Host Eloise Stevens celebrating The Conversation’s Curious Kids win at the British Podcast AwardsGemma Ware, CC BY-ND
We’re delighted that the Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast won the Gold award in the Kids category at the British Podcast Awards on October 2 at an event in London.
Launched in April 2024, The Conversation’s Curious Kids features primary school children from around the world posing questions to researchers, with the help of the show’s host and producer Eloise Stevens.
The podcast, published in collaboration with FunKids radio, grew out of the popular series of Curious Kids articles on The Conversation where children send in questions and we find academics to answer them.
The show is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. For those with access to a Yoto player, The Conversation’s Curious Kids is also available via the ‘Discover’ button on your Yoto app, under ‘Podcasts for kids’.
And for any children out there with a question they’d like to put to an academic, you can question to curiouskids@theconversation.comor record it and send your question to us directly at funkidslive.com/curious. We’d love to hear from you!
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annayah Prosser, Assistant Professor in Marketing, Business and Society, University of Bath
Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has been released to much fanfare. While the album’s critical reception has been mixed – with reviews ranging from a flop to a masterpiece – the album is all but guaranteed to hold the number one spot in music charts across the world this week thanks to a carefully plotted marketing campaign.
Swift is a global phenomenon and, as a lecturer in marketing, business and society, I am one of many researchers exploring the social science of her success.
In recent years, Swift has been criticised for releasing several limited editions of each album. The Life of a Showgirl has been no exception in its release schedule.
At time of writing, over 24 different versions of the CD and vinyl have been released. These include different colour vinyls, different cover images, signed editions and, most recently, CDs with unique tracks that are not available on streaming platforms.
This marketing strategy is a powerful tool for chart success, where every album purchased (regardless of the format or cover image) is valued.
Many of these editions are released online in timed drops on Swift’s official website. They’re only available for 48 hours, or until stock runs out. This leads to a feeling of scarcity among fans, which encourages them to make impulsive purchase decisions for fear of missing out on their “favourite variant”.
The first music video of the album, The Fate of Ophelia.
Research has shown that neurodivergent fans are likely to experience stress and anxiety around marketing strategies similar to this. There is a thriving secondary market for these exclusive editions, and scalpers (resellers who legally buy up products and then resell them at an inflated cost) know that keen fans will pay above the recommended retail price for these editions. This encourages over-consumption and many fans may spend more money than they expect to on the new album.
Manipulating charts by offering multiple exclusive album editions is, of course, not an option that many less powerful artists have. Vinyl pressings, in particular, are extremely expensive, and not all artists can afford to do such large vinyl runs, let alone with multiple variants.
The materials used to create vinyl are also unsustainable, and many musicians are seeking more eco-friendly alternatives. As yet Swift hasn’t experimented with eco-friendly alternatives to vinyl, but she does claim to offset her travel carbon footprint. Regardless of the financial drain on fans or the environmental impact, these coercive marketing strategies currently form a strong tactic for chart success.
Pre-release embargoes
Unusually, Swift’s albums do not often feature a lead single, released before the album. Many other artists use this lead single to promote their albums, and to give listeners a taste of what is to come. Swift’s releases are instead kept under sworn secrecy, with all pre-release information coming directly from the singer’s team.
While for many other artists this may be a negative, for Swift this adds layers of mystery to her releases. It also means that everyone hears the tracks at the same time, leaving little opportunity for music aficionados to provide reviews that, among other effects, could dissuade fans from purchasing.
These embargoes have negative impacts for smaller businesses – independent record stores hoping to host midnight launch parties had to cancel these when it became clear album shipments might not arrive on time. Nonetheless, this strategy allows Swift to control the narrative around her releases entirely, enticing fans with sneak-previews and puzzles to uncover before the release that keeps social media hype high.
Over release weekend, many fans attended Swift’s official album launch party, screened in cinemas internationally. These parties featured a sneak-peek of the upcoming music video for the album’s first track, The Fate of Ophelia, alongside behind-the-scenes commentary from Swift herself. Fans who attended these launch parties were able to see the video before anyone else.
Swift advertises a Target-only variant of the album.
As well as providing another avenue to advertise the album, the limited-time cinema release party creates an exclusive opportunity for Swifties (as fans are known) to connect and celebrate the album together. The Eras Tour showed just how important it is for fans to connect with each other around these kinds of events.
Where once these release parties may have been organised informally among friend groups, Swift has now transformed them into another opportunity for income and generating social media hype.
Unsurprisingly, given these tactics, many artists choose not to release music around Swift album release dates. Those artists who historically have deigned to compete – even weeks after the original release – have had their chart threatened by the release of yet more exclusive editions.
For example, the release of three further exclusive editions of The Tortured Poets Department knocked singer Billie Eilish off of the charts last year, five weeks after Swift’s album’s initial release.
It is extremely difficult for any artist to compete with such a strong industry force. Swift and her fans are powerful enough to wipe out most of her competition whenever she chooses to release her albums.
