A few days after Donald Trump boycotted a G20 summit in Johannesburg, he announced South Africa would not be invited to the next G20 meeting, taking place at his resort in Miami in March 2026.
Trump said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa hosted the November event, citing allegations of a “white genocide” against Afrikaner farmers. This is vigorously denied by the South African government which says such claims are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence”.
Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applications now given priority under a new refugee system.
This preoccupation by some Americans with white Afrikaners has a long history dating back to the publication of a large sociological study focusing on poor white Afrikaners in the 1930s.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to trace the history of the links between white nationalists in the US and South Africa. She says:
South Africa has always been a shadow case for the US. It has been for a century … It’s a way of talking about US politics without ever saying civil rights, without ever saying United States.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feedor find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
Carolyn Holmes has received funding in the past from the Institute for International Education. The Conversation Africa receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
From conflict to prosperity, Nigerian novels trace a history of how Christianity has changed after colonialism.Luis Quintero/Pexels
In African literature, Christianity has usually been shown as a foreign religion brought to the continent by European missionaries and colonisers. But in the past few decades, Nigeria’s writers have dealt with it in a far more complex way as Christianity is rooted in, and transformed by, local realities, ranging from conflict to prosperity.
A new open sourcebook by a scholar of African religion, Adriaan van Klinken, sets out to understand these changes through the eyes of Nigeria’s fiction writers. We asked him five questions.
What made you decide to use fiction to understand religion?
What fiction and religion have in common is that both are works of human imagination and meaning-making. I became interested in literary writing as a commentary on religion. As the late Kenyan writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, put it:
The novel, like the myth and the parable, gives a view of society from its contemplation of social life, reflecting it, mirror-like, but also reflecting upon it.
In the book I ask a two-fold question. How do the novels of today’s writers represent religion as a central part of African social life? But also, how do they reflect on religion, critiquing and reimagining it?
I chose Nigeria because the country has become the continent’s major centre of both literary production and Christian growth. (According to researchers, Nigeria’s Christian population grew by 25% to 93 million from 2010 to 2020. The country is projected to have the third largest Christian population in the world by 2060.)
When I started reviewing novels by contemporary Nigerian writers, I discovered that, in many texts, Christianity is a central theme in one way or another.
So, how is Christianity being written about?
The Nigerian classic Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was published in 1958. It’s about the changes and tensions in traditional Igbo society because of colonisation. Christianity is described as a newly arriving religion. At first it has little traction but thanks to its links to colonial institutions, it gradually grows its influence, causing division in society.
But both African literature and African Christianity have developed. The writers I discuss were born after independence and engage with Christianity in the postcolonial period.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2003 novel Purple Hibiscus signals a transition. In it a teenage Igbo girl, Kambili, grows up in a family dominated by a fanatically religious father.
By contrasting how faith is experienced in two Catholic families, Adichie explores the complexity of Nigerian Catholicism and its transformation from a European missionary product into something locally rooted. Towards the end, Kambili has an apparition of the Virgin Mary in a Nigerian landscape. It’s an empowering religious experience for her.
Adichie invokes Christian imagery and symbols in a story about gender issues. Other writers have done something similar in stories about issues of sexuality (Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees) and ecology (Chigozie Obioma’s The Fisherman). Dominant forms of Christianity are critiqued in these novels for their links to colonialism, patriarchy, homophobia, and environmental destruction. But Christian traditions are also creatively reinterpreted.
Nigerian-born sociologist Wale Adebanwi argues that African literary writers are social thinkers. I expand this to argue they’re religious thinkers, too. They think about and with religion, precisely because religion – not only Christianity, but also Islam and indigenous religions – is part of the fabric of society that shapes their own identities.
What can we learn about Christianity and conflict?
In one chapter I focus on the Biafran War (1967–1970). This tragic episode in Nigerian history is still a source of national trauma, especially among the mainly Christian Igbo people in the east. Although far from simply a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, the civil war shows how religion is enmeshed with other major divisions in Nigerian life. Like ethnicity, economic resources, political power.
The war and its aftermaths are a big theme in Nigerian literature. I discuss two novellas – Chris Abani’s Song for Night and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation. They don’t mention the war by name but can be seen as a commentary on it.
Both tell of the traumatising impact of brutal violence through the eyes of child soldiers. Both draw on Christian objects, texts, and symbols while processing postwar memory and the complex question of forgiveness. Avoiding simple answers, the books suggest Christianity might offer resources for a much-needed path of healing and reconciliation.
Another chapter is about Christian-Muslim relations. This is important given Nigeria’s religious demographics (both Christian and Muslim populations are growing fast, with Muslims in a slight majority). But also because of the history of tensions and conflicts between Christians and Muslims. This has (geo)political significance (just see US president Donald Trump’s threat of military intervention over alleged “Christian persecution” in Nigeria).
They all complicate simplistic views and offer nuanced insight into inter-religious relations in a time of escalating tensions between Christians and Muslims. Written by authors from Christian backgrounds, they interrogate the tendency among some Nigerian Christians to see Muslims as the enemy. They also suggest that Christian radicalisation is part of the problem.
By including Muslim characters who protect Christians, and other examples of Christians and Muslims living together harmoniously, these novels promote an everyday practice of neighbourliness.
How do writers discuss Pentecostalism?
Nigeria, and Lagos in particular, has been described as the Pentecostal capital of the world. Pentecostalism is a fast-growing form of Christianity. It emphasises the experience of the holy spirit, energetic worship, divine healing, and a gospel of prosperity. Nigeria (and Africa more generally) has become a major centre of Pentecostalism. As such it’s become a prominent theme in Nigerian literature.
By and large, it’s not favourably depicted. The satirical novel Foreign Gods, Inc by Okey Ndibe (2014) is a case in point. Through the character of Pastor Uka, it explores how hypocricy, exploitation and deception could accompany the prosperity gospel. It suggests Pentecostalism could be continuing the colonial project, with its hostility towards indigenous religions.
