotts, it can lead to policy changes.

In the United States, 3.5% of the population translates to nearly 12 million people. The “No Kings” movement would need to nearly double in size from its October 2025 levels to reach this threshold.

Boycotts could help reach this tipping point.

How boycotts work

Economic boycotts have a long history as a tool of collective protest as people withdraw their labor, purchases or cooperation to pressure powerful institutions.

Boycotts are a form of mass noncooperation that enables more people to resist without taking time off from work, engaging in confrontation or risking arrest. While demonstrations signal dissent, boycotts change incentives for business leaders. When boycotts cause companies to lose customers and profits slump, they can become unexpected allies in public opposition.

For example, after mass protests against federal immigration raids in Minneapolis, many of the biggest corporations operating in the state released an announcement that called on the government to de-escalate to reduce tensions in the area.

Public support for boycotts

Several consumer boycotts are underway in the U.S., with many taking aim at the Trump administration’s policies.

Boycott leaders focus on major companies, such as Target, Walmart, Amazon and Home Depot, that have donated to the White House ballroom construction project and other causes Trump is personally spearheading,

People’s Union USA, a movement seeking to leverage the power of U.S. consumers, organized what it called a nationwide “economic blackout” on Feb. 28. The organizers urged Americans to avoid spending any money for 24 hours to protest corporate influence over U.S. policies. It’s unclear how effective that boycott was.

Where corporate boycotts have worked

In the 1980s, consumer boycotts of white-owned businesses in South Africa reduced profits and drew global attention to the government’s support of apartheid, a discriminatory system that denied rights to the country’s Black majority. As business suffered, white business leaders pressed for reforms, contributing to the end of apartheid and South Africa’s multiracial elections in 1994.

In the U.S., different boycotts from both the right and the left have compelled Target to change its policies in recent years. Right-wing boycotts demanding the removal of LGBTQ+ Pride merchandise in 2023 caused Target to curtail its embrace of diversity practices.

After Trump’s 2025 executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Target faced left-wing boycotts for ending its Racial Equity Action and Change program. The company’s sales fell and its stock declined by 33% in the first three quarters of 2025.

In March 2026, boycott leaders declared victory, saying that the boycotts led to Target’s weak financial performance.

Following the growing wave of consumer boycotts, several media companies have also faced pressure from the public.

In September 2025, Disney suspended late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose program airs on ABC, after Kimmel suggested that right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed by a fellow conservative. The comedian accused Trump supporters of using his death to “score political points.” Disney owns ABC.

Kimmel’s suspension triggered a rapid public backlash. Three million viewers called for a Disney boycott to disrupt the company’s streaming revenue. Facing mounting risks to its reputation and bottom line, Disney reversed course and put Kimmel back on the air. In December 2025, it renewed his contract for the following year.

The episode illustrated how organized consumer pressure can counter attempts at political intimidation when boycott campaigns focus on a company’s core economic interests.

Uncoordinated boycotts can fail

To be sure, many boycotts fail to meet their goals even when they do succeed at raising awareness.

Their economic impact depends on how many people take part, sustained participation, and clear demands. Boycotts lacking adequate coordination and clear aims are likely to fail, especially when different groups target different companies.

The No Kings protests will no doubt continue to reflect mounting public frustration. But to be effective at their goal of reining in many of Trump’s policies and actions, we believe that this vast movement will likely require a larger, focused boycott that can hurt the revenue and reputation of companies that have financially backed the president or provided support for his policies.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Millions are protesting – but boycotts might be key to changing government policies – https://theconversation.com/millions-are-protesting-but-boycotts-might-be-key-to-changing-government-policies-276256

March 26, 2026

The natural birth movement empowers many women but pressure can also work the other way

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frances Hand, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

Childbirth is often framed as a choice between two extremes: “natural” birth or medical intervention. The real challenge is making sure women can decide how they give birth, without pressure in either direction.

Debates about childbirth often focus on pressure to accept medical interventions in hospital, such as caesareans or forceps delivery. But recent NHS maternity inquiries suggest some women feel pressure in the opposite direction. They describe being discouraged from medical assistance even when they believed it would be safer, or better for them.

One healthcare professional giving evidence in the 2022 Ockenden Review, which examined preventable deaths and injuries affecting mothers and babies between 2000 and 2019, described a culture in which avoiding caesarean sections had become a source of institutional pride:

They were always very proud of their low caesarean rates … I personally found all the failed or attempted instrumental deliveries very difficult to deal with. I had never seen so many injuries … or resuscitations … Nothing to be proud of.

Evidence presented to a House of Commons inquiry into the safety of maternity services similarly found that “hundreds of women felt pressure to have a normal birth”, without medical assistance.

During my doctoral research examining childbirth narratives across several major UK maternity inquiries, I analysed thousands of women’s birth stories submitted to public investigations. Some accounts describe women who felt discouraged from receiving medical assistance even when they would have preferred it.