This album roll out leaves many questions about the state of the music industry today. What do artists owe their fans? Is this business model sustainable given the impending climate emergency? Should consumers be protected from these new forms of market exploitation? What would a fairer way of engaging in the music business look like?
Researchers across the fields of business and society, macro-marketing and corporate social responsibility have been considering these complex questions for decades. It is important that fans, researchers, artists and executives answer these questions together. The fate of the music industry – and fair competition within it – is at stake.
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Annayah Prosser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Ridge-Newman, Associate Dean And Associate Professor School of Humanities, Liverpool Hope University
In the wake of the 2024 general election, media headlines, public discourse, and Reform UK’s consistently favourable electoral and polling results have suggested the party poses an “existential threat” to the Conservatives.
The Conservatives have seen off and subsumed major threats in their long history. But Reform UK is a well-oiled machine. Its leader is a political juggernaut who has honed his skills in a new era of populist political communication and looks better connected to voters as a result. The contemporary Conservative party, meanwhile, is a deer caught in headlights.
The decline in the relevance of the Conservative party and the rising relevance of Reform UK as the de facto opposition party was demonstrated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his party conference speech when he placed primary importance on battling Farage and did not even mention Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, by name.
It is pertinent to note that the rise of Reform UK, formerly the Brexit party, is not an isolated phenomenon. Since Brexit entered our lexicon, scholars have observed political fragmentation and new divides appearing across the political spectrum.
Several nascent political entities have risen and declined, such as the fleetingly registered Change UK party. The European Research Group, a eurosceptic grouping of Tory MPs limps on, but with dramatically reduced influence and activity since the last election.
New political groupings continue to form on both the left and right of British politics. Despite some recent infighting, former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are starting a new party, currently known as Your Party.
But what seems comparatively different on the right is Reform’s fairly rapid, real and successive electoral successes. The outcome of Brexit in 2016 and Reform’s rise in the UK reflects similar recent trends across the world. Voters are turning away from conventional and centrist politics towards more disruptive forces. Trumpism in the United States might be the most notable example.
Historically, at times of significant cultural, technological and social change, we have observed seismic shifts in the political landscape. The most comparable example in the UK might even be the rise of the Labour party at the outset of the 20th century, which came at a time when the right of the British political system was undergoing upheaval.
Around that period, what we now know as the Conservative party was a parliamentary coalition undergoing a process of evolution. Various political groupings, including older Whigs and Tories, and newer Liberal Unionists and National Liberals, linked with Conservatives to form what formally became the Conservative and Unionist party.
Students of the Conservative party, such as historian Richard Cockett, argue the party is like a “Darwinian” organism. It has the ability to adapt and survive – and indeed has survived many crises. It survived the birth of Labour, having weathered a major split, almost a century prior to that, under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel over the repeal of the corn laws.
Many experts cite the Conservative party as the world’s most successful democratic political party in history. To describe Reform as an existential threat in this context is therefore all the more striking.
Reform continues to lack concrete plans in several key areas. Its annual conference primarily focused on immigration, without delivering policies on other pressing issues, such as housing and health. But unlike the Tories, Reform enjoys outsider credibility, further enhanced by Farage’s media-savviness. This clean-slate status allows Reform UK to tap into emotional and cultural discontent – a hallmark of populist politics.
Now, the Conservative party, which has historically absorbed or neutralised political threats, may face a challenge it cannot subsume. If Reform UK was to outperform the Tories at the next election, it would amount to a fundamental realignment of the right in British politics. It would raise the spectre of something that goes against conventional academic wisdom: that the Conservative party always adapts to survive.
Adapt or die
Reform UK’s success suggests it is not simply a fringe distraction, but a genuine existential threat to the political dominance and identity of the Conservative party. Its survival ultimately depends on its ability to evolve and adapt in this new political context.
Currently, the Conservative party seems lost in the wilderness. It is far too laboured in its thinking about how to reshape its identity in an era of superfast social, political and technological change.
It is failing to resist the urge to emulate aspects of the Reform UK agenda, and seems to be lurching further to the right towards its rival. In so doing, the Tories are losing their unique selling point.
The modern Conservative party has been at its strongest when it is able to show a combination of party unity and an image of competent leadership (echoing a sense that it is the party of good and prudent governance), all housed within a catchall and centrist offering. Lurching to the right simply plays into the hands of Reform UK – they risk losing more moderate supporters and splitting the harder right vote with Reform UK.
Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.
Anthony Ridge-Newman 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.
Like afternoon tea, red pillar boxes and bracing walks on crisp autumn days, there is something reassuringly British about the Shipping Forecast, broadcast twice a day on Radio 4, and three times at weekends.
Dogger; Rockall; Malin; Irish Sea: with its distinctive poetic rhythm, the bulletin consists of a gale warning summary, a synopsis of general conditions at sea and forecasts for each of the weather areas including wind direction and force, sea state, weather and visibility. All are essential information to ensure safe sailing for ships and fishing vessels.