For my part I agree, but argue that the depiction of Pentecostalism in Nigerian fiction is somewhat one-sided. It fails to consider the diversity and possibilities within this movement.
Pentecostalism also gives hope to impoverished communities. It empowers people socially and economically. It creates local and global networks, and even builds new cities.
What do you hope readers will take away?
Of course, I hope people will go and read these novels (as well as many others I couldn’t include). Then they too can experience the fascinating life-worlds in them that religion is such an intricate part of.
Good literature is able to avoid simplistic accounts of religion and social life, because by including a diverse range of characters, viewpoints and events it adds nuance and complexity to the conversation.
Debates about whether Christianity has been good or bad for Africa, and Nigeria in particular, can probably never be settled, because so much depends on context and perspective. Nigeria’s writers offer just that.
Adriaan van Klinken 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.
South African liberation leader Albert Luthuli died on 21 July 1967 near his home in Groutville, in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. A government inquest concluded his death was an accident – that he was hit by a train. This was always disputed by his family and almost 60 years later they were vindicated.
In 2025, a court ruled that Luthuli was murdered, his death the result of “assault by members of the security special branch of the South African police”. The ruling corrects long-standing historical records. It adds Luthuli’s murder to the catalogue of torture and assassination that the apartheid government increasingly relied on to suppress dissent.
Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli was born around 1898. He was an educator, Zulu chief, and religious leader. Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner was also president-general of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1952 until his death at 69.
The ANC resisted white minority rule in South Africa and Luthuli was active in the organisation’s defiance campaign. He became head of the ANC in 1952, four years after apartheid was formalised.
In the last decades of his life, Luthuli was silenced and persecuted. Once democracy was achieved in 1994, honours were heaped on him – his image is the watermark on South African passports.
Much of my research on life writing has focused on autobiography published during apartheid, including analysis of Let My People Go.
It’s a book that deserves to be more widely read. It defies expectations that the autobiographer will offer a candidly personal account of self and life.
Luthuli’s autobiography mostly focuses on the struggle for justice. It depicts a steadfastly moral man whose fight against racist oppression inspired activists within and beyond South Africa, and should still.
Who was Albert Luthuli?
Let My People Go offers a brief sketch of Luthuli’s ancestors and early life. His grandparents were Zulu Christian converts. He was born, he calculated, “in the year 1898, and certainly before 1900” near Bulawayo, in today’s Zimbabwe. He was not born in his ancestral home, Groutville, because his father had left to serve in the Second Matabele War. After the conflict, his parents stayed on at a Seventh Day Adventist mission station.
His father died when Luthuli was a baby. At about 10, he was sent back to Groutville for his schooling. Qualifying as a teacher, he became principal of a small school. A government bursary allowed him to study further at Adams College, where he performed exceptionally well and was invited to join the staff and rose up the ranks. He met Nokukhanya Bhengu there and they married in 1927.
Luthuli loved teaching. However, in 1935, after prolonged urging from tribal elders, he and Nokukhanya decided he was duty-bound to accept nomination as chief of the Umvoti Mission Reserve.
For 17 years, he dedicated himself to improving the lot of the people of Groutville and providing principled leadership in confronting the injustices of racism. He took the “revolutionary step of admitting women” to local meetings. He organised African sugar farmers and held a seat on the Native Representatives Council. In 1938, he was a member of the executive of the Christian Council of South Africa.
In the years that followed he would remain deeply involved in Christian and civic organisations. In 1945 he was elected onto the executive of the ANC’s provincial branch, becoming president of it in 1951 and, in 1952, of the whole organisation.
A young Luthuli. Wikimedia Commons
Overseas travel widened Luthuli’s perspective, whether it was a missionary conference in India (1938) or a nine month church-sponsored lecture tour of the US (1948).
His autobiography recounts in detail his religious, civic and political involvement, weaving in a narrative of increasingly draconian and devastating apartheid policies.
Writing painstakingly and usually without emotion – though disgust and horror sometimes break through – he challenges the “twisted, distorted” versions of history promoted by the regime. He offers meticulous evidence of the irrationality and immorality of racism.
Banned
From 1953, repeated banningorders prevented Luthuli from leaving his home or publishing or distributing any written material. In 1956 he was arrested on a charge of high treason. (Discharged in 1957, he was acquitted in 1961.)
Despite this, Luthuli carried on with his autobiography, dictating his story to his friends Rev Charles Hooper and his wife Sheila Hooper. They compiled the draft which Luthuli then edited.
It was a foregone conclusion that Let My People Go would be banned and Luthuli knew it was unlikely to enlighten apartheid rulers:
There is not really even a common language in which to discuss our agonising problems. (They) cannot speak to Africans except in the restricted language of Baasskap.
The term refers to whites being boss, and anyone classified as non-white adopting a position of subservience.
Nonetheless, the narrator insists that:
If the whites are ignorant of the realities, the fault does not lie with us.
In the book, he repeatedly denies his own importance, reminding readers that much of what he experienced was shared by other oppressed South Africans. This is key to the depiction of his character in the book.
He only briefly mentions his family. He and Nokukhanya have seven children, but he doesn’t share their names and draws a “veil” over any details about their marriage.
From left, statues of Luthuli, Tutu, De Klerk and Mandela, peace prize winners. flowcomm/Flickr, CC BY
Nokukhanya, he writes, “ungrudgingly” assumed full responsibility for their home and smallholding so that he could focus on his public duties. At Adams College, for example, he was also a choirmaster, soccer team administrator and Zulu cultural organiser, and served on an association for African teachers.
Under his leadership, the ANC became a mass organisation. Luthuli had to travel the country in support of the defiance campaign:
I quite literally neglect my family and feel extremely guilty about it.
