Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Coastal Carolina University

Your phone buzzes at 6 a.m. It’s ChatGPT: “I see you’re traveling to New York this week. Based on your preferences, I’ve found three restaurants near your hotel. Would you like me to make a reservation?”

You didn’t ask for this. The AI simply knew your plans from scanning your calendar and email and decided to help. Later, you mention to the chatbot needing flowers for your wife’s birthday. Within seconds, beautiful arrangements appear in the chat. You tap one: “Buy now.” Done. The flowers are ordered.

This isn’t science fiction. On Sept. 29, 2025, OpenAI and payment processor Stripe launched the Agentic Commerce Protocol. This technology lets you buy things instantly from Etsy within ChatGPT conversations. ChatGPT users are scheduled to gain access to over 1 million other Shopify merchants, from major household brand names to small shops as well.

As marketing researchers who study how AI affects consumer behavior, we believe we’re seeing the beginning of the biggest shift in how people shop since smartphones arrived. Most people have no idea it’s happening.

From searching to being served

For three decades, the internet has worked the same way: You want something, you Google it, you compare options, you decide, you buy. You’re in control.

That era is ending.

AI shopping assistants are evolving through three phases. First came “on-demand AI.” You ask ChatGPT a question, it answers. That’s where most people are today.

Now we’re entering “ambient AI,” where AI suggests things before you ask. ChatGPT monitors your calendar, reads your emails and offers recommendations without being asked.

Soon comes “autopilot AI,” where AI makes purchases for you with minimal input from you. “Order flowers for my anniversary next week.” ChatGPT checks your calendar, remembers preferences, processes payment and confirms delivery.

Each phase adds convenience but gives you less control.

The manipulation problem

AI’s responses create what researchers call an “advice illusion.” When ChatGPT suggests three hotels, you don’t see them as ads. They feel like recommendations from a knowledgeable friend. But you don’t know whether those hotels paid for placement or whether better options exist that ChatGPT didn’t show you.

Traditional advertising is something most people have learned to recognize and dismiss. But AI recommendations feel objective even when they’re not. With one-tap purchasing, the entire process happens so smoothly that you might not pause to compare options.

OpenAI isn’t alone in this race. In the same month, Google announced its competing protocol, AP2. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are building similar systems. Whoever wins will be in position to control how billions of people buy things, potentially capturing a percentage of trillions of dollars in annual transactions.

What we’re giving up

This convenience comes with costs most people haven’t thought about.

Privacy: For AI to suggest restaurants, it needs to read your calendar and emails. For it to buy flowers, it needs your purchase history. People will be trading total surveillance for convenience.

Choice: Right now, you see multiple options when you search. With AI as the middleman, you might see only three options ChatGPT chooses. Entire businesses could become invisible if AI chooses to ignore them.

Power of comparing: When ChatGPT suggests products with one-tap checkout, the friction that made you pause and compare disappears.

It’s happening faster than you think

ChatGPT reached 800 million weekly users by September 2025, growing four times faster than social media platforms did. Major retailers began using OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol within days of its launch.

History shows people consistently underestimate how quickly they adapt to convenient technologies. Not long ago most people wouldn’t think of getting in a stranger’s car. Uber now has 150 million users.

Convenience always wins. The question isn’t whether AI shopping will become mainstream. It’s whether people will keep any real control over what they buy and why.

What you can do

The open internet gave people a world of information and choice at their fingertips. The AI revolution could take that away. Not by forcing people, but by making it so easy to let the algorithm decide that they forget what it’s like to truly choose for themselves. Buying things is becoming as thoughtless as sending a text.

In addition, a single company could become the gatekeeper for all digital shopping, with the potential for monopolization beyond even Amazon’s current dominance in e-commerce. We believe that it’s important to at least have a vigorous public conversation about whether this is the future people actually want.

Here are some steps you can take to resist the lure of convenience:

Question AI suggestions. When ChatGPT suggests products, recognize you’re seeing hand-picked choices, not all your options. Before one-tap purchases, pause and ask: Would I buy this if I had to visit five websites and compare prices?

Review your privacy settings carefully. Understand what you’re trading for convenience.

Talk about this with friends and family. The shift to AI shopping is happening without public awareness. The time to have conversations about acceptable limits is now, before one-tap purchasing becomes so normal that questioning it seems strange.

The invisible price tag

AI will learn what you want, maybe even before you want it. Every time you tap “Buy now” you’re training it – teaching it your patterns, your weaknesses, what time of day you impulse buy.

Our warning isn’t about rejecting technology. It’s about recognizing the trade-offs. Every convenience has a cost. Every tap is data. The companies building these systems are betting you won’t notice, and in most cases they’re probably right.