This year marks a century since the BBC first broadcast on radio a dedicated shipping forecast from its station 5XX at Daventry on a wavelength of 1,600 metres. Now one of the longest-running radio programmes in the world, for many in the UK it has achieved national treasure status, not least due to its soothing theme tune Sailing By, composed by Ronald Binge in 1963 and added to the broadcast in 1973.
The forecast is produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, and covers sea conditions around the British Isles for the next 24 hours. The waters around the UK and Ireland are divided into 31 weather areas, each with a quixotic-sounding name which often refers to a local geographic feature. Starting with Viking (Viking Bank), the forecast proceeds on a clockwise route around the map of the British Isles to finish at Southeast Iceland (Iceland).
Each broadcast comprises a maximum of 380 words, depending on whether Trafalgar (Cape Trafalgar) is included. This is the weather station furthest from the United Kingdom and is usually only mentioned on the 00:48 forecast. It takes precisely nine minutes for practised BBC announcers to read the bulletin.
With its rhythmic nature and formulaic repeated phrases and structure, the forecast has even been adapted into a fortnightly BBC podcast, The Sleeping Forecast. Advertised as “a soothing blend of classical and ambient music” interspersed with bulletin excerpts, the podcast recognises the forecast’s calming qualities and hypnotic ability to lull the nation to sleep.
The Shipping Forecast has also entered popular culture, inspiring countless songs, novels, films, TV shows and works of art. One of the most memorable is the sonnet The Shipping Forecast by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney in his 1979 collection Field Work, which captures how beauty and routine intersect. It was memorably read out on national poetry day in 2016 on Radio 4’s Today Programme by King Charles, then Prince of Wales.
There are legions of other famous fans too. In 1988 Stephen Fry, with obvious fondness, parodied the forecast: “Malin, Hebrides, Shetland, Jersey, Fair Isle, Turtle Neck, Tank Top, Courtelle,” he deadpanned.
Former merchant-navy seaman and ex-deputy prime minister John Prescott read the 5.20am broadcast on Red Nose Day 2011, to support Comic Relief. Michael Palin, who viewed the forecast as poetry, picked Alan Bennett to read it out when he was guest editor of the Today Programme on December 29 2013. Bennett, with his distinctive Yorkshire accent took obvious relish in repeating the words “rough” and “very rough” when reading this lyric poem of places to the nation.
Early origins of weather warnings
Despite the Shipping Forecast’s comforting nature and importance as a national cultural icon, it should be remembered that first and foremost it is intended to help save lives at sea.
The first public weather forecast – published in The Times on August 1 1861 – was inspired by the tragedy of the steam clipper Royal Charter, sunk in a storm in 1859 with the loss of more than 400 lives.
The storm-warning service was the brainwave of the meteorologist Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who established 15 land weather stations using the recently invented telegraph to transmit to him daily reports of conditions at set times. According to Historic England, the public body that advises the government on important historic sites, there are more than 37,000 known shipwreck sites and recorded losses in England’s territorial sea. Without FitzRoy’s innovation, it would be much higher and more people would have lost their lives. In 2002, the weather area Finisterre (Cape Finisterre) was renamed FitzRoy in honour of the man who created the forecast.
Today, the Shipping Forecast is still listened to by many mariners around Britain, providing a safety net of good weather information to supplement the more advanced weather detection technologies available via satellite systems.
Yet, in 2025, with navigating the sea safely becoming increasingly challenging due to extreme weather caused by climate change, the 10,000 Ships for the Ocean global coalition initiative was launched at the UN’s ocean summit in June. It aims to raise the number of ships equipped for weather monitoring at sea, providing data that improves weather forecasting and the effectiveness of responses to extreme weather events.
Such initiatives underline the crucial importance of global collaboration across maritime communities to continue to further improve safety at sea for the next 100 years.
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.
French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has resigned after less than a month in the role, making him the fourth to leave the office in the past year and a half.
When he was first elected in 2017, President Emmanuel Macron was supposed to be a figure of calm. After five turbulent years under the presidency of François Hollande, Macron heralded a new dawn. The first centrist president of France’s fifth republic managed to amass huge support through his nascent political party La République en Marche, which included many representatives who were entirely new to politics.
For the first year, this steadiness prevailed. Macron had defeated the extreme-right’s Marine Le Pen in the second-round run-off of the presidential elections that year. Le Pen’s supporters seemed stunned into submission. Opposition to Macron was limited. Now he can’t hold on to a prime minister, can’t pass any legislation and faces calls to resign.
The problems really began for Macron in 2018. First came the gilets jaunes in 2018, the mass protest movement opposing fuel prices and Macron’s economic plans, including changes to retirement rights.
Then there was the pandemic, a challenge unlike anything Macron’s predecessors had faced. Then, in 2022, a resurgent Le Pen made it yet again into the second-round of the election. This time the gap between the two was closer than it had been back in 2017.
In an attempt to freshen up his offering, Macron appointed Gabriel Attal as prime minister in January 2024 – the youngest person to hold the role since the fifth republic began in 1958. This approach failed. Macron’s party lost dismally in the European elections of June 2024.