The natural birth movement – which emerged in the mid-20th century as a reaction against the increasing medicalisation of childbirth – advocates for minimal pain medication, midwife-led care, and avoiding caesarean sections and instrumental deliveries where possible. It was designed to encourage women to reclaim control of their bodies from a medical establishment that had, in many cases, taken that control away.

That impulse was legitimate, and the movement has acted as an important counterweight to routinised, unnecessary intervention. But the same cultural force that pushed back against overmedicalisation can, in some settings, tip into a different kind of pressure – one where accepting medical help feels like failure.

When legal rights meet clinical reality

One of the most influential cases in modern medical law addressed this issue of informed choice during childbirth. In Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health NHS Trust (2015), the doctor did not warn the patient about the risks of vaginal delivery because they believed “it was not in the maternal interests for women to have caesarean sections”.

The Supreme Court rejected this reasoning. Instead, it emphasised that patients must receive clear information about risks and alternatives so they can make their own decisions about treatment.

Current Nice guidelines reinforce this principle. They stress that maternity care should support women’s choices during birth and caution against allowing personal opinions to influence the interventions that are offered.

The UK government also recently abandoned the World Health Organization recommendation that caesarean births should not exceed 20% nationally, after concerns that rigid targets were pressuring NHS Trusts to prioritise statistics over safety.

Despite these safeguards, institutional practices can still shape the choices that women feel able to make.

How pressure can shape birth decisions

Some women say these pressures reflect wider cultural narratives about childbirth. In recent years, messages celebrating “natural”, “empowered” or “positive” birth have become increasingly visible in antenatal classes, books and online communities. While these approaches are often intended to build confidence and support informed choice, some women say they can also create an environment in which accepting medical help feels like a failure, or where women worry they may be judged for being “too posh to push”.

These narratives don’t just circulate in parenting spaces or social media. They are also seen in how hospitals – intentionally or unintentionally – present different birth options to expectant parents.

This can feel particularly significant because it comes from institutions that women expect to trust. It shows how legal protections don’t always translate into everyday clinical practice.

In some cases this influence appears in the language hospitals use to describe different birth options. Recently archived material from one hospital promoted non-medicated birth approaches by stating that “treatments are usually non-invasive and rarely cause the unpleasant or long-lasting side effects that can be associated with medication”.

Language like this is often intended to reassure patients. But it can also shape how different options are perceived, particularly when the potential drawbacks of medical interventions are emphasised more strongly than their benefits.

In other cases, the pressures are structural. Some maternity units are organised in ways that make it difficult to move quickly between midwife-led and obstetric wards. Women have described having to walk between departments while in pain and sometimes partially undressed. Situations like this illustrate how problems can arise not from individual professionals, but from how hospital systems are designed.

Finally, recent research by Birthrights, a UK charity that campaigns to protect women’s rights during pregnancy and childbirth, highlights institutional barriers to maternal request for caesarean sections. The organisation found that 113 NHS Trusts do not fully align with Nice guidance. Some policies delayed decisions until 36 weeks of pregnancy, creating uncertainty for expectant mothers.

Pressure to avoid medical intervention should be taken as seriously as pressure to undergo it. Although more than half of first-time mothers experience some form of obstetric intervention, many report feeling ashamed when this occurs.

This matters because some research has linked birth-related shame with an increased risk of suicidal thoughts among mothers, associated with an expressed sense of failure to birth “normally”. When hospital policies create additional barriers to accessing care, they may reinforce these feelings.

Why the term ‘obstetric violence’ matters

Around the world there is growing recognition of the concept of “obstetric violence”, a term used to describe systemic harms that women may experience during childbirth. The concept highlights how these harms often arise not from malicious individuals but from institutional cultures, clinical norms and wider social expectations about motherhood.

Much of the global discussion about obstetric violence has focused on the dangers of overmedicalisation. However, similar pressures can arise when women feel discouraged from accepting medical interventions. In both situations, expectations about the “ideal” self-sacrificing mother can shape how decisions about birth are framed.

In the UK, the term “obstetric violence” is rarely used in policy or public discussion. This reluctance matters. Without language that clearly names systemic harm, it becomes harder to recognise patterns, challenge institutional norms and push for meaningful change.

Many women have positive experiences of both natural and medically assisted birth, and most maternity professionals work hard to support women’s choices. What matters most is that decisions about birth are based on balanced discussions of risks and benefits.

Recognising how pressure can operate in both directions is essential if maternity care is to genuinely support women’s autonomy during childbirth.

Frances Hand 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.

– ref. The natural birth movement empowers many women but pressure can also work the other way – https://theconversation.com/the-natural-birth-movement-empowers-many-women-but-pressure-can-also-work-the-other-way-276090

March 26, 2026

The four types of dementia most people don’t know exist

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Clarissa Giebel, Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Population Health, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast, University of Liverpool

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most well-known types of dementia. Yuriy Golub/ Shutterstock

What most people think of when they hear the word “dementia” is memory problems and forgetfulness. But what people often don’t know is that dementia can cause many different symptoms – affecting speech, behaviour, sleep, motor function and more.