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

– ref. OpenAI slipped shopping into 800 million ChatGPT users’ chats − here’s why that matters – https://theconversation.com/openai-slipped-shopping-into-800-million-chatgpt-users-chats-heres-why-that-matters-267402

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jordan Bretzfelder, Postdoctoral Fellow, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Humanity’s drive to explore has taken us across the solar system, with astronaut boots, various landers and rovers’ wheels exploring the surfaces of several different planetary bodies. These environments are generally hostile to human and equipment health, so designing and executing these missions requires a lot of planning, testing and technological development.

You may have heard about the extensive testing facilities for spacecraft and equipment, but how do scientists prepare for the human aspect of space exploration?

One way to test out techniques and identify situations that may arise during a real mission is using a simulation, which in this field is more commonly known as an analog. Researchers choose and design analog missions and environments to replicate elements of a real mission, using what is available here on Earth.

These missions are conducted in extreme environments on Earth that are comparable to the Moon or Mars, in habitats designed to replicate living quarters, or a combination of both. Researchers can use analogs to study crew performance and procedures, or to test instruments under development for use in space.

For example, operating a drill or wrench may seem easy here on Earth, but try doing the same task in thick gloves on a bulky, pressurized space suit in lower gravity. Suddenly, things aren’t so straightforward. Testing these scenarios on Earth allows researchers to identify necessary changes before launch. The analogs can also train crew members who will one day undertake the actual mission.

I’m a planetary scientist, which means I study the geology of other planets. Currently, I study environments on Earth that are similar to other planets to improve our understanding of their counterparts elsewhere in the solar system. I participated as a volunteer in one of these analog missions as an “analog astronaut,” serving as the crew geologist and applying my prior research findings from studying the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

These analog missions vary in setting, length and intensity, but all aim to learn more about the human factors involved in space exploration.

Where do we send them?

Analog missions are designed to simulate the crew’s experience in a given mission plan. In some cases, they simulate surface operations on the Moon or Mars for up to a year. Others might replicate the experience of being in transit to Mars for a period of time, followed by the crew “landing” and exploring the surface.

NASA uses several analog mission facilities spread across the world. For example, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah is located in an environment chosen to imitate conditions on Mars, while analog missions at Aquarius, an undersea research station off the coast of Florida, help scientists learn about crew behavior and psychology in a confined habitat located in a hostile environment.

Some natural environments are commonly used for analog operations, such as volcanic terrains in the western U.S., human-made craters in Nevada, the natural meteor crater in Arizona and research stations in Antarctica. These locations mirror the geologic settings the crews are likely to encounter on future missions, and so training in these locations helps them execute the actual missions.

I participated in a simulated 28-day lunar surface mission at a facility called Hi-SEAS as part of a study on crew dynamics and psychology in extreme isolation. The facility is located on Mauna Loa, a volcano on the big island of Hawaii. This habitat has been used for a variety of studies, as the volcanic terrain is reminiscent of both the Moon and parts of Mars, and the isolated location simulates being in space.

Analog mission crews

Most missions require applicants to hold relevant degrees. They must undergo physical health and psychiatric evaluations, with the goal being to select individuals with similar backgrounds to those in the astronaut corps. The ideal crew is typically made up of participants who work and live well with others, and can stay cool under stress.

Crews also include at least one person with medical training for emergencies, as well as a variety of scientists and engineers to operate the habitat’s life support systems.

The experiences of each crew varies, depending on the mission design, location and makeup of the crew. My mission was designed so that the six crew members would not have any information about our crewmates until we arrived in Hawaii for training. In addition to geology expertise, I also have some medical training as a Wilderness First Responder, so I was there to assist with any medical issues.

Daily life on an analog mission

Once in Hawaii, the crew spent three days learning how to operate the habitat systems, including the hydroponic garden and solar panels. We practiced emergency procedures and were taught how to perform other tasks.

After that orientation, we were deployed to the habitat for 28 days. We turned in our phones to mission control and could only access the internet to check emails or use a few preapproved websites required for our daily duties. Our days were scheduled with tasks from wake up, about 6:30 a.m., to lights out, about 10 p.m.

The tasks included a variety of exercises to assess individual and group performance. They included individual assessments – similar to a daily IQ test – and group computer-based tasks, such as team 3D Tetris. The researchers remotely monitored our interactions during these activities, and the results were analyzed as the mission progressed. They used our fluctuating performance on these activities as a proxy for estimating stress levels, group cohesion and individual well-being.

Additionally, we went on two-to-three-hour extra-vehicular activities, or excursions outside the habitat, on alternating days. During these expeditions, we conducted geologic investigations on the volcano. On our “off days,” we spent two hours exercising in the habitat. We had to be fully suited in a mock spacesuit any time we went outside, and we had to be careful about the airlock procedures. We were never outdoors alone.