This led Macron to take the decision that plunged France into the unrelenting political chaos that has been on display for over a year. In a bid to halt the progress of the far right, specifically Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Macron called the now infamous snap elections of July 2024.
Stalemate in the National Assembly has been the norm ever since. None of the three major blocs (the centrists under Macron, the far right under Le Pen and her acolyte Jordan Bardella, and the leftwing alliance comprised of socialists, communists and La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed) have a majority.
Attal resigned and was replaced by the rightwing Michel Barnier, who survived just a few months in the job before losing a confidence vote in the assembly. Barnier gave way to François Bayrou, who survived slightly longer in office before also losing a confidence vote in September 2025.
Finally, the centrist Lecornu took over before resigning less than a month later. He did not even have time to chair his first cabinet meeting, let alone try to corral parliament into an agreed position on any important matters, most of all the economy. Lecornu cited a lack of willingness to compromise among the various parties in the assembly as the main reason for his decision to stand aside.
The calm Macron appeared to embody in 2017 has transformed into volatility. The recent bloquons tous! (block everything) protest movement has shown signs of echoing the earlier gilets jaunes, bringing large parts of the nation to a halt with strikes and transport disruption.
Indeed, France has not seen scenes of such political chaos for some time. The prime ministerial churn is more akin to the lowest moments of the third republic – a regime that ended in defeat to the Nazis – than to anything since Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958.
All this comes at a time of constant reports of corruption, scandal and sleaze. Both former president Nicolas Sarkozy and Le Pen have recently been found guilty of corruption. For Sarkozy, this means becoming the first former president to face a custodial prison sentence. For Le Pen, it means a probable end to any hope of the presidency in 2027 thanks to a ban on her even entering the race.
The future seems to lie in youth. Macron may now well turn to someone like Attal, who could be capable of working with two of the three blocs, but who would need to steer clear of major reforms to the economy: the price for the backing of the far-left.
The other option is to look for a way forward through a legislative election, where the main contenders for a majority would all be youthful. Whether the far-right Bardella, Mathilde Panot (the current leader of La France Insoumise in the National Assembly) or a figure like Attal leading the centre, the main players are likely to be under the age of 40, and free of the images of corruption tainting some of the veterans of the political scene.
Macron will no doubt continue to see his role as a statesman on the world stage and hope that one of his followers can bring the left on board, or else hope the prospective legislative election could bring some change. If not, these conditions means two years is a long time to wait for a change in president. Calls for Macron to go will only intensify if a way forward is not found – and soon.
David Lees does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The morning of October 7 2023 set in process a series of events which have profoundly changed the Middle East.
At the beginning of that month, the region looked very different to today. Saudi Arabia appeared ready to normalise with Israel, having recently set aside longstanding differences with Iran.
With the normalisation of relations between the region’s two preeminent military powers would come the possibility of curbing Iran’s influence. This, in turn, could bring peace to Yemen and Lebanon.
But thanks to the events of that day, this vision is in tatters. As the sun rose, Hamas fighters launched a brutal terror attack in southern Israel, killing 1,195 people and taking a further 251 hostages. The attack opened up a wound at the heart of the Israeli psyche, evoking memories of the Holocaust and of repeated terror attacks across the 2000s.
In the past two years, the destructive reverberations have been felt across the entire Middle East as Israeli forces have sought to assert unilateral and hegemonic dominance. Beyond Gaza, Israel has engaged in military strikes across the region, causing thousands of deaths and widespread destruction and sowing the seeds of division.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes on Beirut and across the south led to more than 3,100 deaths – including senior Hezbollah leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a military campaign in southern Lebanon in October 2024, pushing Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani river. Though a ceasefire was reached on November 26, Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon continues, with the Israeli government citing Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm.
With Hamas and Hezbollah on the ropes, Netanyahu’s attention turned to Iran. Given Israel’s longstanding view of the Islamic Republic as an imminent threat to Israel’s security, this is hardly surprising.
The so-called shadow war that had taken place between the two states across the previous decade erupted. The outbreak of open conflict between the two states on June 13 2025 – since dubbed the 12-day war – had a devastating impact on the Iranian regime.
Netanyahu had called for the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic Republic. But while many Iranians are unhappy with the regime, Israel’s strikes appeared to have the opposite affect as people rallied around the flag.
Hostilities culminated in bombing raids launched by the US on Iran’s nuclear installations. While the success of these raids has been open to question, the raids allowed the US president, Donald Trump, to claim a US victory.
He demanded an end to hostilities between Israel and Iran and Iran’s retaliation to the US strikes was confined to a carefully orchestrated attack on a US base in Qatar, which was telegraphed in advance and was more performative than escalatory.
Israel has also conducted regular strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which had targeted Israeli (and other countries’) shipping in the Red Sea. And since the fall of the Assad regime, the Israeli military has occupied large tracts of southern Syria, seizing the demilitarised buffer zone around the contested Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 treaty between the two countries.
