Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Trott, Senior Lecturer in American Studies and History, York St John University

The US president Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policy has surprised much of the world, particularly US allies. It breaks with expectations about how the US has traditionally behaved.

This is mainly due to Trump’s speed and bluntness of decisions, his breaks with longstanding norms and his unpredictable style. But the capture of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and the mounting tension over America’s threatened occupation of Greenland are not isolated events. Neither is the government’s stance over immigration policy and citizenship. They’re rooted in longstanding struggles for power, justice and equality.

This is what makes the academic subject of American studies – in decline in UK universities – so relevant. American studies examines the nation’s history, literature, politics and social movements. By doing so, it helps contextualise current conflicts. Political polarisation, racial tensions, culture wars and debates over identity are placed within a broader historical framework.

During Trump’s presidencies, the US has projected a more muscular, transactional approach to global affairs. At the same time, it has also reconfigured its own traditional ideals. This shift has affected everything from security and trade to climate and technology.

Expanding our understanding of how American society, culture and politics works helps us anticipate instability. This could be through formal education like an American studies course or through building our own knowledge.

The American experiment

America has long understood itself as an “experiment” rather than a finished nation. It’s a political project constantly being tested, revised and debated. This idea is embodied in the US Constitution. It was designed not as a fixed blueprint but as a living framework, capable of change through amendments.

American history is rife with examples of how democracy has been an ongoing (and flawed) project, not a completed one. The nation’s history is marked by struggles over who gets to participate in the democratic process. This includes the exclusion of women, the LGBTQ+ community, African Americans and Native Americans, and the fight for voting rights and civil liberties. Understanding this history can help contextualise the current political landscape. It reminds us that the issues we face today are not entirely new.

American studies can’t fully explain the present without grounding students in the Constitution’s foundational architecture. This includes the separation of powers into equal branches, the system of checks and balances, and the assumption that no single person or institution should dominate the republic.

These principles have been challenged before. During the Civil War, the survival of constitutional democracy itself was at stake. During the McCarthy era – a period of persecution of people with left-wing views in the 1940s and 50s, led by US senator Joseph McCarthy – fear eroded civil liberties. Understanding what is occurring during the Trump administration therefore requires situating him not as an anomaly outside the system, but as a stress test within the American experiment. This stress reveals both the vulnerabilities and the resilience of the constitutional order.

Past and present

Trump’s recent capture of Maduro follows months of military campaigning and years of strained relationships. The possibility of a US-led invasion of Venezuela stems back to 2017, when Venezuela slid towards political unrest. The erosion of democracy, accusations of human rights violations and economic collapse led to humanitarian crises.

The US has a long history of interventions, peace operations and force-backed diplomacy that long predates this event, such as in Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). These examples all fit into a long tradition of US intervention rooted in the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and later expanded by the Roosevelt Corollary (1904). Together, these doctrines supplied the ideological and legal justification for US involvement in Latin America.

---

Read more:
The ‘Donroe doctrine’: Maduro is the guinea pig for Donald Trump’s new world order

---

The mounting tension over America’s heavy strategic interest in Greenland echoes cold war anxieties. It is reminiscent of the great-power rivalry, strategic geography and militarisation that defined that era.

More significantly for global relations and stability, it potentially jeopardises the future of Nato. As The US is one of Nato’s principal architects, guarantors, and its military backbone, this is alarming. America’s historical association with the alliance has been defensive and leadership-driven.

The recent killing of Renee Good by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis has refocused the debate over America’s immigration enforcement. The expansion in power and visibility of ICE fits into a long history of questioning “What is an American?”. It’s been a topic of debate since the 18th century.

Debates over immigration reflect deeper questions about national identity. The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, questioned New York City’s then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s American citizenship. He linked American identity to the American civil war. This raised a highly problematic – if not shocking – interpretation of “Americanness”.

By looking back at these historical moments, we can better understand the root causes of contemporary problems. In short, understanding America’s past is a vital tool for understanding and navigating the global present.