We could only eat freeze-dried and powdered foods, aside from what we were able to grow in the hydroponic system. We had no additional food delivered during our stay. Water was also rationed, meaning we had to find innovative ways to maintain personal hygiene. For example, a bucket shower one or two times per week was allowed, supplemented by “wilderness wipe” baths. As someone with a lot of very curly hair, I was happy to figure out a method for managing it using less than two liters of water per week. We were also permitted to do laundry once during our stay, as a group. Sorting through your crewmates’ wet clothes was certainly one way to bond.

Though physically demanding at times, the workload was not unreasonable. We were kept busy all day, as certain everyday tasks, such as cooking, required more effort than they might need in our normal lives. Preparing nutritionally balanced and palatable meals while rationing our very limited resources was hard, but it also provided opportunities to get creative with recipes and ingredients. We even managed to bake a cake for a crew member’s birthday, using peanut butter protein and cocoa powders to flavor it.

After dinner each night, we shared the pre-saved movies and shows we had each brought with us into the habitat, as we could not access the internet. Those of us who had brought physical copies of books into the habitat would trade those as well. One crew member managed to acquire a downloadable form of the daily Wordle, so we could still compete with our friends back home. We also played board games, and all of these activities helped us get to know each other.

Though different from our typical daily lives, the experience was one of a kind. We had the satisfaction of knowing that our efforts advanced space exploration in its own small way, one IQ test and slapdash cake at a time.

Jordan Bretzfelder 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.

– ref. Space exploration in the backyard, on a budget – how NASA simulates conditions in space without blasting off – https://theconversation.com/space-exploration-in-the-backyard-on-a-budget-how-nasa-simulates-conditions-in-space-without-blasting-off-264658

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Navid Tahvildari, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University

Hurricanes are America’s most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. Since 1980, these powerful tropical storms have done more than US$1.5 trillion in damage and killed more than 7,000 people.

The No. 1 cause of the damages and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge.

Storm surge is the rise in the ocean’s water level, caused by a combination of powerful winds pushing water toward the coastline and reduced air pressure within the hurricane compared to the pressure outside of it. In addition to these factors, waves breaking close to the coast causes sea level to increase near the coastline, a phenomenon we call wave setup, which can be an important component of storm surge.

Accurate storm surge predictions are critical for giving coastal residents time to evacuate and giving emergency responders time to prepare. But storm surge forecasts at high resolution can be slow.

As a coastal engineer, I study how storm surge and waves interact with natural and human-made features on the ocean floor and coast and ways to mitigate their impact. I have used physics-based models for coastal flooding and have recently been exploring ways that artificial intelligence can improve the speed of storm surge forecasting.

How storm surge is forecast today

Today, operational storm surge forecasts rely on hydrodynamic models, which are based on the physics of water flow.

These models use current environmental conditions – such as how fast the storm is moving toward shore, its wind speed and direction, the timing of the tide, and the shape of the seafloor and the landscape – to compute the projected surge height and determine which locations are most at risk.

Hydrodynamic models have substantially improved in recent decades, and computers have become significantly more powerful, such that rapid low-resolution simulations are possible over very large areas. However, high-resolution simulation that provide neighborhood-level detail can take several hours to run.

Those hours can be critical for communities at risk to evacuate safely and for emergency responders to prepare adequately.

To forecast storm surge across a wide area, modelers break up the target area into many small pieces that together form a computational grid or mesh. Picture pixels in an image. The smaller the grid pieces, or cells, the higher the resolution and the more accurate the forecast. However, creating many small cells across a large area requires greater computing power, so forecasting storm surge takes longer as a result.

Forecasters can use low-resolution computer grids to speed up the process, but that reduces accuracy, leaving communities with more uncertainty about their flood risk.

AI can help speed that up.

How AI can create better forecasts

There are two main sources of uncertainty in storm surge predictions.

One involves the data fed into the computer model. A hurricane’s storm track and wind field, which determine where it will make landfall and how intense the surge will be, are still hard to forecast accurately more than a few days in advance. Changes to the coast and sea floor, such as from channel dredging or loss of salt marshes, mangroves or sand dunes, can affect the resistance that storm surge will face.

The second uncertainty involves the resolution of the computational grid, over which the mathematical equations of the surge and wave motion are solved. The resolution determines how well the model sees changes in landscape elevation and land cover and accounts for them, and at how much granularity the physics of hurricane surge and waves is solved.

AI models can produce detailed predictions faster. For example, engineers and scientists have developed AI models based on deep neural networks that can predict water levels along the coastline quickly and accurately by using data about the wind field. In some cases, these models have been more accurate than traditional hydrodynamic models.

