Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder than during a church service, when something faintly ridiculous caught my eye. My friend saw it too, and once she started laughing, it became impossible to stop. Years later I’ve tried to explain what was so hilarious, but it seems you had to be there. What was it about the combination of the situation – sometimes referred to as “church giggles” – and shared laughter that made it so funny?

Most people recognise the experience. A solemn setting. Absolute silence. A fleeting visual detail that is, in any other context, only mildly amusing at best. Yet the harder you try to suppress the laugh, the more uncontrollable it becomes. When someone else notices it too, restraint becomes next to impossible.

This kind of laughter that comes from trying not to laugh isn’t confined to religious spaces. It happens in any setting where silence, seriousness and self-control are tightly enforced and uncontrolled laughter is frowned upon.

Rather than being bad manners or a lack of emotional maturity, it tells us something about how the brain behaves under pressure. The science behind it is surprisingly complex.

In highly formal settings – churches, courtrooms, funerals – the brain operates in a state of active inhibition. This is the process by which your brain deliberately suppresses brain activity.

The region most involved is the prefrontal cortex, the thinking and decision-making part at the front of your brain, particularly its medial and lateral areas. These areas handle social judgment, behavioural restraint and emotional regulation.

This part of the brain doesn’t stop emotions from arising. Instead, it works by suppressing their outward expression.

Laughter comes from a distributed network in the brain rather than a single “laughter centre”. The impulse begins in the outer regions of the brain, but the emotional drive comes from deeper structures in the limbic system, the emotional processing centre of the brain.

The limbic system includes the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure that processes emotions and assigns emotional importance to things, and the hypothalamus, which controls automatic body functions like heart rate and breathing. Once laughter gets released, circuits in the brainstem – the base of the brain that connects to the spinal cord – take over and coordinate facial expression, breathing and vocalisation.

This makes laughter difficult to stop voluntarily. The prefrontal cortex normally keeps this response in check, suppressing laughter when it’s socially inappropriate.

When that control weakens – through heightened arousal or shared social cues – laughter emerges as an automatic, reflex-like behaviour. It’s no longer a deliberate act.

In other words, the impulse to laugh and the effort to stop yourself come from different parts of the brain. They’re competing with each other.

When something unexpected or odd catches your eye, your emotional response fires rapidly and automatically. The process to control it takes effort, burns energy, and is prone to failure, especially when you have to maintain it for long periods.

The more firmly you try to exert control, the more the trigger stays active in your attention. Suppression doesn’t erase the thought – it actually rehearses and sustains it.

Laughter isn’t just a response to humour. Neurologically, it also functions as a regulatory reflex – a way of releasing emotional and physical tension.

In constrained environments, your nervous system has few outlets. You can’t move, you can’t speak, you can’t shift position much or signal discomfort.

At the same time, your automatic nervous system becomes slightly activated. Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes shallower and your muscle tone rises.

This combination lowers the threshold for emotional release. Your body becomes primed to let something out.

Once laughter begins, it recruits automatic motor pathways in the brainstem that you can’t easily interrupt. This is why laughter, once triggered, often feels physically unstoppable.

You’re no longer “deciding” to laugh. The system has taken over and you’re helpless.

The contagion takes hold

For many people, the tipping point isn’t the original trigger. It’s the instant someone else notices it as well.

This is where social neurobiology comes into play. Humans are highly sensitive to subtle social cues: facial tension, changes in breathing, suppressed smiles.

We process these cues rapidly through networks involving the superior temporal sulcus, a groove along the side of the brain that plays a key role in reading other people. Mirror neurons – brain cells that fire both when we act and when we watch others act – also help us pick up on these signals.

Laughing together represents a shared emotional alignment. That shared recognition does two things at once.

It validates your own response (I’m not imagining this). And it removes the sense of solitary transgression (you’re no longer suppressing alone).

The prefrontal control system weakens further. Laughter spreads through emotional contagion.

By this point, the original trigger hardly matters. What you’re laughing at is each other, and the absurdity of trying to regain control.

These moments are often triggered by something visual, but they don’t have to be. A mispronounced word or an unexpected phrase can provoke the same response.

However, visual triggers are especially potent in silent settings. They can’t be interrupted or talked away, and your brain can replay them repeatedly while suppression is in place.

Spoken triggers, by contrast, tend to be shared instantly. Whether laughter erupts depends on how quickly social inhibition can be re-established.

“Inappropriate” laughter is often framed as rudeness or childishness. But from a neurological perspective, it’s a predictable consequence of prolonged emotional suppression in a social species.

The brain is not designed for sustained inhibition without release. When restraint is tight enough – and when someone else is there with you – laughter becomes the escape route. That is why it feels impossible to stop.

Michelle Spear 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. Why it’s funnier when you’re not allowed to laugh – https://theconversation.com/why-its-funnier-when-youre-not-allowed-to-laugh-275003

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Bell, Senior Research Associate in Qualitative Research, University of Bristol

Persistent concerns about poor behaviour in UK secondary schools have led to the widespread implementation of disciplinary behaviour management strategies. These include the use of isolation rooms, where children are sent to work alone.

In some schools, it may also include zero-tolerance sanction systems such as “Ready to Learn”. This is an approach in which a graduated sanction system is applied for non-compliance: any minor rule-breaking gets a warning, and any further infractions mean going to isolation.