More recently, Israel struck targets in Doha, Qatar, in an effort to assassinate senior Hamas leaders which ultimately failed. The strike prompted a united front from the Gulf monarchies who called for a real discussion about ending the war. With US officials furious at the Israeli strike on a major non-Nato ally, diplomats sensed an opportunity for a breakthrough.
Peace plan
Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to enact a ceasefire has the potential to be an impressive feat of diplomacy, bringing together a wide range of disparate actors with a real chance of ending the fighting – despite its multiple flaws. But as a feat of peace building, it rings hollow.
The plan does not indicate how a Palestinian state will emerge. It does suggest that the Palestinian Authority will, in the right circumstances, play a role in the governance of Gaza – but this is something that Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.
Instead, the Gaza International Transition Authority will resemble a mandate of the sort imposed by the League of Nations over a century ago. And even if Trump’s plan brings about a ceasefire and the release of the Israeli hostages, the contours of regional order have been dramatically affected.
Without a Palestinian state there can be no Saudi normalisation with Israel. This is a point that Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, has made abundantly clear.
Popular anger across the region will remain. The failure to secure a viable Palestinian state after the Abraham accords provoked anger and resentment among some. That feeling is now growing with the death and destruction meted out to people in Gaza.
If a ceasefire doesn’t emerge, the destruction of Gaza will continue at a pace which will continue to have a catastrophic impact across the Middle East. Israel will remain diplomatically isolated while its citizens will continue to live in fear of Houthi and Hezbollah rockets or attacks from what remains of Hamas, as well as having to deal with the memory of October 7 for years to come.
All the while, Palestinians continue to die on a daily basis and there are still Israeli hostages (and in some cases bodies) waiting to be brought home. Gaza is devastated and rebuilding the enclave will take decades. And the so-called international rules-based order may never recover.
Simon Mabon receives funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Henry Luce Foundation.
Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how the body stops its own immune system from turning against itself.
Shimon Sakaguchi from Osaka University in Japan, Mary E. Brunkow from the Institute for System Biology and Fred Ramsdell from Sonoma Biotherapeutics, both in the USA, identified specialised “security guard” cells that keep our immune system in check. These discoveries have been important for understanding how to treat and prevent autoimmune conditions. The trio will share a prize sum of 11 million Swedish Kronor (£870,000).
An effective immune system is critical. It sculpts tissues as they grow and clears away old cells and debris. It also eliminates dangerous viruses, bacteria and fungi, keeping us healthy.
But the immune system faces a delicate challenge: it must attack thousands of different invading microbes each day, many of which have evolved to look remarkably similar to our own cells – yet it must never mistake our own tissue for the enemy.
So how does the immune system know what cells it should attack and which ones it shouldn’t?
This question has been studied by immunologists for decades. But it was the groundbreaking work by this year’s Nobel laureates that led to the discovery of the specialised immune cells – called regulatory T cells – which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body and keep the immune system running as it should.
For decades, immunologists weren’t certain why some immune cells functioned as they should, and why others went rogue and attacked the body’s own tissues. When this happens, it can result in autoimmune conditions – such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
For a long time, scientists believed the thymus – a small gland in the chest – was solely responsible for immune tolerance. Immune cells (specifically a type of cell called a T lymphocyte) that recognised the body’s own proteins too strongly were initially thought to be eliminated in the thymus in early life. Those immune cells that only showed mild reactivity were then released into the bloodstream to patrol the body.
But work conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Sakaguchi showed that there was a specialised class of immune T cells that played a critical role in suppressing immune responses and preventing the immune system from attacking the body’s tissues.
In Sakaguchi’s first experiment, he surgically removed the thymus organ from newborn mice, then injected T cells into them from genetically similar mice. He hypothesised that the mice would have a weaker immune system and develop fewer T cells.
Instead, he discovered that there appeared to be T cells that protected the mice from developing autoimmune diseases.
Over the next decade, Sakaguchi set out to uncover whether there were different types of T cells that played different roles in immune response. In 1995, Sakaguchi published the paper that detailed a new class of T cell, called a “regulatory T cell”. It showed that T cells carrying a specific type of protein on their surface actually eliminated harmful T cells.
There was initial scepticism among scientists about the existence of regulatory T cells. But work from Brunkow and Ramsdell published in the 1990s and early 2000s showed how regulatory T cells work.
Brunkow and Ramsdell’s research showed that regulatory T cells prevent immune cells from attacking the body by secreting immune dampening proteins or by directly delivering anti-inflammatory signals.
They also discovered a specific protein that identified these regulatory T cells (called FoxP3). This meant scientists could work out when a cell was regulatory and also isolate them for study.
These discoveries showed how important regulatory T cells (also called T-regs for short) are in regulating other inflammatory immune cells in the body.
The work of this year’s Nobel laureates has also massively opened up the field of immunology, going far beyond merely understanding the process of immune tolerance.
Their work has revealed that immunity and inflammation is actively regulated. It has provided a raft of new ideas to control inflammatory disease, whether caused by infection, allergens, environmental pollutants or autoimmunity.