Luthuli’s reserve is reinforced by his use of the passive voice. For instance, he describes being urged to take leadership roles, rather than seeking these himself.
Nonetheless, even in these apparent self-deflections, Luthuli’s character emerges: his centre of gravity does not lie in the domestic sphere but in service to the community. He is driven by his “desire to serve God and neighbour”.
By refusing the “self-assertion and self-display” that is typical of autobiography, Let My People Go portrays a selfless self.
The humility of a man who cannot be humiliated
Luthuli’s story depicts a humble man who refuses to yield, despite growing persecution. Or, as Charles Hooper observes in the introduction, the “humility of a man who cannot be humiliated”. Luthuli expresses gratitude when outrage might seem more reasonable. He describes his prison cell, when he was ill and isolated, as a prayerful “sanctuary”.
Statue of Luthuli in KwaZulu-Natal, where he was born. J Ramatsui/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Accounts of casual racism, police harassment and brutal assault are harrowing. Hard to read, too, is Luthuli’s self-recrimination. He reproaches himself for “having contributed too little” to the political struggle.
This reserve doesn’t obscure his character, it illuminates it. He emerges as a thoughtful, humble man committed to non-racism, non-violence and justice who even tries to understand Afrikaners’ fears of “being swamped”.
Farsighted, he predicted the rise of “terrorism (and) legalised murder by army and police forces”. Yet he retained faith that “the outcome of the struggle” would be justice for all.
After his release from prison, Luthuli, still banned, lived in isolation in Groutville. He was murdered before the banning order expired.
Judith Coullie does not receive funding from any organisation.
Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during the 17th annual BRICS summit on July 6, 2025. AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo
Far from being a routine bilateral diplomatic event for both countries, the trip was part of a broader trend. Since the onset of war in Gaza in late 2023, sparked by the Tehran-aligned and -funded Palestinian group Hamas, Iran has found itself increasingly isolated and facing a number of political and economic crises. Internationally, Tehran’s network of proxy nonstate groups across the Middle East, its so-called axis of resistance, was stretched to a breaking point with Israel’s brutal campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in late 2024.
As Iranian officials attempt to weather this rocky new reality, they have looked to advance geostrategic interests elsewhere. As an expert on Iran’s foreign policy, I believe one key emergent area for this is Africa, where Iran has increased its outreach to historically dependable and strategically significant partners such as Burkina Faso. This outreach has created important opportunities for Tehran to engage with countries on issues such as security and critical minerals, while also expanding its market for weapons and other exports while bypassing sanctions.
Security, uranium and economy in West Africa
In addition to Burkina Faso, Iran has intensified its outreach to other African countries in West Africa and the Sahel region, such as Mali and Niger.
Since the early 2020s, these countries have experienced military coups and distanced themselves from the West. They have also confronted serious security threats from rebels, militias and jihadists. Consequently, and as was the case with Ethiopia, they have looked toward Iran as a security partner and a potential supplier of arms, drones and other equipment.
For Iran, expanding relations with these African countries holds the benefit of opening up economically critical markets, including metals and minerals. For instance, Tehran has aspired to access gold from Burkina Faso and Mali, and uranium from Niger. Depending on the extent of the damage and destruction to Iran’s nuclear program during the 12-day war, the potential uranium procured from these countries could be particularly critical if Iran decides to reconstitute or weaponize its program.
After the Iranian and Malian foreign ministers met in May 2024, they did so again the following year in October to discuss reinforcing bilateral and multilateral relations.
To this end, both nations agreed to hold a joint economic commission and to show solidarity and support at meetings of international organizations such as the U.N. and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi delivers a speech at the 51st meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on June 22, 2025. Elif Ozturk / Anadolu via Getty Images
In August, Iran sought to strengthen security ties with South Africa – its largest trading partner on the continent by far. At the time, the South African army chief, Gen. Rudzani Maphwanya, made statements supporting Iran and criticizing Israel that created controversy. Between April and October, Iran held meetings and signed agreements with Zimbabwe in the areas of economy, the environment and medical tourism.
While attending the Non-Aligned Movement’s meeting of foreign ministers in Kampala in October, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and thanked him for Uganda’s condemnation of the U.S. and Israel during the 12-day war, during which Uganda evacuated 41 students from Iran. Araghchi also expressed Tehran’s interest and intent on strengthening cooperation with Kampala in agriculture, the economy and commerce.
For Iran, Uganda is strategically important because it possesses not only uranium but also cobalt, which is used to manufacture lithium batteries, superalloys and other industrial products.
While Iran has increased its outreach to reliable and significant African partners across the continent, it has encountered a number of consequential constraints.
For one, there continues to be extensive trade competition from Iran’s Middle East rivals. As recently as 2023, the United Arab Emirates was a top export partner for Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Uganda and Zimbabwe, as well as a top import partner of Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zimbabwe. As it had done with several countries in the Horn of Africa in 2016, the UAE, alongside Saudi Arabia, could pressure others on the continent to reduce or eliminate their engagement with Tehran.
Particularly with the U.N. snapback sanctions now back in place, the ongoing reality of global economic pressure on Iran could also give African countries pause when considering stronger bilateral ties with Tehran. Yet before then, and even with the U.S. reimposing sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, these countries did not simply stop engaging with Tehran.
The final constraint is the transactional nature of Iran’s outreach. This could create distrust among its African partners. In November 2025, for instance, Tehran reportedly supplied drones to Eritrea as tensions escalated between it and Ethiopia. Such a move by Iran could complicate its relationship with Ethiopia and put Tehran in the middle of another conflict between those countries.
Time will tell whether the opportunities outweigh the constraints as Iran attempts to forge closer relations with the continent. Yet for government officials in Tehran weathering sundry crises at home and abroad, it will feel like they have few alternatives than to seek opportunities where they can find them.