AI can also develop forecasts for areas with little historic data, or be used to understand extreme conditions that may not have occurred there before.

For these forecasts, physics-based models can be used to generate synthetic data to train the AI on scenarios that might be possible but haven’t actually happened. Once an AI model is trained on both the historic and synthetic data, it can quickly generate surge forecasts using details about the wind and atmospheric pressure.

Training the AI on data from hydrodynamic models can also improve its ability to quickly generate inundation risk maps showing which streets or houses are likely to flood in extreme events that may not have a historical precedent but could happen in the future.

The future of AI for hurricane forecasting

AI is already being used in operational storm surge forecasts in a limited way, mainly to augment the commonly used physics-based models.

In addition to improving those methods, my team and other researchers have been developing ways to use AI for storm surge prediction using observed data, assessing the damage after hurricanes and processing camera images to deduce flood intensity. That can fill a critical gap in the data needed for validating storm surge models at granular levels.

As artificial intelligence models rapidly spread through every aspect of our lives and more data becomes available for training them, the technology offers potential to improve hurricane and storm surge forecasting in the future, giving coastal communities faster and more detailed warnings about the risks on the way.

Navid Tahvildari’s research on coastal flooding has been funded by NSF, NOAA, NASA, and DOT.

– ref. How AI can improve storm surge forecasts to help save lives – https://theconversation.com/how-ai-can-improve-storm-surge-forecasts-to-help-save-lives-259007

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor Questrom School of Business, Boston University

Halloween is a fun, scary time for children and adults alike – but why does the holiday seem to start so much earlier every year? Decades ago, when I was young, Halloween was a much smaller affair, and people didn’t start preparing until mid-October. Today, in my neighborhood near where I grew up in Massachusetts, Halloween decorations start appearing in the middle of summer.

What’s changed isn’t just when we celebrate but how: Halloween has evolved from a simple folk tradition to a massive commercial event. As a business school professor who has studied the economics of holidays for years, I’m astounded by how the business of Halloween has grown. And understanding why it’s such big business may help explain why it’s creeping earlier and earlier.

The business of Halloween

Halloween’s roots lie in a Celtic holiday honoring the dead, later adapted by the Catholic Church as a time to remember saints. Today it’s largely a secular celebration – one that gives people from all backgrounds a chance to dress up, engage in fantasy and safely confront their fears.

That broad appeal has fueled explosive growth. The National Retail Federation has surveyed Americans about their Halloween plans each September since 2005. Back then, slightly more than half of Americans said they planned to celebrate. In 2025, nearly three-quarters said they would – a huge jump in 20 years.

And people are planning to shell out more money than ever. Total spending on Halloween is expected to reach a record US$13 billion this year, according to the federation – an almost fourfold increase over the past two decades. Adjusting for inflation and population growth, I found that the average American will spend an expected $38 on Halloween this year – up from just $18 per person back in 2005. That’s a lot of candy corn.

Candy imports show a similar trend. September has long been the key month for the candy trade, with imports about one-fifth higher than during the rest of the year. Back in September 2005, the U.S. imported about $250 million of the sweet stuff. In September 2024, that figure had tripled to about $750 million.

This is part of a larger trend of Halloween becoming a lot more professionalized. For example, when I was a kid, it wasn’t unusual for households to pass out brownies, candied apples and other homemade treats to trick-or-treaters. But because of safety concerns and food allergies, for decades Americans have been warned to stick to mass-produced, individually wrapped candies.

The same shift has happened with costumes. Years ago, many people made their own; today, store-bought costumes dominate — even for pets.

Why Halloween keeps creeping earlier

While there’s no definitive research establishing why Halloween seems to start earlier each year, the increase in spending is one major driver.

Halloween items are seasonal, which means no one wants to buy giant plastic skeletons on Nov. 1. As total spending grows, retailers order more inventory, and the cost of storing ever-larger amounts of unsold items until the next year becomes a bigger consideration.

Once a season’s commercial footprint becomes large enough, retailers begin ordering and displaying merchandise long before it’s actually needed. For example, winter coats start appearing in stores in early fall and are typically gone when the snow starts falling. It’s the same with Halloween: Retailers put out merchandise early to ensure they’re not stuck with unsold goods once the season is over.

They also often price strategically – charging full price when items first hit the shelves, appealing to eager early shoppers, and then marking down prices closer to the holiday. This clears shelves and warehouses, making room for the next upcoming shopping season.

Over the past two decades, Halloween has become an ever-bigger commercial holiday. The growth in people enjoying the holiday and the increase in spending has resulted in Halloween becoming one giant treat for businesses. The big trick for retailers is preventing this holiday from starting before the Fourth of July.