However, a new wave of research is challenging the long-standing dominance of punitive strategies. My ongoing research with colleagues has shed light on the perspectives of young people, school staff and behaviour experts, revealing the need for a critical reassessment of school behaviour management policies and practices.

Our study on behaviour in schools was initiated by members of our Young People’s Advisory Group, which provides a way for young people aged between ten and 18 to contribute to health and care research. The young people raised deep concerns about the impact of disciplinary behaviour management strategies being used in secondary schools.

We systematically reviewed the evidence to investigate the impact of disciplinary strategies on students, and found they may have a negative impact on mental health and wellbeing and behaviour. We then interviewed 15 young people and 17 secondary school staff and experts in behaviour to understand their views and experiences.

The young people we worked with felt that disciplinary behaviour management strategies, particularly isolation use, were ineffective at addressing poor behaviour. They also believed that it had a negative effect on their mental health and wellbeing, as well as their academic and social lives. They described the Ready to Learn approach as harsh, confusing, and inconsistent. One said:

If you had the wrong-coloured socks on or something like that you’d get a warning or a detention. Then that would lead to you getting angry and you’d get an isolation.

Another commented that: “They don’t try to find out why you’ve done it or anything like that. They just put you in isolation. They don’t really care.”

Addressing causes

The young people voiced a preference for disciplinary approaches rooted in relationships and understanding. Approaches that seek to address the causes of behavioural issues, rather than those that rely on sanctions and exclusionary practices. One suggested:

People would go to a room and sit down on a table with everybody, work together to work out what they did wrong in the lesson, how they could be better next time. And not only what and how, but why. Why is this occurring and then that would also create a platform for anyone to seek help and support of any needs that they had as well.

We also talked to school staff. Some described Ready to Learn as beneficial due to its clarity, consistency, and ability to reduce classroom disruption. Its centralised structure, affordability, and simplicity were seen as advantages. However most expressed the desire for a more therapeutic approach alongside Ready to Learn.

One teacher said:

What we’re missing, is a complementary or alternative narrative at whole-school level to RTL [Ready to Learn]. So, the idea of RTL sitting as a structure but alongside therapeutic or trauma-informed, more relational approaches to dealing with behaviour.

Interestingly, both school staff and experts in behaviour agreed on what encourages positive behaviour. They mentioned clarity, consistency, fairness, and – crucially – positive communication and relationships. They described what works: a supportive school culture that is warm and structured with predictable routines and boundaries, and high expectations delivered with empathy and support.

Here, the use of relational practices is key. This approach recognises behaviour as a form of communication, and aims to build relationships with students to help them understand their emotions and behaviour rather than punishing them.

One student described how this could work:

Talking to the student, trying to help them. Even if they’ve got anger issues and they’re being rude all the time, they could have something that’s causing them to be like that. I think that would be more beneficial.

But relational practices are rarely used. “We aren’t trained, we don’t have that expertise,” a deputy headteacher explained. “So even if we had time for it, we can’t necessarily implement it because we don’t know what we’re doing if I’m honest.”

Schools face significant structural and cultural barriers. Government and most school policies encourage disciplinary behaviour management strategies and a focus on academic outcomes. They are embedded in schools and staff fear change and loss of control. Some school staff see their role as to impart knowledge, not provide pastoral care. Most lack training and expertise in relational approaches and schools face resource constraints.

Disciplinary behaviour management strategies offer an illusion of control but are failing to improve behaviour in meaningful and lasting ways. With growing evidence, especially from those directly affected, suggesting that they may be doing more harm than good, a rethink is needed.

This isn’t about going soft on behaviour. It’s about creating compassionate, inclusive schools that are smart about how they view and respond to poor behaviour.

Sarah Bell works for National Institute for Health and Care Research, Applied Research Collaboration West (NIHR ARC West) at the University of Bristol.

– ref. A rethink is needed on zero-tolerance school behaviour policies – https://theconversation.com/a-rethink-is-needed-on-zero-tolerance-school-behaviour-policies-266021

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eleftheria Kodosaki, Research Fellow in Neuroimmunology, UCL

Women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with dementia. While researchers have some idea of the factors that elevate risk, it’s still not entirely clear why this happens. But a recent study suggests that the menopause could play a key role in increased vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed brain scans from nearly nearly 125,000 women. They found the menopause is associated with measurable reductions in grey matter (brain areas where information is processed and analysed). They also identified volume reductions in brain regions involved in memory, emotion, attention and decision-making.

These changes were also linked to poorer sleep, increased anxiety and depression and slower reaction times. Importantly, the affected regions overlap with those most vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease (the most common form of dementia).

This does not mean, however, that menopause causes dementia. But it does suggest that menopause may represent a critical neurological transition – one that can influence brain health trajectories for years or even decades afterwards.

These findings have brought the influence of biological sex on brain health into sharper focus. These findings may also bring us closer to understanding why women are not only at greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease, but a range of other neurological conditions – including multiple sclerosis and depression.

Factors affecting women’s dementia risk

Although women face a higher risk of dementia, their brains often show remarkable resilience.

Throughout much of life, women tend to outperform men on certain verbal memory tasks, and often show greater resistance to early cognitive decline.

But this resilience could be a double-edged sword, masking underlying brain changes for longer.