Eric Lob receives funding from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is affiliated with the organization as a non-resident scholar in its Middle East Program.
Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.
As a professor of urban planning, I know this isn’t just a hypothetical scenario. It’s the impossible choice millions of Americans face every day as the U.S. housing crisis collides with climate change. And we’re not handling it well.
The numbers tell the story
The migration patterns are stark. Take California, which lost 239,575 residents in 2024 – the largest out-migration of any state. High housing costs are a primary driver: The median home price in California is more than double the national median.
Housing costs are the main driver of the California exodus, the Los Angeles Times notes.
This isn’t simply people chasing lower taxes. It’s a housing affordability crisis in motion. The annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home was about $237,000 in June 2025, a recent analysis found – over twice the state’s median household income.
Over 21 million renter households nationwide spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For them and others struggling to get by, the financial math is simple, even if the risk calculation isn’t.
I find this troubling. In essence, the U.S. is creating a system where your income determines your exposure to climate disasters. When housing becomes unaffordable in safer areas, the only available and affordable property is often in riskier locations – low-lying areas at flood risk in Houston and coastal Texas, or higher-wildfire-risk areas as California cities expand into fire-prone foothills and canyons.
Climate risk becomes part of the equation
The destinations drawing newcomers aren’t exactly safe havens. Research shows that America’s high-fire-risk counties saw 63,365 more people move in than out in 2023, much of that flowing to Texas. Meanwhile, my own research and other studies of post-disaster recovery have shown how the most vulnerable communities – low-income residents, people of color, renters – face the greatest barriers to rebuilding after disasters strike.
Consider the insurance crisis brewing in these destination states. Dozens of insurers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and beyond have collapsed in recent years, unable to sustain the mounting claims from increasingly frequent and severe disasters like wildfires and hurricanes. Economists Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder, who study climate change impacts on real estate, describe the insurance markets in some high-risk areas as “broken”. Between 2018 and 2023, insurers canceled nearly 2 million homeowner policies nationwide – four times the historically typical rate.
Yet people keep moving into risky areas. For example, recent research shows that people have been moving toward areas most at risk of wildfires, even holding wealth and other factors constant. The wild beauty of fire-prone areas may be part of the attraction, but so is housing availability and cost.
The policy failures behind the false choice
In my view, this isn’t really about individual choice – it’s about policy failure. The state of California aims to build 2.5 million new homes by 2030, which would require adding more than 350,000 units annually. Yet in 2024, the state only added about 100,000 – falling dramatically short of what’s needed. When local governments restrict housing development through exclusionary zoning, they’re effectively pricing out working families and pushing them toward risk.
My research on disaster recovery has consistently shown how housing policies intersect with climate vulnerability. Communities with limited housing options before disasters become even more constrained afterward. People can’t “choose” resilience if resilient places won’t let them build affordable housing.
The federal government started recognizing this connection – to an extent. For example, in 2023, the Federal Emergency Management Agency encouraged communities to consider “social vulnerability” in disaster planning, in addition to things like geographic risk. Social vulnerability refers to socioeconomic factors like poverty, lack of transportation or language barriers that make it harder for communities to deal with disasters.
In my view, when a society forces people to choose between paying for housing and staying safe, that society has failed. Housing should be a right, not a risk calculation.
But until decision-makers address the underlying policies that create housing scarcity in safe areas and fail to protect people in vulnerable ones, climate change will continue to reshape who gets to live where – and who gets left behind when the next disaster strikes.
Dr. Ivis García has received funding from the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Institute for Transportation and Communities; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; JPB Foundation; Ford Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation; Chicago Community Trust, SBAN, Texas Appleseed, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, Urban Institute & UNIDOS, and Natural Hazards Center.
What happens when the grinding sounds of metal music collide with the innocence of Christmas?Alexander Koerner/Getty Images
With Mariah Careyand Wham! saturating airwaves with their holiday tunes, it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas.
But if all you want for Christmas is a reprieve from stereotypical Christmas music, you’re not alone.
Despite the fact that they often rebel against conformity and commercialism, many countercultural musicians have been inspired to produce holiday tracks of their own. Because the symbols of Christmas are so widely recognizable, juxtaposing them with the sounds and values of more niche musical styles can have striking effects.
Here’s how genres like roots reggae, thrash metal and pop punk have added new layers to familiar holiday tropes:
A roots reggae Christmas revival
Certain sounds elicit certain expectations.
If you hear sleigh bells and a children’s choir, lyrics about wintry fun can’t be far. If you hear off-beat reggae guitars and Jamaican accents, you’ll probably picture pot and palm trees, not Christmas.
And yet the roots reggae sound of Jacob Miller’s “We Wish You A Irie Christmas” infuses the classic “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with Rastafarian liberation theology.
Singers of the classic carol – which some historians trace to 16th-century England – clamor for figgy pudding, a traditional British Christmas dessert. They refuse to leave until they get their sweets: “We won’t go until we get some / So bring it out here!”
By contrast, Miller’s Christmas is “irie,” which, in Jamaican Patois, roughly translates to contentment and inner peace.
Jacob Miller’s 1978 recording ‘We Wish You A Irie Christmas’ critiques materialism.
In his version, Miller points out that poverty and joy are not mutually exclusive: “We rub it and dub it to the Christmas ‘pon a broke pocket this year.” He also stresses freedom from material desire: “Don’t kill nuf oneself to buy it all.”
After all, the biblical Christmas in Bethlehem had no toys – and no snow either, just like the Caribbean.
For Rastafarians like Miller, the renewal promised by Christmas was deeply personal. In the track, a word that sounds like “Ice-mas” is actually “I’s-mas.” In Rastafarianism, the “I” is the deity contained in each person. Miller’s Christmas revelers dance to their own divinity, anticipating a return to the promised land.