In fact, dementia is an umbrella term. There are estimated to be more than 100 types of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common subtype of dementia, affecting approximately 60% of all cases. Memory loss in one of the most common symptoms of this type of dementia.

But approximately 40% of all dementia cases are considered to be different, rarer types. Unfortunately, having a rarer subtype of dementia often makes diagnosis more difficult and requires more complex care.

Although most people might be aware of some types of dementia – including Lewy Body, Parkinson’s disease dementia and frontotemporal dementia – awareness of other rarer types is low.

Knowing how to spot the signs of these rarer types of dementia early could be crucial in ensuring loved ones get the support they need.

Posterior cortical atrophy

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) affects mostly visual and spatial functioning. Memory is not as badly affected early on as it is in Alzheimer’s disease.

People with PCA can struggle with visual hallucinations and spatial navigation. This can become apparent when reading or judging depth and space on a staircase – making it difficult to judge where the next step is, for example. Symptoms commonly start appearing between the ages of 55 and 65.

There’s still much we don’t know about PCA because of how rare it is. Researchers are still trying to figure out whether PCA is a distinct subtype of dementia or whether it’s an atypical form of Alzheimer’s disease. This is because the brain changes that occur in people with PCA closely resemble those that occur in people with Alzheimer’s disease, although the symptoms are different. It’s also estimated that between 5% to 15% of people with Alzheimer’s have PCA.

Creutzfeld-Jakob disease

Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is a particularly rare form of dementia, affecting about one in 1 million people worldwide.

Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is a prion disease. These diseases involve prion proteins which, for unknown reasons, suddenly change into a three-dimensional shape. The function of healthy prions remains unknown, but they appear to play some role in protecting nerves and brain cells and keeping the body’s circadian rhythm functioning (the natural, 24-hour cycle our body follows that controls everything from sleep, digestions and immunity).

The misfolding of prion proteins in Creutzfeld-Jakob disease causes a very rapid and severe form of dementia, progressing much more quickly than Alzheimer’s disease or Lewy Body dementia, for example. Besides the notably quick nature of progression, people with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease struggle with memory and movement, including sudden jerky movements.

A digital drawing of a misfolded prion, which look like three or four spirals that are clustered over and around each other. — Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is caused by misfolded prion proteins.
ibreakstock/ Shutterstock

Risk factors for this subtype of dementia include old age and genetics (occurring in 10-15% of cases). In very rare cases, it can also develop as a result of contamination – such as from eating beef from cattle infected with mad cow disease.

FTD-MND

FTD-MND is a form of frontotemporal dementia that occurs alongside motor neurone disease.

Frontotemporal dementia refers to subtypes of the disease that cause gradual brain tissue loss in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.

Motor neurone disease, on the other hand, is a rapidly progressing neurological condition which can lead to difficulties breathing, movement and paralysis. Although it affects the brain and nerves, it is not itself a form of dementia.

Approximately 10-15% of people with frontotemporal dementia also develop motor neurone disease. This co-occurence seems to be linked to a mutation in the C9orf72 gene. Because of this genetic link, FTD-MND can run in families.

People with FTD-MND experience several muscle-related issues, including muscle waste, stiffness and problems with swallowing. These are things you would not normally associate with dementia and memory problems.

It’s currently not clear whether frontotemporal dementia develops first and then motor neurone disease, or if it’s the other way around.

Progressive supranuclear palsy

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a rare neurological condition that causes both dementia and problems with movement.

It’s estimated to affect approximately 4,000 people in the UK. PSP is difficult to diagnosis as it overlaps with many other conditions – including Parkinson’s disease.

PSP primarily leads to damage in subcortical brain regions, specifically the brainstem and basal ganglia. These areas are linked to vision and movement.

As such, people with PSP struggle using their eyes and can thus often fall and experience difficulties moving around. People with PSP can also struggle concentrating and problem solving.

Dementia support

As with all dementia subtypes, there is no cure yet. While there are medications that can delay symptoms, these only work in cases of Alzheimer’s disease.

As such, we still need to find ways to support people with other subtypes of dementia as best as possible.

One way of doing this is by properly understanding their condition and their subtype. Knowing that someone might particularly struggle with walking and movement as opposed to memory is important to put the right care in place in advance.

It is just as important to be able to spot the signs early on. Dementia doesn’t just affect memory. Changes in behaviour, problems seeing or falling more frequently, walking or moving differently or difficulty speaking can all be early signs of dementia.

Better understanding dementia’s many forms will hopefully lead to better ways of managing and treating this complex disease.

Clarissa Giebel receives funding from the NIHR and ESRC. She is affiliated with The Lewy Body Society by sitting on the Scientific Advisory Board.

– ref. The four types of dementia most people don’t know exist – https://theconversation.com/the-four-types-of-dementia-most-people-dont-know-exist-278124