Sarah Trott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why everyone should be a student of American studies – https://theconversation.com/why-everyone-should-be-a-student-of-american-studies-273385

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Brocklesby, Lecturer in History, Sheffield Hallam University

The UK formally agreed to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in May 2025. With the Trump administration’s explicit support, this move ended one of the longest-running territorial disputes in Britain’s remaining overseas territories.

The decision has been hailed by some as a long-overdue act of decolonisation, condemned by others as a strategic misstep. Unexpectedly, Donald Trump has now reignited the debate, branding the deal an “act of great stupidity”.

Why has this small chain of remote Indian Ocean islands become such a flashpoint?

The roots of the crisis lie in the dismantling of Britain’s empire in the 1960s. The Chagos archipelago was historically administered as part of colonial Mauritius, then a British colony. In 1965, three years before Mauritian independence, the UK separated Chagos from Mauritius to create a new territory: the British Indian Ocean Territory.

The creation of a new colony was an act shaped by cold war strategy. Mounting economic and strategic pressures in the late 1960s – including the devaluation of the pound in 1967 and the Labour government’s 1968 decision to withdraw British forces east of the Suez Canal – together curtailed Britain’s regional defence role in the Indian Ocean.

As Britain retreated “east of Suez”, it still wanted a secure military foothold in the Indian Ocean, particularly one that could be used jointly with the US. Diego Garcia, the largest island in Chagos, was ideal: isolated, strategically positioned between Africa and Southeast Asia, near major trade routes and capable of hosting a major naval and air facility.

The costs were met by the UK, with £3 million paid to Mauritius to cede the islands. But the price of this strategy was paid by the Chagossians. Between 1967 and the early 1970s, the islanders were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles. Their removal was brutal: families were separated, livelihoods destroyed, and a distinct island community effectively erased.

Why the UK changed course

By the 21st century, Britain’s legal position was increasingly untenable. In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that the separation of the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius had been unlawful and that the UK should “terminate” its administration “as rapidly as possible”. The UN General Assembly backed this view with an overwhelming but non-binding vote.

Mauritius has consistently argued that the islands are a stolen part of its national territory, and therefore their decolonisation is incomplete. Over time, this case gained traction – Britain’s continued control of Chagos came to symbolise the unfinished business of empire.

By 2022, James Cleverly, then the UK’s foreign secretary, opened negotiations with Mauritius to “resolve all outstanding issues” over the archipelago. In October 2024, the Labour government under Keir Starmer concluded that a negotiated settlement was preferable to decades more legal wrangling.

The deal struck with Mauritius did two things: it transferred sovereignty over the archipelago to Mauritius, while securing a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia to allow the existing US-UK military base to continue operating at a cost of £3.4 billion.

On paper, this protected British (and by extension US) strategic interests in the region while satisfying the legal argument from the UN. However, while the deal was initially supported by the US, the deal has come under attack from other UK political parties, and increasingly jars with Trump’s vision of the world.

Why the islands matter strategically

The significance of Chagos is its location. Diego Garcia is one of the most important western military installations outside Europe and North America. It has been described as “an all but indispensable platform” for US interests in the Middle East and East Africa, with B-52 bombers recently used from the base to strike Yemen.

In an era of renewed great-power rivalry, the island’s value has increased. As China expands its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, western governments see Diego Garcia as a counterweight. However, critics of the deal have raised questions about the China-Mauritius relationship, arguing this would allow China a crucial foothold in the region.

For the UK, the base also underpins its claim to still be a meaningful military actor beyond Europe. For this reason, sovereignty transfer was carefully managed. Britain was not abandoning the base, but ensuring an arrangement that kept western military access intact while removing the colonial stain.

On one level, the Chagos deal looks like a model of decolonisation. Britain accepted international law, acknowledged a historic wrong and negotiated a settlement.

Yet this is happening at a moment when global politics is becoming more overtly imperial in style. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s assertive regional ambitions and Trump’s expansionist rhetoric about Greenland all suggest a world less governed by law and more by power.