It has even provided new ideas to prevent rejection of transplants and has opened up new ways of improving immune responses to cancer treatments and vaccines.
Tracy Hussell is affiliated with the British Society of Immunology as President
Service workers may pay a price for the “customer is king” mentality: power imbalance and increased exposure to sexual harassment and hostility.John Michael Wilyat/Unsplash, CC BY
Corporate websites, training manuals, and interviews with business leaders abound with maxims that place the customer above all else. The customer service industry, which includes restaurant workers, call centre employees, hair stylists, and retail employees has a strong tradition of a “customer is king” mentality. The idea is that customers will respond positively to such deference, making them more likely to return in the future. But this mentality has a downside that is less often discussed: it shifts the balance of power away from service workers and toward customers.
This shift has become even more dramatic in recent years, as online reviews determine which businesses thrive and which must close their doors. Even for freelancers in the gig economy, reviews and the algorithms that feed on them decide which job gets offered to whom, and even who is allowed to work on the platform. Today, customers have more power than ever. But is that a good thing?
People who hold more power are increasingly likely to engage in sexual harassment, raising our concerns given the shifting power imbalance in customer service work. We examined two specific risk factors in the service context that might make sexual harassment more likely. First, when the customer is king, employees must adapt their actions and emotions accordingly. They are increasingly expected to regulate or control their emotions as part of the job, a process called “emotional labour”. A restaurant server is expected to remain friendly and cheerful even during the evening rush. A bartender must show interest and offer sympathy to a customer’s tale of woe. These are instances when employees must control the emotions they actually feel and ensure that organisationally sanctioned emotions are displayed to customers at all times.
The second risk factor is that these jobs often involve tips and gratuities that employees depend on for their earnings. The extent of tipping varies across cultures, with countries like Germany, the UK and Croatia having stronger norms, whereas in the Scandinavian countries, tipping is fairly uncommon. In the US, where we conducted our research, many tipped workers like restaurant servers and bartenders are allowed to be paid below minimum wage, meaning that tips make up the entirety of their income. We tested whether the combination of emotional labour expectations and a reliance on tips creates a “perfect storm” that makes sexual harassment more likely.
In our first study, we asked 142 tipped workers from a variety of occupations about the emotional labour expectations of their workplace, and what percent of their overall pay came from tips. We found that when emotional labour expectations were high and employees were more dependent on tips, customers had more power and were then more likely to engage in sexual harassment. In our second study, we recruited 171 men to take on the role of a restaurant diner in an online simulation. Participants were shown a picture of their female server, who was either smiling or had a neutral display. The men were also presented with the bill, which either emphasised the importance of tips or stated that employees were paid a fair wage and tips were not necessary. When participants saw the smiling server and the bill that emphasised the importance of tips, they were much more likely to report feeling powerful and indicated a greater willingness to make inappropriate requests for a date or phone number. Our results suggest that a unique environment exists in customer service jobs, where emotional labour expectations combined with a dependence on tips may make sexual harassment more likely.
Coping with hostility
Another consequence of the “customer is king” mindset is that it gives people a licence to act in hostile or aggressive ways toward employees. In recent years, there has been a noticeable uptick in hostility toward flight attendants and healthcare workers. Given this, we set out to understand how employees can best handle their emotions when confronted with this hostility.
Our paper focused on an alternative school for troubled youth who had been expelled from the public school system. When teachers experienced hostility from students, they were required to file a report to administrators. We attached a short survey to this report, asking teachers how they controlled their emotions during the incident and how they felt afterwards. We found that teachers used unique combinations of emotional labour strategies – like reappraising the situation to “look on the bright side” or distracting themselves and suppressing whatever emotions they felt. We also looked at how these strategies predicted two important outcomes – teachers’ performance during the incident (as rated by administrators) and their well-being afterwards.
Our results suggest that to enhance performance, employees facing hostility should try to disengage from the situation. This might mean ignoring or mentally distancing themselves and suppressing their emotions. Yet this approach was among the worst for maintaining employee well-being. Employees wishing to protect their well-being, the results suggested, should try actively to modify the situation while also seeking social support. But doing so was not associated with better performance ratings. In short, it seems that employees faced with hostility may need to choose between maintaining their performance and their well-being. As such, organisations must put a priority on minimising hostile events in the first place, so that employees are not faced with this impossible choice.
Moving forward
Our research demonstrates that there are serious downsides to the “customer is king” approach. It creates a toxic atmosphere that makes sexual harassment more likely and puts employees in a no-win situation when facing hostility. In contrast, fostering a culture of mutual respect can encourage a more balanced power dynamic while still ensuring high performance standards. Approaching customer and public service from a place of respect can also empower employees to solve problems and work together with the general public, instead of forming a subservient or adversarial relationship. Let’s move beyond the monarchy to instead encourage employees and those they serve to work together as equal partners.