In Alzheimer’s disease, women often show fewer symptoms early on, despite accumulating signs of the disease in the brain. When symptoms do emerge, decline can appear faster and more dramatic – partly because the brain has already been compensating for damage for years.

There are many other crucial social and biological differences between men and women that may explain why brain health outcomes can vary so broadly, as well.

Cognitive reserve, for instance. This is the brain’s ability to adapt and maintain a certain level of function, even when faced with damage (including that caused by dementia and Alzheimer’s). Education, intellectually demanding work, being socially and physically active and lifelong learning all help build cognitive reserve.

Not only is cognitive reserve shaped by biology, it’s also shaped by social realities. For instance, many women have experienced interrupted education, chronic stress or limited access to healthcare. These factors can quietly erode cognitive reserve over time – even while women continue to function at a high level.

At the same time, strong social networks, emotional intelligence and adaptability, qualities often reinforced in women, may enhance resilience and delay the appearance of symptoms.

Another key factor in dementia risk lies in immune function differences between sexes.

Women generally have stronger immune responses than men. While this protects against infections, it can also increase vulnerability to autoimmune conditions (where the immune system becomes overactive). The immune response can particularly become overactive as women age or during periods of hormonal change.

This heightened immune activity extends to the brain. Chronic neuroinflammation, often caused by a dysregulated immune system, is increasingly recognised as a contributor to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as multiple sclerosis and mood disorders. Women’s stronger immune activation may therefore raise risk for certain brain conditions, especially during periods of hormonal instability – such as menopause.

Chromosomes also matter.

Women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y in most cases. Many immune-related genes are located on the X chromosome. But some of these genes are able to escape the usual process that switches off their activity in women.

This can lead to higher expression of immune system and inflammatory genes – potentially increasing susceptibility to autoimmune and neuroinflammatory disorders.

The menopause link

One of the most important insights from the recent Cambridge study concerns brain metabolism.

The brain is an energy-hungry organ. It primarily uses glucose (sugar) as it’s main source of energy.

Oestrogen plays a significant role in how brain cells use glucose. Oestrogen helps brain cells use glucose efficiently, supporting the energy needed for thinking and memory.

But when oestrogen levels fall during the menopause, the brain may become less efficient at generating energy from glucose. This can create a mild, chronic energy shortfall in vulnerable brain regions. Over time, this metabolic stress may increase susceptibility to processes linked to Alzheimer’s.

This metabolic aspect could also help explain why symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, mood changes and sleep disruption are common during the menopause.

It also offers a possible biological bridge between menopause and later-life neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders develop under different biological conditions in women and men. Studies on brain health, as well as tests, treatments and prevention strategies, must reflect that reality.

Factors such as hormones, metabolism, lifestyle and immune function not only affect how Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders develop, but also how they interact with and affect each other.

But for decades, research has ignored women, with studies investigating women’s issues being underfunded. Clinical trials on brain health have also failed to acknowledge sex as a potential modifying factor.

Some studies have completely excluded women – with peri- and post-menopausal women particularly overlooked. As a result, many of the treatments available (including those which slow dementia) are developed and prescribed without considering how hormonal changes may alter drug metabolism.

The result is a healthcare system poorly equipped to recognise early brain changes in women or to intervene at the most effective time.

Everything we currently know is pointing towards an important message: women’s brains are complex, adaptive and shaped by forces (such as hormonal transitions throughout the lifespan) that medicine is only beginning to acknowledge. Recognising both the risks women face and the resilience they carry is the first step toward more equitable, effective brain care.

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

– ref. Dementia: how brain resilience, immune health and the menopause play a role in women’s risk – https://theconversation.com/dementia-how-brain-resilience-immune-health-and-the-menopause-play-a-role-in-womens-risk-274700

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

The inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s board of peace in Washington on February 19 caps a busy week for US diplomacy – though, not necessarily for the country’s professional diplomats. These people have been largely sidelined in the close-knit circle of the US president’s personal envoys, his former real-estate business partner Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Earlier in the week, Witkoff and Kushner attended two separate sets of negotiations in the Swiss city of Geneva. They first sat down for indirect talks with Iran before then leading negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. They then dashed back to Washington to attend the board of peace meeting.

At best, Witkoff and Kushner have a mixed track record of diplomatic success. Kushner was a key mediator in the Abraham accords during Trump’s first term in office. Designed to normalise relations between Israel and other states across the Middle East, the accords have failed to create sustainable momentum for regional peace and stability.

So far, only the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have established full diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia, an influential player in the Middle East, has not followed suit.

Witkoff has been credited with playing a key role in mediating the January 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the Gaza peace plan later that year. This latter plan, with endorsement from the UN security council, gave rise to Trump’s board of peace.

Both men have also been at the centre of efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Witkoff has been involved from the start of Trump’s second term, with Kushner joining more recently at the end of 2025.

Yet, neither Kushner’s addition or a greater focus on a parallel track of negotiations between Washington and Moscow focused on the mutual economic opportunities that peace between Russia and Ukraine would create have brought the warring sides closer to a deal.

Taken together, the outsized roles that Witkoff and Kushner are playing in US diplomacy despite their limited success expose a fundamental misunderstanding of peacemaking at the heart of Trump’s approach to international affairs.

Peace deals are generally complex. To get one across the line usually requires mediators and support teams that are deeply knowledgeable of the conflict in which they are mediating and have broad knowledge of how a plethora of issues can be resolved in a technical sense.