Jay L. Zagorsky 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.

– ref. Why is Halloween starting so much earlier each year? A business professor explains – https://theconversation.com/why-is-halloween-starting-so-much-earlier-each-year-a-business-professor-explains-267716

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Michael Watson, Interim Associate Chair and Instructor of Retailing, University of South Carolina

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

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“Why are ladies’ shoes so pointy? Feet and toes aren’t pointy, most of men’s shoes aren’t pointy, and they hurt my feet.” – Bunny, age 13, Mizpah, New Jersey

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While people’s actual feet are rounded on the end, women’s dress shoes often come to a sharp point at the toe. Many people also feel these pointy shoes are uncomfortable to wear. So why do shoe designers keep making them this way?

With over two decades in the fashion industry, I’ve researched and taught on the influences behind fashion design and how it’s used, even when certain traditions and styles seem impractical.

Revisiting the interesting history behind women’s pointy shoes can help us understand the various reasons why they’re still popular.

Pointy poulaines for men

Several current fashion trends for women, including pointy shoes, were in fact initially adopted by men.

In medieval Europe, around the 14th and 15th centuries, pointy leather shoes were popular among wealthy men. Called poulaines – or cracows, after the Polish city Kraków, where historians think they originated – these shoes could run as long as 12 inches in length. To keep the stiff, pointy shape, the wearer would stuff the ends of the shoes with moss or wool.

Like most items of fashion, shoes signal the wearer’s status to their peers. Poulaines were heavily decorated and expensive to make, and their elongated design made it difficult to move around. Thus, wearing poulaines communicated to others that the wearer was wealthy, having no need to perform physical work that required mobility.

Pointy shoes as status symbol

These shoes became so popular that in 1463 King Edward IV of England passed laws limiting toe length to 2 inches for anyone below a lord in social ranking. This decree had social, political and religious effects.

Socially, restricting the longest-toed shoes to the nobility ensured the shoe would be a visual status marker associated with the upper classes. This obvious sign helped maintain social order and prevented lower-class people from trying to pass themselves off as higher in standing than they were.

Politically, the king used this same legislation to control the textile trade and protect English industries. By regulating the fabrics and accessories necessary to make excessively ornate shoes, Edward IV could limit foreign competition with English textile manufacturers and at the same time manage fashion trends.

From a religious perspective, King Edward IV passed these laws on the grounds that God was displeased by anything other than modest clothing – for the lower classes, anyway. Additionally, religious leaders believed that the long toes prevented people from kneeling in a respectful, submissive manner and so restricted the ability to properly pray.

The pressure to literally “fit in” to these pointy shoes also came with a physical cost. Poulaines hurt the wearer’s feet and could make their toe bones crooked. Bunions – a bony bump that develops on the inside of the foot at the big toe – became more common with the popularity of these shoes.

Pain with a purpose

Various cultures have adopted pointy shoes throughout history, often to signify status, wealth or a connection to a specific subculture. A few examples include the juttis or khussas of Northern India and Pakistan, respectively; the lotus shoes once popular in China; and the pointed flat slippers worn during the Etruscan civilization.

From a practical standpoint, however, pointy-toed shoes can lead to foot deformities and health problems. Why do people still wear pointy shoes if they’re so painful?

One reason is a desire to belong. Your brain is programmed to seek out and find people who think and believe like you. Like how early humans needed to stay with their tribe to survive, your brain thinks that being part of a group can help keep you safe.

Because high-heeled, pointed shoes are commonly worn by women, wearing them gives the wearer feelings of acceptance from other women. While there is nothing inherent about pointy shoes that make them feminine or attractive – considering that they were often originally designed for men – fashion often relies on trends that people unconsciously agree on. What is stylish is often influenced by accepted social norms.

Your brain also has clever shortcuts to help you make decisions quickly. One shortcut is to look at what other people are doing. If you see lots of people wearing a certain style or playing a particular game, your brain thinks, well, if everyone is doing this, it must be a good choice. This process helps you make decisions without having to think too hard about every little detail.

Scientists call the powerful, mental influence fashion has on both the person wearing it and the people seeing their outfit enclothed cognition. The shoes you wear may alter how you perceive yourself and others, as well as carry symbolic meaning. So designers might use elongated shoes to create the illusion of a long, slender silhouette to create a look that is not only seen but also personally felt as elegant and powerful.

With new technology and an increased consumer desire for comfort, the good news is that next time you get dressed and want to wear pointy, fashionable shoes, they may be at least a little less painful than they were in the past.

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Michael Watson 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.