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Gordon M. Sayre ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan.Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
As Tanzania’s national elections approach, a familiar humdrum of coverage has emerged. It goes like this. In its crackdowns, censorship and harassment of the opposition, Tanzania is becoming increasingly repressive.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who is seeking re-election in the October 2025 poll, increasingly resembles her predecessor, John Pombe Magufuli. Before he died in office in 2021, he banned media, censored journalists, hamstrung the opposition and rigged elections. Hassan is reverting to his tactics to lengthen her advantage in the elections.
Yet, I would go further. Hassan has become, in key ways, more autocratic than Magufuli. She has crossed autocratic thresholds that have not been breached since Tanzania’s transition to multipartyism in 1992. Most crucially, she has put her chief opponent Tundu Lissu on trial for treason. She has kept another out of the presidential race.
I have been writing about autocracy in Tanzania and chronicling the struggles of Tanzania’s opposition for over a decade. From this vantage point, I describe what makes this election different.
Many authoritarian regimes today take the form of what political scientists call electoral authoritarianism. It is a mixture of the outward form of multiparty democracy and autocratic practices that tilt the playing field in the incumbent’s favour.
Yet, the steps taken by Hassan’s regime amount to something more draconian than this.
Hassan has broken Tanzania’s political norms, and done so now, it seems, because the international context permits it more than any time in the last 30 years.
The ominous implication of all this is that an era of autocratic rule – which is yet more extreme than any endured in the last 30 years – has arrived.
Crossing red lines
In one way or another, Tanzania’s regime has been autocratic for decades. The party in power today, Chama cha Mapinduzi, has been in power since independence from Britain in 1961.
Media were banned, opposition parties were knee-capped, journalists were censored, activists were persecuted, and at large, freedoms were infringed. In the 2020 elections, there appeared to be mass manipulation across Zanzibar and Tanzania for the first time.
In some respects, despite promises of change, Hassan has picked up where Magufuli left off after his death.
In this context, much coverage has understandably drawn analogies from Hassan’s presidency to Magufuli’s. Yet Hassan has been crossing democratic red lines that Magufuli never did, even if he might have wanted to.
The leader of the opposition has been charged with non-bailable offenses, twice.
Freeman Mbowe was charged with terrorism offences and held for 226 days until his release in 2022. His successor, Tundu Lissu, who survived an assassination attempt in 2017, has been detained since 9 April 2025. He’s now facing trial on charges of treason, a crime punishable by death.
Magufuli had these and other opposition leaders arrested a number of times. Yet he did not have them charged with offences of such magnitude. Nor did he have them held for so long.
Hassan has found a way to eliminate her other most significant competitor from the race. Luhaga Mpina was prevented from submitting nomination forms to enter the presidential election as the candidate for Alliance for Change-Wazalendo. This was after a last-minute intervention from the registrar of political parties, who is a presidential appointee.
The consequence is that Hassan is running to be re-elected as the president of Tanzania opposed only by minor candidates.
This is a scenario without precedent since the reintroduction of multiparty elections in 1992.
In case the normal array of media control and military displays of force are not enough to quell the prospect of protest, the regime has shut down the internet early. It has not, as under Magufuli, imposed a post-election blackout. Instead, it has banned social media platforms X, Clubhouse and Telegram, which have been blocked nationwide. Vibrant local social media platform JamiiForums has been taken down. Meanwhile, the rhythm of state-sponsored violence against opposition activists has been maintained.
Zooming out
The upshot is that Tanzanians are witness to a remarkable split-screen. On one side, Hassan addresses enormous crowds at richly adorned rallies in what political researcher Nicodemus Minde has aptly called “a procedural coronation ritual”.
On the other, opposition leader Lissu has been escorted in and out of court, where, representing himself, he has been declaring his trial a political persecution.
In effect, a new era of authoritarianism is crystallising in Tanzania, one in which electoral competition is all but absent at the presidential level.
Hassan alone knows her true motives for these changes, but her actions should be read in the international context. Under President Donald Trump’s second term, the US has retreated from global democracy promotion. Heavy cuts in aid budgets have weakened the west’s political might.
In this context, Hassan seems to have explored her room for autocratic manoeuvre, and found international norms giving way before her.
She is not alone in doing so. Today, Turkish opposition leader Ekrem Imamoğlu is in jail awaiting trial on terrorism charges. Mozambican opposition leader Venancio Mondlane is awaiting trial facing terrorism offences.
Amid a world in flux, Hassan, and others, are testing what is left of a liberal world order. So far, they must like what they are finding.
Dan Paget is a member of the British Labour Party. He is in receipt of a research funding grant from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Foundation. He is will be in receipt of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council from January 2026.
Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Saheed Babajide Owonikoko, Researcher, Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Modibbo Adama University of Technology
Abubakar Shekau, the erstwhile leader of the terrorist group Jama’at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da’wa wa al-Jihad (JAS), died in 2021. The west African group, also known as Boko Haram, then fell into obscurity while its breakaway faction, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), steadily rose.