In doing so, Miller turns a simple, well-worn carol into an anthem of self-worth and liberation.
Thrash metal Christmas horror
Other genres can recast an innocent carol’s lyrics into a horror story.
The 19th-century German carol “Kling, Glöckchen, Klingelingeling” was written from the perspective of the “Christkind,” a Christmas gift-bringer in parts of Europe and South America. This “little Jesus” brings gifts in countries where Santa Claus isn’t part of holiday traditions.
Each stanza is framed by a melody and words that evoke the sounds of a ringing bell, which are reflected in the title. In the carol, the Christkind implores children to let it inside so it doesn’t freeze to death. Next, the Christkind promises gifts in return for being let into the living room. Finally, the Christkind asks the children to open their hearts to it.
Who could corrupt this child-friendly pitch for piety?
Enter Thomas “Angelripper” Such, a former coal miner and the front man of the German thrash metal band Sodom.
Where earlier heavy metal could be gloomy and occult, Sodom raised the temperature even more with gory, blasphemous lyrics, buzzsaw guitars and snarled screams. Sodom’s side project, Onkel Tom Angelripper, has recorded metal versions of popular German songs, including “Kling, Glöckchen, Klingelingeling.”
Things take an ominous turn in Onkel Tom Angelripper’s version of the German Christmas classic ‘Kling, Glöckchen, Klingelingeling.’
Without changing the lyrics, the thrash metal sound transforms the carol’s wholesomeness into horror. A twee wind arrangement is cut off by heavy, distorted guitars and a growled “Kling.” Metal musicians often use these sounds to evoke feelings of danger.
Angelripper’s caroler sounds more like a large predator who manipulates and bribes his way into a home. In this framing, the final stanza’s line – “open your hearts to me!” – sounds less like a call for communion and more like an ominous threat of mutilation. It’s a home invasion akin to that in the classic Christmas movie “Home Alone,” but it’s all terror, no humor.
This musical corruption of ambiguous lyrics lays bare the fragility of festive innocence.
But few touch on painful themes of substance abuse, suicide and guilt like the raw-yet-catchy “Christmas Vacation” by pop-punk pioneers the Descendents.
For better or worse, many of the Descendents’ songs are unabashedly immature, petulant and sometimes offensive. Yet their boyish bravado puts moments of vulnerability into relief.
“Christmas Vacation” is no different.
Over jangly guitars and sparse bass, front man Milo Aukerman recalls an alcoholic friend or partner who “took a vacation into oblivion.” And while this turn of events wasn’t a surprise to the narrator, that didn’t change anything: “I knew about your plans / I really did understand / But you didn’t let me know / I wasn’t invited to go.”
The Descendents’ 1985 track ‘Christmas Vacation’ is about loss and longing.
The lyrics portray a process of ongoing grief. What makes “Christmas Vacation” poignant is its lyrical vacillation. The narrator wonders: Did she leave forever? Will she be back? Is she to blame? Am I?
The vocal harmony in the chorus – a pop punk staple – mirrors this ambivalence. In the track, the joining of voices starts to sound like a wail. An expected feature of pop punk is transformed into a moving expression of grief and loneliness: a common, less celebrated, holiday experience.
Rather than sneer at or mock Christmas, these three tracks give voice to the complicated emotions that can accompany the holidays. Miller evokes gratitude and hope; Angelripper provokes fear and vulnerability; the Descendents dwell on grief and longing. And all three perspectives end up complementing the focus of mainstream music on food, fancy gifts, snow and family.
Florian Walch 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.
Meditation can make us more aware of the miracle of existence of everything in this world.Anna Sunderland Engels
The late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the interconnectedness of everything in this world. He explained how meditation can change our perceptions about the things we encounter in our daily lives by revealing this interdependence.
Take the example of an apple: Before meditation, an apple is just a piece of fruit. During meditation, the meditator sees how deeply the apple is interconnected with the world – the apple would not exist without the rain, the sunshine, the soil and the farmer who planted the seed. These are just a few of the causes and conditions that allow the apple to exist.
The apple is because of all these other things. An apple is not just a piece of fruit. The apple is also part rain, part sunlight, part soil, part farmer.
After meditation, an apple goes back to being an apple again. The meditator continues to call it an “apple,” but they understand its true nature. Hanh calls this sense of connection “interbeing.”
In his book “The Other Shore,” Hanh recounts how he coined the term “interbeing” during a retreat in California in the 1980s, while guiding a mindfulness meditation on the nature of a chair.
He asked his students to look at the chair and notice the trees, sunshine, rain and clouds in it. He then wondered aloud if there was a word in English or French that could capture the reality that a chair is made up of things other than a chair: “I asked if the word ‘togetherness’ would do. Somebody said that it sounded strange, so I suggested the word ‘interbeing.’”
Hanh explains that interbeing means “this is because that is.” No rain means no tree, and no tree means no apple and no chair.
According to Hanh, this knowledge can help us to live a happier life because it reveals the miracle of existence.
Consider all the causes and conditions that had to happen exactly as they did for an apple to exist. Had there been a drought that killed the tree when it was young, or a late spring freeze that stunted the apple flower, or had a person chopped the tree down to make space for a housing development, this particular apple would not exist. The apple is a small miracle composed of many other small miracles.
From what I noticed staying at the Plum Village monastery Hanh established in southern France, people who practice mindfulness meditation in Hanh’s tradition are able to see miracles everywhere, because they recognize interbeing in daily life. Even commonplace activities can become special.
When drinking tea at Plum Village, for example, meditators are encouraged to “drink your cloud,” because the water in the tea was once a cloud that was once a river that will one day again fall from the sky as raindrops nourishing the apple trees.