Above all, they need to understand what has driven the parties to conflict and what might induce them to cooperate. While material incentives such as the promise of economic development in exchange for peace are important, warring parties often also have symbolic and psychological needs. These also need to be addressed to ensure the parties sign on the dotted line.

Having just two people with little prior experience of diplomacy and almost no expertise on either of the two conflicts they are currently mediating simultaneously is a recipe for failure. It is likely to lead to a deal being pushed that is simply unattainable in the short term because at least one party will not sign.

And if a deal is, against the odds, agreed because of high pressure on one or both sides, it is likely to be unsustainable in the long term as at least one of the parties will probably defect and violence will resume. This is particularly likely if a deal lacks sufficient guarantees, which lowers the threshold for defection for parties who are not negotiating in good faith.

Ukraine peace negotiations

It is easy to see how such calculations apply in the context of the war against Ukraine. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has repeatedly made it clear that the Kremlin’s demands – especially Ukrainian withdrawal from the territory in the east it has successfully defended against Russia’s aggression – are not something he will agree to.

Even if he did, such a deal would almost certainly be rejected in a referendum. It will be psychologically close to impossible for Ukraine and Ukrainians to accept the humiliation of giving up something they have not lost, to reward Putin’s aggression and to be sold down the river by Trump in his pursuit of an economic side-deal with his Russian counterpart.

Similarly, it is easy to see that Russia is not negotiating in good faith. Moscow is presenting Kyiv with an ultimatum while destroying as much as possible of the country, both to weaken Ukraine’s will to resist and to undermine its future recovery. Add to that Russian resistance to credible security guarantees and the true intent of Russia’s negotiation strategy is not to achieve sustainable peace but to prepare for the next war.

If and when negotiations on Iran or Ukraine break down or the agreements they might achieve collapse, there will also need to be supporting frameworks in place that can manage the consequences. Trump’s board of peace, which looks like a privatised version of the UN, is unsuitable for such a task.

Not only does it lack the legitimacy the UN has. There is also no indication that its members – be they the countries attending the inaugural meeting or the people serving at Trump’s pleasure in its executive structures – have the intent or capacity to take any actual peace-making role.

The board’s membership is, numerically at least, far below Trump’s aspirations. Only 24 of the 60 or so invitations sent out have been accepted, with traditional US allies in Europe and the G7 absent from the group. Among the attendees at the Washington meeting are the likes of Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Egypt and even Belarus, a country sanctioned by the US and Europe for its support of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine.

Trump’s board of peace may be able to establish a free economic zone here or there and generate some real-estate development. But much of that will be done to benefit its members’ wallets or egos – or both.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

– ref. Trump’s diplomatic blitz exposes a misunderstanding of peacemaking – https://theconversation.com/trumps-diplomatic-blitz-exposes-a-misunderstanding-of-peacemaking-276357

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Payne, Associate Professor of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin

Hundreds of thousands of marine animals are killed every year after becoming accidentally caught in commercial fishing nets. Sharks, skates and rays are at particular risk, alongside turtles, seals, whales and dolphins, many of which are endangered.

Much of this problem comes down to the design of fishing nets and how they are used. Particularly damaging are tangle nets, which typically use large mesh sizes and large amounts of slack that can indiscriminately catch anything that crosses their path. They are also typically left in the water for long periods and only checked every one to ten days.

A new four-year study from Ireland’s national Marine Institute highlights the particular problem the nets are causing in Ireland. Legally protected seals, for instance, are regularly caught in this type of net, widely used by the Irish fishing industry including in the country’s only marine national park.

Tangle nets were first introduced to Ireland in the early 1970s. This was to help boost the competitiveness of the Irish crayfish fishing sector and provide an alternative method to the traditional pot-based method that was used up to that point.

But tangle nets are known to potentially harm a variety of species. The estimated impact from the latest report (covering 2021-2024) about what the nets had caught was stark:

• 1,161 nationally protected grey seals

• 81 critically endangered angel sharks

• 1,712 critically endangered flapper skate

• 532 critically endangered tope sharks

Other species caught included the endangered white skate and undulate ray, as well as rarer records of common and Risso dolphins. Catches varied throughout the study region, and included Ireland’s marine national park in County Kerry. It is unclear whether similar numbers are seen in other fishing areas throughout Ireland.

The report argues for the reduction of these accidental catches to “safe biological limits”, but acknowledges that there probably is no safe limit for several of the shark and skate species given their conservation status and their approach to reproduction.

The documented numbers of catches is particularly concerning for the species’ designated as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This classification stipulates an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future. Unlike many bony fish such as cod, tuna and salmon, sharks, skates and rays tend to mature slowly (often at more than ten years of age), have long gestation periods, and only produce a few young every year or two.

This makes it very difficult for them to recover if anything causes their populations to decline. The angel shark is a good example – once widespread throughout the north-east Atlantic, it has suffered drastic declines across its range, and the species is now locally extinct throughout much of Europe.

There are few remaining strongholds for the species, but County Kerry is one of the last northerly refuges for angel sharks. With so few left in the wild, numbers caught in Ireland’s tangle net fishery are a significant concern at a global level.

Fisheries at a turning point?

Irish commercial fishers are facing a challenging future, with a number of recent restrictions to activities and quotas creating severe pressure on numerous businesses and communities around Ireland , and closing the crayfish fishery would be another blow.