Early 2025 saw Boko Haram resurging in the Lake Chad region, however, with attacks in Nigeria and Cameroon. Lake Chad is in west-central Africa, in the Sahelian zone. It is located at the conjunction of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.
As a security studies scholar tracking Boko Haram, I discuss reasons for this resurgence, and its impacts, and recommend possible responses from Lake Chad region countries.
Evidence of Boko Haram resurgence
On 15 May 2025, Boko Haram massacred close to 100 residents of Mallam Karamti and Kwatandashi villages in Nigeria’s Borno State. A report has it that Boko Haram attacked the residents because they were loyal to, and served as informants for, Islamic State West Africa Province.
On 5 September, it attacked Darul Jamal village in Borno State, killing about 60 people. A researcher specialising in Boko Haram at the Institute for Security Studies, Taiwo Adebayo, was said to have spoken with residents of the community who attributed the attack to Boko Haram, possibly because of information about the group being shared with the Nigerian military.
There are also reports that the group has extended its reach beyond Lake Chad to North Central region of Nigeria, where it is operating with bandits and possibly Lakurawa, the new terrorist group in that region.
In Far North region of Cameroon, the group has also been active. Reports shared on LinkedIn showed that in July and August 2025, it was responsible for 101 attacks out of 144.
Four factors explain why Boko Haram has become more active again in the Lake Chad region.
First, the rise of one of its leaders, Bakura Doro, and his efforts to sustain Boko Haram gains over Islamic State West Africa Province.
Doro was the Lake Chad Amir al-Fiya (zone commander) before Shekau’s death. He was announced as the leader in May 2022 after a violent takeover from Sahalaba, a cleric whom Shekau had reportedly designated as his successor in his will. Doro reinforced Boko Haram by fighting Islamic State West Africa Province, killing members and capturing its territories in Lake Chad.
He also shunned media propaganda, thus taking the public gaze away from Boko Haram while it grew unnoticed. Although reports said Bakura was killed in Niger in August 2025, the group denied it.
The second factor is that it received less attention from the Lake Chad militaries. Instead, attention was on Islamic State for its targeted attacks on military outposts since early 2025.
By July 2025, 15 outposts had been attacked. The Lake Chad region countries’ counterterrorism efforts focused on countering ISWAP, dangerously neglecting Boko Haram.
The third factor is the failure of reintegration programmes across the region. In Nigeria, for one, community rejection, unmet government promises, limited political will and a weak framework have caused many ex-combatants to return to the trenches.
The fourth factor is combat stress or fatigue among soldiers of the Lake Chad region countries. For instance, more than 1,000 soldiers resigned from the army between 2020 and 2024 in Nigeria. Nigeria’s total armed forces personnel was estimated at 230,000 in 2020.
The weakened commitment of the countries to the Multinational Joint Task Force adds to the problem. Nigeria established the force in 1994 to checkmate trans-border armed banditry around the Lake Chad Basin. In 1998, Chadian and Nigerien soldiers joined the task force.
All this gives insurgent groups impetus to intensify their attacks.
Implications of resurgent Boko Haram
To understand the implications, it is essential to distinguish Boko Haram’s ideology from that of Islamic State. While the latter primarily targets military forces and non-Muslim communities, Boko Haram’s violence is aimed at all, except its members.
The attempt by Shekau’s successor, Sahalaba, to align with Islamic State West Africa Province’s more selective attacks led to his death, leaving Boko Haram rigidly committed to ruthless attacks.
The result might be a worsening of humanitarian conditions and disruption of community resettlement programmes in the region.
According to a June 2025 report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the region hosts 2.9 million internally displaced people and 272,000 refugees. I believe this figure may rise as violence escalates. But donor funding is shrinking.
Boko Haram’s blend of jihad with criminal activities such as robbery and kidnapping not only sustains its operations but may also attract disaffected youth, given the region’s fragile socio-economic conditions, especially the high rate of poverty and unemployment.
The competition between both insurgent groups, and between them and the military, places civilians in danger. Each actor seeks local support and intelligence, and communities risk severe punishment if perceived as loyal to the opposing side.
A constraint currently confronting Boko Haram is the shortage of weaponry. To bridge this gap, I believe it may focus its attacks on military outposts across the region. They may be encouraged by the successes of Islamic State’s attacks on the military outposts and the transfer of combat experience and technical expertise from former Islamic State fighters who have defected to Boko Haram. If it joins the attacks against military outposts in the area, the consequences will be fatal.
The governments and militaries of Lake Chad region countries should pay attention to Boko Haram as much as Islamic State in their counter-terrorism efforts.
There is a need to improve security cooperation among the countries by luring Niger back into the Multinational Joint Task Force and ensuring members’ commitment to the force.
Enhanced welfare services from the countries to their citizens can reduce incentives to join Boko Haram and other insurgent groups.
Strengthening defection programmes is crucial to prevent former terrorists from going back to groups like Boko Haram. I recommend harmonising regional deradicalisation efforts to enhance their effectiveness.
Saheed Babajide Owonikoko 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.