In that context, Britain’s attempt to “do the right thing” over Chagos risks looking out of step. It reflects a rules-based worldview that is under pressure.

This creates a dilemma for Britain, which on January 20 vowed to “never compromise on national security”. The UK government defended the deal, saying it had to hand over the Chagos Islands because the military base was “under threat” from international legal action.

Britain is no longer an imperial sovereign with uncontested control over distant territories. It is a mid-sized power that must balance history, law, alliances and strategy.

This situation also exposes Britain’s continued dependence on the US for its global military clout and economic advantages. Without the US, Diego Garcia would be far less significant. The US substantially provides most of the base’s military capability. Trump’s criticism underscores a deeper vulnerability: Britain’s post-imperial identity remains tethered to American power.

James Brocklesby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why Trump is attacking the UK over Chagos Islands – and what it tells us about Britain’s place in the world – https://theconversation.com/why-trump-is-attacking-the-uk-over-chagos-islands-and-what-it-tells-us-about-britains-place-in-the-world-273939

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Debra Benita Shaw, Reader in Cultural Theory in the School of Architecture and Visual Arts, University of East London

The writings of H.P. Lovecraft have seen a renewal of interest in recent years, despite the fact that he was a well-known racist and xenophobe. Writing in the early 20th century, he imagined monsters that gave form to fear of difference.

Creatures like Cthulhu, probably his best-known and most borrowed invention, effectively challenge human complacency about our place in the world as the most powerful species. Lovecraft describes Cthulhu as a “huge, formless white polypous thing; a “squid-head with writhing feelers” that inhabits the lost city of R’lyeh, described as “nothing of this or of any sane planet”.

His story The Call of Cthulhu recounts a documented history of human encounters with the monster that lead only to madness and death. Such monsters, and their strange domains, led the philosopher Graham Harman to coin the term “weird realism” to describe Lovecraft’s oeuvre.

Lovecraft’s stories also reveal his fear of women and the horror he saw in their capacity to give birth to the thing he perhaps feared above all – a hybrid race that would put an end to white supremacy. As Lovecraft expert Carl Sederholm has noted, Lovecraft’s stories abound with “creatures that ooze, pulsate and drip mostly from below the waist”.

It is this fear of women’s bodies and the attendant racism and misogyny bound up in it that is confronted in the recently published novella Come Down To A Lower Place by Seoyoung Yi. The novella is part of the Lovecraft Reanimated project by UK-based publisher Honford Star, in which leading Korean speculative fiction writers reimagine the works of Lovecraft.

The novel opens with Lee Seul, a team leader at Yukwang Construction, worrying about her vaginal discharge and struggling with a UTI (urinary tract infection). Seul has been tasked with investigating a smell seeping up from the basement of a prestigious department store, threatening the carefully curated ambience of the luxury goods department on the first floor. The plans for the original construction during the colonial era hint at something sinister.

The stinking slime that oozes from the basement heralds the arrival of Bin-o-Jae, a Lovecraftian monster formed from the despair of countless women subjected to misogynistic violence. It’s been created from such experiences as the suppressed pain of generations of female workers denied the breaks necessary to change their sanitary pads during their periods – “their knees twisting under bright lights, as they waited for a chance to go to the bathroom”.

Department stores in colonial Korea were known for propagating the emotional labour identified by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Managed Heart (1983). Like the flight attendants that Hochschild examined, female store attendants were expected to smile constantly and endure rude and dismissive customer attitudes without complaint.

In research published in 2018, social scientists Jinseok Oh and Howard Kahm reported on the case of Paek Inbong, a worker at the Hwasin Department Store in Seoul. In 1938, after constant bullying by her manager, Inbong took an overdose of sleeping pills. Talking about the experience, she said:

“[The manager] started scolding me for fidgeting and kept going until I could hardly breathe. I thought it would be better to die than to suffer like this. In order to show the agony felt by the employees, I decided to die.”