But there is a suitable and straightforward low-impact alternative to the tangle net, which is to fully return to the traditional pot fishery to target crayfish.

Currently in Ireland some fishers still use these pots, and others a combination of pots and nets. Pots are typically netted, baited cages with a narrow-funneled opening designed to only catch the target species with a minimal footprint when landing on the seabed and low risk of harm to the endangered and protected species documented in the Kerry report.

The report clearly states the urgent need of phasing out tangle nets, and highlights an upcoming Marine Institute report focusing on economic considerations supporting a complete switch from nets to pots. The current report suggests this is the “optimum solution”. And it adds that trials using the pots showed equivalent catches.

Fishing is an integral part of Irish culture, and the need for a fair transition with appropriate support is repeatedly highlighted as essential for effective marine conservation.

What happens next in Kerry is probably going to be influenced by proposed legislation relating to how Ireland’s marine landscape is managed. The potential introduction of the Marine Protected Area and Nature Restoration laws, currently being debated, are aimed at protecting and restoring marine biodiversity, and may soon change how fishing is carried out in Irish waters.

Examples from around the world show that it is possible to change the type of fishing nets used to protect marine life. Gillnets (which capture fish by entangling then around the gills) have been almost completely phased out in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef marine park due to risks to animals including dolphins and turtles. Large scale drifting gillnets were banned in the European Union more than 20 years ago due to similar concerns.

The deaths of the world’s most sensitive marine animals documented in the tangle net report highlight the urgency of how fishing needs to change globally, while also protecting the livelihoods of an industry important to coastal communities.

Nicholas Payne receives funding from Ireland’s Marine Institute to study the ecology of sharks and rays. He is also a council member for the British Society of the British Isles

Louise Overy has received funding from National Parks and Wildlife Service for ecological research purposes and is a coordinator at the Irish Elasmobranch Group and Project lead of Angel Shark Project: Ireland.

– ref. Endangered marine life is being caught in fishing nets, but it doesn’t need to be – https://theconversation.com/endangered-marine-life-is-being-caught-in-fishing-nets-but-it-doesnt-need-to-be-275366

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lillian Hingley, Postdoctoral Researcher in English Literature, University of Oxford

When the album dropped at the stroke of midnight on February 13, I found myself lying in the dark listening to Charli XCX’s album, Wuthering Heights. As her second soundtrack album (after Bottoms in 2023), this record was made for Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But this collection of songs also stands as a musical adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel in its own right.

The opening track, House, struck me with its ability to succinctly get to the heart of what Wuthering Heights is. It is not just the title of Brontë’s book and Fennell’s film, but also the name of a house, the story’s main setting.

Rather than offering a typical three-act structure of beginning, middle and end, Brontë’s novel is an experimental, strange form. I conceive the novel as structured largely by the movement of the characters between the titular Wuthering Heights and neighbouring property Thrushcross Grange. There is a constant movement, a haunting, between poles rather than a clear linear progression from point A to point B.

I was pleased, therefore, to see that Charli’s part-film soundtrack, part-book adaptation has adopted this impetus towards formal experimentation – albeit in her own distinct way.

Brontë’s story utilises the technique of frame narrative – the layering of several stories within a wider narrative – in a complex web of flashbacks, unreliable narrators and perspective shifts. Charli’s fourth track, Always Everywhere reflects this narrative multiplicity on a sonic level, particularly by evoking the elemental setting of Heathcliff and Cathy’s story.

The grand scale and layers of the sound allow me to visualise and hear the Yorkshire moors. Just as Charli’s lyric “your laughter tearing through the rain” suggests, Always Everywhere has a wide, spatial quality. This song is a vast space through which the wind blows, or where a ghostly voice travels through the sound until it reaches the listener’s ears.

Boundaries of the self

This dispersed, abstracted narrative offered by Brontë and Charli reflect their shared interest in the boundaries of the self. Brontë fans are well-acquainted with Cathy’s famous line: “Nelly, I am Heathcliff.” The album is similarly concerned with interrogating the conception of the self as a sealed entity, instead seeing the individual as spilling out into something other than itself.

In the song Out of Myself, we are attacked by aggressive strings, in a way that feels romantic in the poetic sense. Here, we have the pain and the pleasure of the sublime (an overwhelming aesthetic experience of awe and even terror that writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge wished to capture in their poetry) – a quasi-religious experience. This is why the sado-masochistic imagery in the song’s lyrics – the imperatives to “put the rope between my teeth”, “push my cheek into the stone” and “please rub the salt into my wounds” – offer more than just shock value. The navigation and testing of boundaries contained in these images reflect the novel’s status as a gothic romance.

The central metaphor of the track Chains of Love reflects the ambivalent character of love in the original text. Following Cathy’s declaration that she is Heathcliff, she adds: “He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure […] but as my own being”. The “chains” in Charli’s song act like the star-crossed destiny of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a symbol of an enduring yet tragic partnership – a partnership that the character of Isabella directly mentions in Fennell’s film.

This ambivalence is matched by the use of the strings on the album. In Always Everywhere, the strings represent a cinematic romanticism. In House, Charli uses creepy strings and screams of demonic possession, borrowed directly from the soundscape of horror films. The marriage of strings and electronic sounds represents a similarly complex relationship. At one point in Funny Mouth (specifically, at 1 minute 17), the strings sound like they could be an instrument setting on a keyboard. In My Reminder, choppy vocal effects and intermissions of discordant strings fight for their position on the track.