– ref. Why are women’s shoes so pointy? A fashion expert on impractical but stylish footwear – https://theconversation.com/why-are-womens-shoes-so-pointy-a-fashion-expert-on-impractical-but-stylish-footwear-256174

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Charles Vanthournout, Ph.D. Student in Ancient History, Université de Lorraine

When Napoleon embarked upon a military expedition into Egypt in 1798, he brought with him a team of scholars, scientists and artists. Together, they produced the monumental “Description de l’Égypte,” a massive, multivolume work about Egyptian geography, history and culture.

At the time, the United States was a young nation with big aspirations, and Americans often viewed their country as an heir to the great civilizations of the past. The tales of ancient Egypt that emerged from Napoleon’s travels became a source of fascination to Americans, though in different ways.

In the slaveholding South, ancient Egypt and its pharaohs became a way to justify slavery. For abolitionists and African Americans, biblical Egypt served as a symbol of bondage and liberation.

As a historian, I study how 19th-century Americans – from Southern intellectuals to Black abolitionists – used ancient Egypt to debate questions of race, civilization and national identity. My research traces how a distorted image of ancient Egypt shaped competing visions of freedom and hierarchy in a deeply divided nation.

Egypt inspires the pro-slavery South

In 1819, when lawyer John Overton, military officer James Winchester and future president Andrew Jackson founded a city in Tennessee along the Mississippi River, they christened it Memphis, after the ancient Egyptian capital.

While promoting the new city, Overton declared of the Mississippi River that ran alongside it: “This noble river may, with propriety, be denominated the American Nile.”

“Who can tell that she may not, in time, rival … her ancient namesake, of Egypt in classic elegance and art?” The Arkansas Banner excitedly reported.

In the region’s fertile soil, Chancellor William Harper, a jurist and pro-slavery theorist from South Carolina, saw the promise of an agricultural empire built on slavery, one “capable of being made a far greater Egypt.”

There was a reason pro-slavery businessmen and thinkers were energized by the prospect of an American Egypt: Many Southern planters imagined themselves as guardians of a hierarchical and aristocratic system, one grounded in landownership, tradition and honor. As Alabama newspaper editor William Falconer put it, he and his fellow white Southerners belonged to a “race that had established law, order, and government on earth.”

To them, Egypt represented the archetype of a great hierarchical civilization. Older than Athens or Rome, Egypt conferred a special legitimacy. And just like the pharaohs, the white elites of the South saw themselves as the stewards of a prosperous society sustained by enslaved labor.

Leading pro-slavery thinkers like Virginia social theorist George Fitzhugh, South Carolina lawyer and U.S. Senator Robert Barnwell Rhett and Georgia lawyer and politician Thomas R.R. Cobb all invoked Egypt as an example to follow.

“These [Egyptian] monuments show negro slaves in Egypt at least 1,600 years before Christ,” Cobb wrote in 1858. “That they were the same happy negroes of this day is proven by their being represented in a dance 1,300 years before Christ.”

A distorted view of history

But their view of history didn’t exactly square with reality. Slavery did exist in ancient Egypt, but most slaves had been originally captured as prisoners of war.

The country never developed a system of slavery comparable to that of Greece or Rome, and servitude was neither race-based nor tied to a plantation economy. The mistaken notion that Egypt’s great monuments were built by slaves largely stems from ancient authors and the biblical account of the Hebrews. Later, popular culture – especially Hollywood epics – would continue to advance this misconception.

Nonetheless, 19th-century Southern intellectuals drew on this imagined Egypt to legitimize slavery as an ancient and divinely sanctioned institution.

Even after the Civil War, which ended in 1865, nostalgia for these myths of ancient Egypt endured. In 1877, former Confederate officer Edward Fontaine noted how “Veritable specimens of black, woolyheaded negroes are represented by the old Egyptian artists in chains, as slaves, and even singing and dancing, as we have seen them on Southern plantations in the present century.”

Turning Egypt white

But to claim their place among the world’s great civilizations, Southerners had to reconcile a troubling fact: Egypt was located in Africa, the ancestral land of those enslaved in the U.S.

In response, an intellectual movement called the American School of Ethnology – which promoted the idea that races had separate, unequal origins to justify Black inferiority and slavery – set out to “whiten” Egypt.

In a series of texts and lectures, they portrayed Egypt as a slaveholding civilization dominated by whites. They pointed to Egyptian monuments as proof of the greatness that a slave society could achieve. And they also promoted a scientifically discredited theory called “polygenesis,” which argued that Black people did not descend from the Bible’s Adam, but from some other source.

Richard Colfax, the author of the 1833 pamphlet “Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists,” insisted that “the Egyptians were decidedly of the Caucasian variety of men.” Most mummies, he added, “bear not the most distant resemblance to the negro race.”