In exploring this kind of territory, Come Down To A Lower Place is unashamedly political. It espouses a return to the socialist feminism promoted by social theorists Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, who argued for a recognition of gender roles and their expression in heteropatriarchal (straight and male-dominated) institutions, like marriage, as essential to the perpetuation of capitalism.

Yi’s book is certainly born of Korea’s 4B movement, a feminist movement with four tenets all of which start with “bi” (no) in Korean – bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating) and bisekseu (no sex). Drawing on this, the book makes the case for women’s power to withdraw their labour, both as workers in the consumer economy and as wives and mothers.

Yi’s Bin-o-jae stands for the accumulation of frustration and anxiety that gave rise to 4B and for the liberatory potential of women’s anger. This monster has been waiting impatiently for a woman like Lee Seul, to unleash its power on the world, which, Yi hints, it plans to do on her wedding day.

Bin-o-jae is, like Cthulhu, squid-like and huge with writhing tentacles, described as not “gray like a squid’s” but “more like a piece of mammalian flesh – massive, red and covered in slime”. Equally, like Cthulhu, it defies full description as it partially emerges from the depths below the department store, hinting at further horrors to be revealed. However, its effects are quite different.

While Lovecraft’s protagonists succumb to madness, chronic fevers and suicide, Seul, at the end, embraces Bin-o-jae and, “despite the pain … throughout her body … strangely [feels] at peace”. As Seul is fitted for her wedding dress, she struggles to contain the monster that now fully inhabits her body and she promises it “just a little longer” before she releases it upon the world.

Lovecraft’s legacy therefore entails a somewhat delicious irony in this book. Bin-o-jae is Cthulhu repurposed to draw attention to women’s very real pain and the potential power of unleashing their anger in collective action.

As Yi demonstrates, poking the monster doesn’t always lead to horror and death; it may just lead you to the power you need to win the fight.

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

---

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

---

Debra Benita Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Come Down to a Lower Place – a Lovecraftian Korean tale about the oppression of female workers and their bodies – https://theconversation.com/come-down-to-a-lower-place-a-lovecraftian-korean-tale-about-the-oppression-of-female-workers-and-their-bodies-273619

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Per Ola Kristensson, Professor of Interactive Systems Engineering, University of Cambridge

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse was meant to reimagine how we interact with each other and the world, providing us with an immersive world where we could seamlessly combine digital and physical information.

The parent company, renamed Meta along the way, had begun introducing headsets and reimagining everyday computing with its Project Orion augmented-reality glasses.

Now, however, Meta is making deep budget cuts to its Reality Labs division, which could see around 10% of the 15,000 employees working on the metaverse and related projects lose their jobs. Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth confirmed the cuts to staff in a memo on January 13.

But my years of research with colleagues suggest this apparent U-turn is far from the end of the road for the technology. In search of commercial applications that stretch beyond gaming, it is, though, likely to signal a shift from virtual reality (VR) to less-immersive ways to merge the digital and real worlds.

This augmented reality approach has already been realised through products such as Microsoft HoloLens, which present virtual information within an optical see-through display.

Such augmented reality devices give the illusion of virtual information appearing in physical 3D space. They can also allow users to interact through both gestures and gaze, using integrated hand- and eye-tracking technology.

The problem with virtual reality

After decades of research and development, VR technology is unquestionably a real product serving real needs. State-of-the-art headsets provide users with impressive immersive 3D environments along with integrated robust hand and eye tracking. Beyond gaming, virtual reality is used to train medical doctors, engineers, pilots, and many others.

But there is a conflict when it comes to more general, day-to-day applications. I and many others believe that with the advent of AI, new interfaces will be needed beyond the mobile phone to control and benefit from the applications in the work and home. At the same time, it is clear from our research that many people find VR headsets just too immersive, unsettling and impractical to use.

In a two-week user study in 2022, we compared working in virtual reality for an entire working week – five days in a row, eight hours each day – against a baseline of performing the same work using a standard setup with a regular display, external keyboard and mouse.