Sonic melancholia

Charli’s album does not shy from outlining the complexities and, indeed, the problems of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love. The psychoanalytic theorists Maria Torok and Nicolas Abraham have explained how the act of mourning can turn into its excessive and neurotic counterpart: melancholia, in which a person “incorporates” or preserves a beloved dead object instead of accepting the reality that the object has gone.

Think of, for example, Heathcliff’s desire to dig up Cathy’s remains on two occasions in the book. Charli’s song Altars reflects the double meaning of Heathcliff’s obsession with Cathy. “Your altar” could be interpreted as a symbol of betrayal; for example, when Cathy stood at the wedding altar with the man she married, Edgar Linton, instead of with her true love, Heathcliff. This phrase could also be interpreted as Heathcliff worshipping at Cathy’s altar even, or perhaps especially, in death. In response to this excessive mourning, Eyes of the World, a feature with Sky Ferreira, offers a plea in its final line: “Set me free”.

Perhaps, then, this is a useful way to navigate what some see as the aberration of adapting English Literary classics into other forms, whether songs or films. Charli XCX’s Wuthering Heights is a reminder that adaptation need not be understood as a detraction of the original novel. To take Charli’s language of nature v nurture in her penultimate track My Reminder, while the album may have emerged from the “same four walls” of Wuthering Heights, it is “different”. This album is not a negation of Brontë’s novel, but a productive, imaginative, beautiful haunting.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Lillian Hingley 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. Charli XCX turned Wuthering Heights into a sonic gothic masterpiece – https://theconversation.com/charli-xcx-turned-wuthering-heights-into-a-sonic-gothic-masterpiece-276218

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Abdul Jabbar, Dean of Internationalisation, Associate Professor Data Strategy and Analytics, University of Leicester

The kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie – the mother of US news anchor Savannah Guthrie – is the latest in a string of crimes where ransoms have been demanded in Bitcoin.

The 84-year-old was kidnapped from her home in Tucson, Arizona, in the middle of the night. A ransom of US$6 million (£4.4 million) has been demanded by the kidnappers.

The scale of the ransom demand, combined with the use of cryptocurrency as the payment mechanism, raises a critical question: although Bitcoin is not inherently untraceable, can the perpetrators ultimately profit without being identified?

Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency, commonly referred to as a cryptocurrency, and is often believed to be anonymous, private and untraceable.

This perception has made Bitcoin attractive to some criminals, who view it as a convenient mechanism for receiving, transferring and storing payments.

As a result, Bitcoin has become increasingly associated with criminal activity, including extortion, kidnapping, fraud, ransomware and even murder.

The Guthrie case has once again drawn attention to the darker associations surrounding Bitcoin and reinforced public anxiety about cryptocurrency and its use for nefarious purposes.

At the same time, a number of high profile kidnappings around the world in 2025, involving people known to hold cryptocurrency, has intensified these concerns.

A common perception is that, because Bitcoin is digital, tracking transactions is difficult. Bitcoin does not exist in a physical form; it is represented as entries on the Bitcoin blockchain – a decentralised ledger used to record transactions across a network of computers. So Bitcoin is not inherently untraceable; its blockchain is transparent and permanently recorded.

Transactions do not explicitly list names, but each transaction is publicly visible and traceable between wallet addresses. Ownership is controlled through private keys and managed via a “digital wallet”, which functions conceptually like a traditional wallet in that it stores and enables the transfer of value. Thus, Bitcoin is more accurately, pseudonymous, not anonymous.

Currency conversion

In the Guthrie case, the immediate practical challenge for the kidnappers would be converting US$6 million into Bitcoin and transferring the cryptocurrency to a digital wallet. From there, the funds would need to be sent to a wallet address specified by the perpetrators – assuming the kidnappers provide such an address.

Transactions conducted through regulated cryptocurrency exchanges that impose know-your-customer checks may expose participants. These checks are mandatory processes to confirm user identities with official IDs, proof of address, and facial recognition.

Even before the funds reach the kidnappers, the transaction through a cryptocurrency exchange may itself create identifiable records. However, there is no guarantee of this, as there are many unregulated exchanges that operate in jurisdictions with lenient legislation.

While Bitcoin transactions are traceable between wallet addresses, the kidnappers in this case may attempt to enhance anonymity through layered technical measures. These may include generating a new wallet address for each transaction, operating multiple wallets, and repeatedly transferring funds from a primary wallet through successive intermediary wallets to obscure transaction links.

Maintaining anonymity also requires avoiding any association between wallet addresses and personal information, refraining from interacting with other identifiable people, and using privacy-enhancing tools such as Tor/VPNs – software that masks a user’s location – and coin-mixing services, which enhance privacy by scrambling cryptocurrency funds with others to obscure links between senders and receivers.

Achieving this level of operational security demands significant technical knowledge and strict discipline from the kidnappers. Any human error, whether through identity exposure, exchange interaction, IP logging, or conversion into hard cash may compromise anonymity.

Ultimately, the critical issue is not merely tracing funds but determining how recipients convert or use the Bitcoin without triggering identification through regulatory checkpoints, forensic analysis, or operational mistakes.