Physician Samuel George Morton cited “Crania Aegyptiaca,” an 1822 German study of Egyptian skulls, to reinforce this view. Writing in the Charleston Medical Journal in 1851, he explained how the German study had concluded that the skulls mirrored those of Europeans in size and shape. In doing so, it established “the negro his true position as an inferior race.”

Physician Josiah C. Nott, Egyptologist George Gliddon and physician and propagandist John H. Van Evrie formed an effective triumvirate: Through press releases and public lectures featuring the skulls of mummies, they turned Egyptology into a tool of pro-slavery propaganda.

“The Negro question was the one I wished to bring out,” Nott wrote, adding that he “embalmed it in Egyptian ethnography.”

Nott and Gliddon’s 1854 bestseller “Types of Mankind” fused pseudoscience with Egyptology to both “prove” Black inferiority and advance the idea that their beloved African civilization was populated by a white Egyptian elite.

“Negroes were numerous in Egypt,” they write, “but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves.”

Denouncing America’s pharaohs

This distorted vision of Egypt, however, wasn’t the only one to take hold in the U.S., and abolitionists saw this history through a decidedly different lens.

In the Bible, Egypt occupies a central place, mentioned repeatedly as a land of refuge – notably for Joseph – but also as a nation of idolatry and as the cradle of slavery.

The episode of the Exodus is perhaps the most famous reference. The Hebrews, enslaved under an oppressive pharaoh, are freed by Moses, who leads them to the Promised Land, Canaan. This biblical image of Egypt as a land of bondage deeply shaped 19th-century moral and political debates: For many abolitionists, it represented the ultimate symbol of tyranny and human oppression.

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, Black people could be heard singing in front of the White House, “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt Land … Tell Jeff Davis to let my people go.”

Black Americans seized upon this biblical parallel. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was a contemporary pharaoh, with Moses still the prophet of liberation.

African American writers and activists like Phillis Wheatley and Sojourner Truth also invoked Egypt as a tool of emancipation.

“God has implanted in every human heart a principle which we call the love of liberty,” Wheatley wrote in a 1774 letter. “It is impatient with oppression and longs for deliverance; and with the permission of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that this same principle lives in us.”

Yet the South’s infatuation with Egypt shows how antiquity can always be recast to serve the powerful. And it’s a reminder that the past is far from neutral terrain – that there is rarely, if ever, a ceasefire in wars over history and memory.

Charles Vanthournout 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.

– ref. Pharaohs in Dixieland – how 19th-century America reimagined Egypt to justify racism and slavery – https://theconversation.com/pharaohs-in-dixieland-how-19th-century-america-reimagined-egypt-to-justify-racism-and-slavery-266665

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By George Anastasia, Adjunct Professor of Law and Justice Studies, Rowan University

The bloody mob war that is the focus of the new Netflix series “Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia,” which premieres Oct. 22, 2025, is full of the murder and mayhem, treachery and deceit that have been the hallmarks of the nation’s Cosa Nostra family conflicts.

What was different in Philadelphia was that the FBI had it all wired for sound.

Electronic surveillance has been a major tool in the government’s highly successful war against the Mafia nationwide, but nowhere has its impact been felt more dramatically than in Philadelphia.

As a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, I covered this mob war in real time from 1994 through 2000. Now I teach a course at Rowan University on the history of organized crime, using the war as a case study, and I was a consultant on the Netflix series.

The war pitted one faction of the Philadelphia mob, headed by Sicilian-born John Stanfa, against a rival faction led by Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino. The issues were control of all illegal operations in the underworld – gambling, loan-sharking, drug-dealing and extortion. Money was the bottom line, but there also was a cultural and generational divide that had Stanfa and, for the most part, his group of older wiseguys facing off against Merlino and his crew of young South Philadelphia-born mobsters.

But only after indictments were handed down and evidence was introduced at trials did the extent of the electronic surveillance operation become known.

‘Goodfellas kill goodfellas’

Mobsters, speaking in unguarded moments and unaware that the feds were listening, buried themselves.

So here was mob boss Stanfa discussing with an associate plans to lure Merlino and two of his two lieutenants to a meeting where they would be killed:

“See, you no gotta give a chance,” the Sicilian-born Stanfa said in his halting English. “Bam, bam … Over here is best, behind the ear.”

Or here was Salvatore Profaci, a New York mobster brought in to quietly settle a dispute that had gone public after mob lawyer Salvatore Avena filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his mobbed-up business partner in a trash-hauling business.

“Goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas,” Profaci said in a line that couldn’t have been written any better by “The Godfather” author Mario Puzo or delivered more effectively by the award-winning actor Robert De Niro. “Goodfellas kill goodfellas.”