In this study, we asked 16 volunteers to do their ordinary office work, such as word processing, programming, creating spreadsheets, and so on. The headline result was that users could work in virtual reality for an entire workweek – but there were lots of issues in doing so.

Study participants using VR experienced a higher perceived workload as well as lower usability, lower perceived productivity, higher frustration, lower wellbeing, higher anxiety, a greater experience of simulator sickness and higher visual fatigue. In short, VR yielded worse outcomes on all key metrics.

Despite these results, in the interviews participants commented that they could see themselves using VR if headsets were lighter and if exposure to virtual reality was limited to a few hours at most.

In a follow-up research paper in 2024, we examined the video evidence we had collected in the study in detail. It showed what participants did while wearing the headset – adjusting it, managing the cable when it got in the way, eating and drinking by lifting up the headset halfway, receiving phone calls, and rubbing their faces.

Our analysis showed people did gradually get used to the VR headsets. Overall, participants adjusted their headset about 40% less frequently towards the end of the workweek, and removed the headset approximately 30% less frequently.

This tells us it is possible to work in virtual reality as we normally work with a physical desktop, keyboard and mouse. But if we arrange it so the VR setup replicates our ordinary setup then VR, unsurprisingly, performs worse. We are asking a virtual environment to perfectly replicate our physical work environment, which is impossible.

More importantly, it tells us something about trade-offs. Virtual reality provides a fully immersive virtual environment that transports users to completely different virtual worlds. But this has to be balanced against negative qualities such as poor ergonomics, nausea and fatigue.

Superhuman powers

For any form of extended reality – from augmented-reality smart glasses to something much more ambitious – to achieve mainstream success, it needs to provide more positive than negative qualities in relation to devices we are already familiar with, such as laptops, tablets and phones.

The solution, I believe, is to be bold and reimagine extended reality – not as a transplantation or extension of devices we already use in our daily lives, but as a medium that bestows us superhuman powers. In particular, it can enable us to seamlessly interact with computing systems in the 3D space around us.

In physical reality, you have to select a tool to use it: you pick up a spraycan, then push a button to spray-paint. In a desktop interface, you click the spraycan icon and can thereafter spray-paint using a mouse. But in extended reality, there is no need to first select the tool in order to use it – you can just do it with hand gestures.

Simply by forming your hand as if you were holding a spraycan and pushing down your index finger to spray, the system can automatically recognise that you wish to use the spraycan tool. It will then allow you to spray-paint the digital items, modulated by your index finger pushing down a virtual spraycan button.

Extended reality can also provide a medium for interacting with personal robotics by, for example, showing the robot’s future movements in 3D space in front of us. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in our physical reality, this will become more important.

Ultimately, any vision of a metaverse (not just Zuckerberg’s version) will only succeed if it goes beyond current user interfaces. Extended reality must embrace the fact that it allows a seamless blending of virtual and physical information within our 3D world.

Per Ola Kristensson has previously consulted for Meta. He receives funding from EPSRC and Google.

– ref. What Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse U-turn means for the future of virtual reality – https://theconversation.com/what-mark-zuckerbergs-metaverse-u-turn-means-for-the-future-of-virtual-reality-273659

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marc Hudson, Visiting Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex

The Trump administration recently announced it would pull out of around 150 international and global organisations, including two foundational pillars of global climate organisations: the political United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In terms of media coverage this was a one-day wonder, understandably overshadowed by mass government killings in Iran and the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Minneapolis.

But the acronym Ice brings to mind a different history. Thirty five years ago another “Ice” – the Information Council for the Environment – was created to spread confusion and hostility. As the late Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan revealed, this Ice was funded by coal companies as part of a targeted effort to cultivate doubt around the “greenhouse effect” among low information voters, especially older white men without college educations.

Ice was eventually exposed and melted away. But the broader effort continued, spearheaded by the Global Climate Coalition, formed by oil companies and carmakers. Their goal was rational: to protect their profits by softening US carbon reduction commitments, such as those agreed at the 1997 Kyoto conference.