Even if the US$6 million could be traced between wallet addresses, anonymity hinges on whether those addresses can be linked to real-world identities. Where wallet holders remain unidentified and operate outside regulated exchanges, investigative challenges increase.

Additional complications arise if the perpetrators operate outside the US. Cross-border enforcement faces limitations including variation in crypto-related legislation and regulation, uneven training in tracing and confiscation, and limited international coordination.

Whether perpetrators can ultimately be reached by law enforcement depends significantly on their jurisdiction and the degree of international cooperation.

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

– ref. Nancy Guthrie kidnapping: can Bitcoin ransom demand be used to track down the criminals? – https://theconversation.com/nancy-guthrie-kidnapping-can-bitcoin-ransom-demand-be-used-to-track-down-the-criminals-276213

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephanie Dennison, Professor in Brazilian Studies, University of Leeds

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto, 2025) marks a moment of consolidation in one of contemporary Brazilian cinema’s most consistent careers.

Since his early short films such as Cold Tropics (Recife Frio, 2009), the filmmaker has developed a unique style packed with movie references that tantalisingly falls somewhere between arthouse and genre film. These traits reach new heights of self-awareness and formal freedom in The Secret Agent, which has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture, and best actor for Wagner Moura.

The film belongs to a recent wave of Brazilian productions revisiting the military dictatorship (1964-1985), including Walter Salles’s Oscar-winning I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui, 2024), and actor/director Wagner Moura’s Marighella (2019). Yet these films do more than reconstruct historical episodes: they process, through cinema, an unresolved trauma whose reverberations continue to shape Brazil’s political present.

One of the features that makes The Secret Agent, set predominantly in 1977, particularly compelling in this regard is its treatment of universities, as battlegrounds where memory, power and democracy collide.

The film’s main character Armando, played by Oscar-nominated Moura, is not, in fact, a secret agent and has no obvious links to opposition movements. He is an academic forced into hiding after clashing with big business interests aligned with the authoritarian regime who want to get their hands on his research.

Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí has spoken of her personal experience of these dark days in Brazil portrayed in Mendonça Filho’s film. Chauí returned from France in 1969 with her PhD in hand, just after the Brazilian military suspended most civil rights in the country, leading to a state hunt for “communists” and the intensification of torture and censorship.

Chauí describes the presence on campus of mysterious military figures with the power to hire and fire and “disappear” staff and students who were hostile to the regime. The presence of secret agents disguised as students to monitor professors and students in classrooms in public universities was commonplace.

In The Secret Agent, Armando has recently returned from the University of Leeds in Britain. He and the international research team he has set up at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil’s north-east fall under the scrutiny of Henrique Ghirotti, an industrialist from Sao Paulo.

Armando openly questions Ghirotti’s ethics and points to a conflict of interest: how can a wealthy industrialist justify taking government funding destined for universities for his own private interests? Armando’s bitter reaction to such an open show of corruption is enough for him to become a marked man. Much of the film portrays Armando’s attempt to hide from Ghirotti and the corrupt law enforcement and paid assassins he has at his disposal.

This dramatic situation illuminates not only the surveillance and repression universities endured under the dictatorship, but also broader patterns of corruption. The spider’s web connecting military interests with big business that drained Brazil’s economic momentum throughout the 1970s, is a history that is only now fully coming to light.

The film’s focus on academic freedom carries contemporary resonance. Mendonça Filho wrote The Secret Agent during the presidency of far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), whose long list of hostile measures included attacks on public education. Between 2019 and 2022, federal universities lost 14.4% of their budget, and by 2022 funding had fallen below 2013 levels.

Universities reported severe difficulties maintaining basic operations and scholarship programmes, with accumulated cuts exceeding R$100 billion (£14 billion) over four years. Bolsonaro and his followers encouraged the reporting (and “outing” on social media) of teaching staff deemed to be “ideological”. Following Lula’s victory in the 2022 elections, modest relief arrived and, with the renewal of funding lines, the reconstruction of this ravaged terrain is slowly getting underway.

Archives of repression

The Secret Agent also speaks to renewed global debates around the privatisation of research, intellectual property, and the political vulnerability of universities, increasingly viewed as hotbeds of leftist sedition. Mendonça Filho’s film suggests that authoritarianism attacks society not only through violence but through the destruction, privatisation, or silencing of knowledge production itself.

The industrialist Ghirotti takes delight in informing Armando that he’ll be recommending that his research team is shut down and the work transferred to the University of São Paulo, with whom Ghirotti has dubious links. Ghirotti questions the usefulness of any research being carried out in the north-east that speaks to national interests, particularly when Canadians are working on the same tech and Brazil can pay for foreign science and technology.

Mendonça Filho, who is from Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, has been very vocal about the ingrained prejudice of many from the wealthier and whiter southern states in relation to the north, which is dismissed as backward. It is telling that in The Secret Agent Armando’s international research team first took shape in Leeds, given similar prejudices are often held about the north of England.

In a subplot set in the present day, a group of students work on an oral history project involving tape recordings made by dissidents during the dictatorship, including Armando. One of them, Flávia, travels to Pernambuco to visit Armando’s now middle-aged son.

A young black mother with family in the north-east, living in the periphery of São Paulo, Flávia, typifies the new, more diverse university student body, made possible by hard-won affirmative action initiatives and the expansion of the public university network.