We as human beings are also interbeing. We are not separate from the world or each other. We are mutually interdependent. None of us would exist without rain, sunshine, food, a planet Earth – and the efforts of other people, including parents, neighbors, teachers, scientists, farmers and doctors.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s calligraphy, Plum Village, France. Anna Sunderland Engels
Seen from this perspective, being a human is miraculous. Think of how the stars had to align so that each of us could be here today. Had the Earth been a little farther from the Sun, or one of our ancestors slipped and fallen down a cliff before their children were conceived, we wouldn’t be here at all.
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is to walk on earth,” Hanh wrote in his book “The Miracle of Mindfulness.” Each breath, each step, becomes a miracle in this practice of meditation.
Everything is interdependent, so it’s not enough to focus on individual well-being while ignoring the well-being of others or the world.
“With the insight of interbeing – that we are inherently interconnected with all other beings – we know that when other people suffer less, we suffer less. And when we suffer less, other people suffer less,” Hanh observed.
As I explain in my new book, “On Mindful Democracy,” to foreground interbeing changes democracy.
It’s common today to talk about democracy as a partisan conflict and to interpret events through the lens of which party will win.
From the perspective of interbeing, we are interdependent, so we all win, or we all lose, together. To practice meditation is to see that underneath our partisan disagreements, we are interconnected. I therefore define mindful democracy as the practice of caring for each other and for the miraculous life we share.
Concretely, this means building welcoming, vibrant communities where people can meditate on interbeing together. It means learning to disagree – and still work together to reduce suffering – without turning each other into enemies.
Life is a shared project, and all of us benefit when we cooperate to ensure that there is less suffering, and more joy, in the world.
Jeremy David Engels 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.
Mysterious blasts of radio waves from across the universe called fast radio bursts help astronomers catalog matter.ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC BY-SA
If you look across space with a telescope, you’ll see countless galaxies, most of which host large central black holes, billions of stars and their attendant planets. The universe teems with huge, spectacular objects, and it might seem like these massive objects should hold most of the universe’s matter.
But the Big Bang theory predicts that about 5% of the universe’s contents should be atoms made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Most of those atoms cannot be found in stars and galaxies – a discrepancy that has puzzled astronomers.
If not in visible stars and galaxies, the most likely hiding place for the matter is in the dark space between galaxies. While space is often referred to as a vacuum, it isn’t completely empty. Individual particles and atoms are dispersed throughout the space between stars and galaxies, forming a dark, filamentary network called the “cosmic web.”
Throughout my career as an astronomer, I’ve studied this cosmic web, and I know how difficult it is to account for the matter spread throughout space.
In a study published in June 2025, a team of scientists used a unique radio technique to complete the census of normal matter in the universe.
The census of normal matter
The most obvious place to look for normal matter is in the form of stars. Gravity gathers stars together into galaxies, and astronomers can count galaxies throughout the observable universe.
The census comes to several hundred billion galaxies, each made of several hundred billion stars. The numbers are uncertain because many stars lurk outside of galaxies. That’s an estimated 1023 stars in the universe, or hundreds of times more than the number of sand grains on all of Earth’s beaches. There are an estimated 1082 atoms in the universe.
However, this prodigious number falls far short of accounting for all the matter predicted by the Big Bang. Careful accounting indicates that stars contain only 0.5% of the matter in the universe. Ten times more atoms are presumably floating freely in space. Just 0.03% of the matter is elements other than hydrogen and helium, including carbon and all the building blocks of life.
Looking between galaxies
The intergalactic medium – the space between galaxies – is near-total vacuum, with a density of one atom per cubic meter, or one atom every 35 cubic feet. That’s less than a billionth of a billionth of the density of air on Earth. Even at this very low density, this diffuse medium adds up to a lot of matter, given the enormous, 92-billion-light-year diameter of the universe.
The intergalactic medium is very hot, with a temperature of millions of degrees. That makes it difficult to observe except with X-ray telescopes, since very hot gas radiates out through the universe at very short X-ray wavelengths. X-ray telescopes have limited sensitivity because they are smaller than most optical telescopes.
Deploying a new tool
Astronomers recently used a new tool to solve this missing matter problem. Fast radio bursts are intense blasts of radio waves that can put out as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. First discovered in 2007, scientists found that the bursts are caused by compact stellar remnants in distant galaxies. Their energy peters out as the bursts travel through space, and by the time that energy reaches the Earth, it is a thousand times weaker than a mobile phone signal would be if emitted on the Moon, then detected on Earth.
Research from early 2025 suggests the source of the bursts is the highly magnetic region around an ultra-compact neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense remnants of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity after a supernova explosion. The particular type of neutron star that emits radio bursts is called a magnetar, with a magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than the Earth’s.
A magnetar is a rare type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field. ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY-ND
Even though astronomers don’t fully understand fast radio bursts, they can use them to probe the spaces between galaxies. As the bursts travel through space, interactions with electrons in the hot intergalactic gas preferentially slow down longer wavelengths. The radio signal is spread out, analogous to the way a prism turns sunlight into a rainbow. Astronomers use the amount of spreading to calculate how much gas the burst has passed through on its way to Earth.
Puzzle solved
In the new study, published in June 2025, a team of astronomers from Caltech and the Harvard Center for Astrophysics studied 69 fast radio bursts using an array of 110 radio telescopes in California. The team found that 76% of the universe’s normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, with another 15% in galaxy halos – the area surrounding the visible stars in a galaxy – and the remaining 9% in stars and cold gas within galaxies.
The complete accounting of normal matter in the universe provides a strong affirmation of the Big Bang theory. The theory predicts the abundance of normal matter formed in the first few minutes of the universe, so by recovering the predicted 5%, the theory passes a critical test.
Several thousand fast radio bursts have already been observed, and an upcoming array of radio telescopes will likely increase the discovery rate to 10,000 per year. Such a large sample will let fast radio bursts become powerful tools for cosmology. Cosmology is the study of the size, shape and evolution of the universe. Radio bursts could go beyond counting atoms to mapping the three-dimensional structure of the cosmic web.