The most staggering piece of the investigation, which was made known only after Stanfa and more than 20 of his associates had been indicted and arrested, was that the FBI had received court authorization to plant listening devices in the Camden, New Jersey, law offices of Salvatore Avena, Stanfa’s defense attorney.

A judge approved the highly unusual authorization after the feds argued that Stanfa was using the shield of attorney-client privilege to conduct mob meetings in Avena’s office while a mob war raged on the streets of South Philadelphia.

More than 2,000 conversations were recorded during the two-year electronic surveillance operation, with FBI agents and an assistant U.S. attorney manning a listening post in the basement of the federal courthouse a block away from Avena’s office. Whenever Stanfa and his associates got together, the feds were listening. Many of those conversations were then introduced as evidence at the racketeering trials that followed.

The conversations proved to be a treasure trove not only for investigators but also for journalists who covered the story as it unfolded and later got access to the tapes that were made public when the cases went to trial.

Blood in the streets

Two of the books I’ve written about the Philadelphia mob, “The Last Gangster” in 2004 and “The Goodfella Tapes” in 1998, are built around those tapes and the investigations they spawned.

Anyone who has written true crime knows that part of the problem with nonfiction storytelling is coming up with dialogue. In writing books about the Philadelphia mob wars that are the focus of the new Netflix series, that was never a problem.

Mobsters from Philadelphia, South Jersey, New York and the Scanton-Wilkes Barre area of Pennsylvania ended up on the recordings, which offered not only details about the war but also included philosophical ramblings and personal asides that provided a glimpse into the world of organized crime as good as or better than any fictionalized story line from “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos.”

Throughout the conflict, as bodies piled up and blood ran in the streets of the City of Brotherly Love, Stanfa and several of his associates were picked up plotting murder and mayhem, bemoaning the loss of honor and loyalty that had once been the hallmark of Cosa Nostra, and belittling their street-corner rivals, the “little Americans” who hadn’t a clue about what it meant to be a real mafioso.

“When you’re a dwarf they could put you on a high mountain, you’re still a dwarf,” Avena told Stanfa in one of several conversations mocking Merlino and his associates.

“I was born and raised in this thing (Cosa Nostra) and I’m gonna die in this thing,” said Stanfa at another point, bemoaning the state of the Philadelphia mob. “But with the right people. Over here is like kindergarten.”

‘You can’t cross-examine a tape’

Electronic surveillance was used again and again in racketeering trials in which the feds not only dismantled but judicially eviscerated the Philadelphia crime family.

Stanfa is currently serving life in prison. Several of his top associates were jailed for more than 20 years. In a second prosecution, Merlino and most of his top associates were convicted of racketeering and jailed for sentences ranging from seven to 14 years.

Dozens of conversations were played for the juries that sat in judgment during the racketeering trials that followed. Again and again the mobster’s own words were turned against them.

Another highlight was an FBI surveillance video of a mob hit picked up on a hidden camera as it occurred. A surveillance camera located across the street from a deli run by then-Stanfa underboss Joseph Ciancaglini Jr. picked up the early morning shooting in which four shadowy figures burst into the deli and opened fire. An audio bug hidden inside the deli provided the sound effects – gunshots, shouting and the screams of a waitress. The shooting occurred shortly after 6 a.m. and just moments after Ciancaglini and his waitress had arrived and begun setting up for business.

Cooperating witnesses were also part of the trial, but defense attorneys frequently undermined their testimony by providing a litany of the crimes – often including murders – that the witnesses had admitted to as part of their plea deals.

You can attack the credibility of a cooperating witness by focusing on his own crimes and his need to say whatever the government wants in order to win a lenient sentence, a defense attorney once explained to me. What you can’t do, he said, “is cross-examine a tape.”

Jurors got to hear mobsters in their own words discussing the mob war. And there was nothing the defense could do to counterattack the impact of those words.

One classic discussion underscored the mobsters’ concern about electronic surveillance and demonstrated their inability to do much about it.

Stanfa consigliere Anthony Piccolo was talking with Avena about the problem with cooperators and phone taps. Both men agreed it was important to be cautious. Avena then told Piccolo that he’d had an electronic anti-bugging expert come into his office over the weekend and had swept the rooms. It had cost him $500, Avena said.

“It’s money well spent,” said Piccolo as the undetected FBI listening device beamed the conversation back to the listening post.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

George Anastasia is the owner of G&A Media LLC, the company through which he served as consultant for the series and through which he was paid, .

– ref. How mobsters’ own words brought down Philly’s mafia − a veteran crime reporter has the story behind the end of the ‘Mob War’ – https://theconversation.com/how-mobsters-own-words-brought-down-phillys-mafia-a-veteran-crime-reporter-has-the-story-behind-the-end-of-the-mob-war-267196