In The Secret Agent, it is Flávia and students like her who have inherited not only the archives of repression, but also the possibility of transforming knowledge into a form of democratic repair.

Anchored by Wagner Moura’s compelling performance, Mendonça Filho’s film connects the struggles of the past to the curiosity and courage of a new generation. In so doing, The Secret Agent powerfully underscores cinema’s ability not only to entertain, but also to illuminate, question and inspire.

Alfredo Luiz Paes de Oliveira Suppia receives funding from CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) as a researcher level 1C.

Stephanie Dennison 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 Secret Agent: gripping thriller reminds us why academic freedom needs protecting – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-agent-gripping-thriller-reminds-us-why-academic-freedom-needs-protecting-275598

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Monnereau, PhD Candidate in Music Copyright, Bangor University

A little-known American lawsuit could end up reshaping popular music. A US federal court is preparing to rule on a landmark copyright dispute. At its centre is an interesting question: can a short rhythmic pattern – one that appears in thousands of reggaeton tracks – be owned?

The case, known as the Fish Market dispute, asks whether a looping beat widely associated with reggaeton can be protected by copyright. More than 150 artists and producers have been named as defendants, and around 3,600 songs are implicated.

But the consequences stretch far beyond potential damages. If the claim succeeds, a rhythm that underpins an entire genre could become private property. The lawsuit exposes a long-standing weakness in copyright law, which is its inability to clearly define what makes a piece of music “original”.

Copyright is meant to be straightforward. Original musical works receive legal protection but copies do not. In practice though, music rarely fits this neat, binary logic.

Songs are built from shared elements like rhythms, chord progressions and harmonic patterns. Musicians can reuse, adapt and transform them. These building blocks are how music communicates. But copyright law offers little guidance on which musical elements can be protected, and which belong to everyone.

Unlike literature or visual art, music lacks clear legal definitions for its basic components. There is no settled guidance on whether courts should compare melody, rhythm, harmony, tempo, timbre or pitch, or indeed how much similarity is too much. As a result, judges and juries are left to decide these questions case by case, often without musical expertise.

That uncertainty has made music copyright litigation expensive and unpredictable. Jury trials are particularly risky, and damages can be eye-watering. Two recent American cases show just how inconsistent the system has become.

When courts can’t agree what counts as copying

In 2018, a US jury found that musicians Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had infringed Marvin Gaye’s work with their song Blurred Lines, not because of a shared melody or lyrics, but because of a similar “feel” or “vibe”. The decision marked a dramatic expansion of copyright protection, suggesting that a musical mood could be owned. Critics warned this risked allowing artists to monopolise styles rather than specific creative expressions.

By contrast, a 2024 US court ruling in a case involving singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran took the opposite view. The court held that copyright does not protect the basic building blocks of music. Shared rhythms, chord sequences or stylistic elements, it ruled, are part of musical language itself. Protection applies only to concrete expressions such as specific melodies or lyrics.

The Fish Market case magnifies this contradiction and raises the stakes considerably.

The plaintiffs – Steely & Clevie Productions, which represent the musical catalogue of the influential Jamaican dancehall duo Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson and Cleveland Browne – claim that their 1989 instrumental track, Fish Market, introduced the so-called “dem bow” rhythm. This is a distinctive beat, they argue, which forms the backbone of reggaeton. They are seeking copyright protection for that rhythmic pattern.

If successful, the ruling would grant two rightsholders control over a core musical feature used across a global genre. Unsurprisingly, many musicians and scholars see this as an attempt to claim ownership of reggaeton itself.

They argue that the rhythm predates Fish Market, drawing on long-established Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Cuban traditions such as the habanera beat. Reggaeton, they say, emerged through cultural exchange: from Jamaican dancehall, through Puerto Rico and out into the world. According to this perspective, the plaintiffs are not protecting originality but attempting to privatise a shared cultural inheritance.

Why rhythm is so hard to copyright

Rhythm sits at the heart of the legal problem. It is abstract yet fundamental, short in duration but repeated across a song and deeply tied to cultural identity. Copyright law, designed to compare fixed and discrete works, struggles to evaluate such elements. When courts attempt to isolate rhythm from its musical and cultural context, they risk mistaking convention for originality.

Copyright once played a limited role in musical life. Over time, as recorded music became a major commercial industry, songs increasingly came to be treated as economic assets. Ownership and control moved to the foreground, often at the expense of recognising music as an intellectual and cultural practice rooted in borrowing, influence and exchange.

The dispute around the “dem bow” rhythm lays bare the clash between subjective creativity, economic regulation and the law’s demand for objective rules. That clash is becoming harder to ignore as AI-generated music floods the market, trained on existing works and capable of producing endless stylistic variations. If copyright cannot clearly define originality now, its limits will soon be tested even further.

The reggaeton rhythm on trial is not just a fight over a beat. It reveals a fundamental mismatch between copyright law’s rigid standards and the reality of how music is made.

The Fish Market case offers judges an opportunity to clarify where protection should end, and to recognise the dangers of stretching originality so far that creativity itself becomes collateral damage.

Anna Monnereau 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. Can a rhythm be owned? What a reggaeton lawsuit reveals about how copyright misunderstands music – https://theconversation.com/can-a-rhythm-be-owned-what-a-reggaeton-lawsuit-reveals-about-how-copyright-misunderstands-music-273624