Pie chart of the universe
Scientists may now have the complete picture of where normal matter is distributed, but most of the universe is still made up of stuff they don’t fully understand.
The most abundant ingredients in the universe are dark matter and dark energy, both of which are poorly understood. Dark energy is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter is the invisible glue that holds galaxies and the universe together.
Dark matter is probably a previously unstudied type of fundamental particle that is not part of the standard model of particle physics. Physicists haven’t been able to detect this novel particle yet, but we know it exists because, according to general relativity, mass bends light, and far more gravitational lensing is seen than can be explained by visible matter. With gravitational lensing, a cluster of galaxies bends and magnifies light in a way that’s analogous to an optical lens. Dark matter outweighs conventional matter by more than a factor of five.
One mystery may be solved, but a larger mystery remains. While dark matter is still enigmatic, we now know a lot about the normal atoms making up us as humans, and the world around us.
Chris Impey has received funding from NASA, NSF, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Templeton Foundation.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Eric Gilbertson, Associate Teaching Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Seattle University
Using lightweight tools, Eric Gilbertson hikes the world’s tallest mountains to measure their heights. Elijah Gendron
In the middle of a chilly October night in 2025, my two friends and I suited up at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead and started a trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. It was a little below freezing as we got moving at 1:30 a.m., and the Moon illuminated the snowy mountaintops above us.
Our packs were a bit heavier than normal because we were hauling highly accurate surveying equipment to the summits of two peaks, each over 14,000 feet (4,267.2 meters). The peaks, Crestone and East Crestone, were close enough in height, with a short enough saddle in between, that only the taller of the two would count as a true 14er and the other as a sub-peak.
Crestone had traditionally been thought to be taller and sees hundreds of ascents each year. East Crestone, traditionally believed to be shorter, sees only a fraction as many ascents. Colorado has 58 mountain peaks over 14,000 feet that peakbaggers consider 14ers. For locals and visitors alike, bagging a 14er is a sport, and some people post reports about having climbed all 58.
I wanted to measure which was taller, since I suspected previous measurements people had trusted for years might be erroneous.
GPS allows Eric Gilbertson to measure the peaks of Crestone and East Crestone in Colorado in October 2025. Eric Gilbertson
Through my experience climbing, I discovered that not all countries in the world have been surveyed accurately enough to know the country’s true high point. The high point is geographically significant, as it’s the highest natural point or peak in the country, state or province. Often, high points are a source of national or state pride. I taught myself surveying to determine and verify these high points on my own.
I’ve determined the 100 highest peaks in Washington state, where I live and work, and studied how climate change is affecting the elevations of ice-capped peaks. My research showed that, while historically the contiguous U.S. had five ice-capped peaks, only two remain – Liberty Cap and Colfax, both in Washington state. Mount Rainier used to have as its highest point an ice dome named Columbia Crest on the western rim of the summit crater. But since 1998, Columbia Crest has melted more than 20 feet (6 meters) and is no longer the highest point on the mountain. The highest point is now a rock 436 feet (133 meters) to the south, on the southwest edge of the summit crater.
At the very top of South Mirror Image Peak in Washington, Eric Gilbertson uses an Abney level to measure nearby mountain heights. Matthew Gilbertson
How to survey mountain high points
Surveying mountains is challenging due to the altitude, long approaches, difficult weather conditions and technical climbing. To get accurate surveying equipment to the summits requires ingenuity and specialized gear. Equipment needs to be as light as possible and adaptable to tricky terrain. For these reasons, very few mountains have been surveyed to the level of accuracy I can attain.
Historically, measurements have generally been made from a distance with theodolites. These are mechanical devices that can measure an angle up to a mountain summit very accurately. The distance to the mountain can be measured by other means, and trigonometry can be used with the distance and angle to calculate the summit elevation. But if the measurement is taken too far away, the error in elevation can be high. Theodolites are heavy and not easy to carry close to a peak.
Schematic diagram of how a theodolite is used to measure an angle to the summit of a mountain. Eric Gilbertson
I sometimes carry a 30-pound (13.61 kg) theodolite to a summit, but if the mountain is technical, this is challenging and requires complicated rope systems to haul it up. More often I bring an Abney level, which is a lighter mechanical device that also measures angles. I bring this to a summit to measure relative angles between nearby points to identify which is the highest point on the mountain.
A theodolite is a mechanical devices that can measure angles up to a summit very accurately. Here one is used on Cardinal Peak in Washington in June 2023. Eric Gilbertson
I then use a highly accurate, survey-grade GPS to measure the absolute elevation of the highest point. The GPS requires an hour or more to get an accurate measurement, so it wouldn’t make sense timewise to measure many nearby points with this device. I’ve found time is usually limited when surveying a summit, due to incoming storms or approaching darkness when descents need to be made in daylight for safety. This is why I first identify the highest point with an Abney level or theodolite.
Many satellites overhead send data down that is collected by the GPS device and used to calculate the device’s position. To save weight, I use a device that then sends measurements over Bluetooth to my phone instead of requiring a dedicated computer.
A GPS receiver generally needs to be mounted on a vertical rod that touches the exact summit. I measure the GPS height, subtract the rod height, and that gives the summit height. To keep the rod perfectly vertical I use a tripod, and this also requires innovation.
Eric Gilbertson uses a GPS to measure East Fury in Washington. Courtesy of Ross Wallette
Sometimes a summit is so sharp that regular tripod legs aren’t long enough to touch the ground. In this case, I strap on hiking poles to extend the legs. Another solution is to use a tripod with flexible legs, and I mold the legs to conform to the shape of a sharp boulder. This is what I used to measure the high point of Uzbekistan.
Another tool I use is LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging. This works by an airplane flying over a mountain and bouncing light signals off the summit. By using the plane’s location and the time it takes the signal to bounce back, the mountain’s elevation can be calculated.
Colorado 14ers
All measurements can have errors. I traveled to Colorado because I suspected LiDAR measurements of Crestone Peak, considered a 14er, might be erroneous. LiDAR measurements have been taken for nearly all mountains in Colorado, and these measurements are generally the most accurate available for mountain elevations.
LiDAR measurements hit the ground every few feet of horizontal spacing and can miss the top of sharp summits, leading to an underestimate of summit height. They can also hit things such as bushes, leading to an overestimate of summit height.
LiDAR data showed Crestone Peak and East Crestone within a few feet of the same height. But, interestingly, it showed a 3-4 foot (0.9-1.2 meter) spike on the top of Crestone. I climbed Crestone in 2020 while doing the Rocky Mountain Slam, a challenge to climb all the Colorado 14ers, Wyoming 13ers and Montana 12ers in two months, and knew the summit was pretty flat. I speculated that spike could have easily been a person, which meant the LiDAR elevation of Crestone might be too high.
East Crestone has a sharp boulder on the summit, which LiDAR could easily miss because of the horizontal gaps between measurements. So that elevation was possibly too short. In Colorado a point needs 300 feet (91.44 meters) of prominence to count as a separate peak. Other states have different rules, like in Washington where 400 feet (121.92 meters) is required. Prominence is a measure of how high a peak sticks up above a saddle connecting it to a taller peak. The saddle between Crestone and East Crestone is short enough that only the taller of them is a true peak and the other is a sub-peak.
On East Crestone I first set up a tall tripod, but the wind blew it down, nearly over a cliff. I switched it out with a shorter one, which was more stable.
Eric Gilbertson hiked Crestone, one of Colorado’s 14ers, to determine its true height. Elijah Gendron
I then scrambled over to Crestone Peak and mounted another identical GPS device. That summit was on the edge of a cliff, and I needed to extend one tripod leg with a hiking pole so it could touch the ground.
I logged data for over two hours with both devices simultaneously. This ensured both were receiving the same satellite signals – so any atmospheric distortion would be the same – and that enough data was logged so I could get elevations accurate to the nearest inch. This gave me a lot of time to admire the views and take pictures, but I also needed to check on the equipment every 5-10 minutes to ensure it was working properly.
After packing up, hiking down and flying home to Seattle, I spent a few weeks poring over the data. The results showed East Crestone is 0.3 feet (0.09 meters) taller than Crestone, with more than 99.9% confidence that East Crestone is taller.
This means Colorado has a new 14er: East Crestone. Crestone is, in fact, a sub-peak. Discussions are ongoing about whether this means the 14ers list that peakbaggers climb should retain Crestone and add East Crestone to be 59 peaks, or whether East Crestone should replace Crestone so the list stays at 58 peaks.
I’m planning to continue my work surveying mountains in Colorado and around the world to determine accurate summit elevations. My next plan is surveying several country high points in Africa this winter. The Benin country high point is still not known, and I hope to solve that mystery next.
When people use hand gestures that visually represent what they’re saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent and persuasive. That’s the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication.
Talking with your hands
Whether you’re giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what you’ll say. But what about the ways you’ll move your hands?
I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United States, I’ve become acutely aware of how cultures differ in how, and how much, people move their hands when they talk. Still, across contexts and cultures, one thing is constant: People do talk with their hands.
As someone who studies communication, I’d noticed how some speakers seemed instantly clearer when they gestured. This made me wonder: Do gestures actually make communicators more effective?
The short answer is yes, but only when the gestures visually represent the idea you’re talking about. Researchers call these movements “illustrators.” For example:
When talking about distance, you might spread your hands apart while saying something is “farther away.”
When explaining how two concepts relate, you might bring your hands together while saying “these ideas fit together.”
When describing how the market demand “is going up and down,” you could visually depict a wave shape with your hands.
To study gestures at scale, my team and I analyzed 200,000 video segments from more than 2,000 TED Talks using AI tools that can detect and classify hand gestures frame by frame. We paired this with controlled experiments in which our study participants evaluated entrepreneurs pitching a product.
The same pattern of results appeared in both settings. In the AI-analyzed TED Talk data, illustrative gestures predicted higher audience evaluations, reflected in more than 33 million online “likes” of the videos. And in our experiments, 1,600 participants rated speakers who used illustrative gestures as more clear, competent and persuasive.
How hands can help get your point across
What I found is that these gestures give listeners a visual shortcut to your meaning. They make abstract ideas feel more concrete, helping listeners build a mental picture of what you’re saying. This makes the message feel easier to process – a phenomenon psychologists call “processing fluency.” And we found that when ideas feel easier to grasp, people tend to see the speaker as more competent and persuasive.
But not all gestures help. Movements that don’t match the message – like random waving, fidgeting or pointing to things in the space – offer no such benefit. In some cases, they can even distract.
A practical takeaway: Focus on clarity over choreography. Think about where your hands naturally illustrate what you’re saying – emphasizing size, direction or emotion – and let them move with purpose.
What’s next
Your hands aren’t just accessories to your words. They can be a powerful tool to make your ideas resonate.
I’m now investigating whether people can learn to gesture better – almost like developing a nonverbal vocabulary. Early pilot tests are promising: Even a 5-minute training session helps people become clearer and more effective through the use of appropriate hand gestures.
While my research examined how individual gestures work together with spoken language, the next step is to understand what makes a communicator effective with their voice and, ultimately, across all the channels they use to communicate – how gestures combine with voice, facial expressions and body movement. I’m now exploring AI tools that track all these channels at once so I can identify the patterns, not just the isolated gestures, that make speakers more effective communicators.
Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo 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.