Bad for the public, bad for capital

For decades, US engagement with climate change was characterised by delay. This “made sense” for certain interests. When George H.W. Bush weakened the UNFCCC or his son pulled out of the Kyoto protocol, they were operating on a certain economic logic: protect American industry from regulation.

Trump is very different.

Over the past 20 years “clean tech” has gone mainstream and is now seen as a way for corporations to secure market share. This was matched by policymakers, and the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) threw enormous sums – grants, loans, tax-breaks – at “green” reindustrialisation.

Big companies were making loads of money. The true capitalist move would surely be to keep profits flowing. Yet Trump is rolling back the IRA.

This is not in the interests of the public, but it’s not generally in the interests of capital either. At best, Trump’s moves favour a dying form of capitalism over the emerging one.

Insurers facing uninsurable risks, carmakers who had committed to electric vehicles, and the clean tech sector all lobbied to keep the IRA. They would be making more money had the green industrial policy continued. Even major oil companies seem lukewarm towards a policy of total isolationism.

Things were better before

So, if it isn’t about money, what’s going on?

Trump and his allies share a worldview shaped by conservative backlash against civil rights, feminism, environmentalism and even scientific authority itself. The nostalgia they invoke is for a partly-imagined 1950s, a time when white technocratic men were in charge, schools were segregated, women were in the kitchen, and polluting industries could do as they pleased.

In my own academic research, I found something similar played out in Australia. For many older white men used to industrial dominance, the transition to renewables represents a psychological loss of control similar to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Their war on climate policy is less about economics and more about reasserting a “natural order” where traditional hierarchies remain unchallenged.

Whether in Australia or the US, being too young to have lived through these changes provides no immunity to the myth that everything was better before they were born. For a long time, however, this reactionary impulse was kept in check by political realities.

In the 1980s, Reagan appointees learned that pitched battles with environmental interests can be costly. They learned to use the language of technology, and to cast doubt rather than issue outright denials. Crucially, they learned the value of under-funding institutions to the point of incapacity, rather than abolishing them entirely, so that environmentalists had no easy-to-explain causes to rally behind.

Trump’s administration is unwilling to pretend. Alongside the UNFCCC and IPCC pullout, it has been attempting to dismantle the state’s ability to measure reality through key scientific institutions such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and those around him are not doing this because it saves money, but because the science itself offends their worldview. It is a refusal to admit the political enemies they have derided for decades might actually have been right.

We are used to thinking of politicians and bureaucracies as captives of vested interests with predictable economic motives. But Trump’s climate policy suggests something different is also at work. It recalls the moment when former UK prime minister Boris Johnson is reported to have dismissed corporate concerns about Brexit with a blunt “fuck business”.

Trump’s climate policy is the geopolitical equivalent. It is a scorched earth strategy that sacrifices the climate to win a culture war. And the terrifying reality is they seem willing to do this just to avoid admitting they were wrong.

Marc Hudson was previously employed as a post-doctoral researcher on two separate Industrial Decarbonisation Research & Innovation Centre projects.

– ref. US climate obstruction used to be about profits. Trump’s scorched earth policy is something else – https://theconversation.com/us-climate-obstruction-used-to-be-about-profits-trumps-scorched-earth-policy-is-something-else-273643

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Trish Lalor, Professor in Experimental Hepatology, University of Birmingham

Every January, the same wave of “detox” promises rolls in. Juice cleanses, detox teas, charcoal capsules and liver “resets” all sell a familiar story: you overdid it over Christmas, your body is full of toxins, and you need a product to flush them out.

Here is the inconvenient truth. Your body already has a detox system. It is called your liver, supported by your kidneys and gut, and it has been doing this job your entire life.

I am a liver researcher. I study how this organ works, how it gets damaged and how it repairs itself. So if you are wondering whether you need to detox, my honest answer is that most healthy people do not. In fact, some popular detox trends are not just unnecessary, they can cause harm.

When people talk about detoxing, they usually mean getting rid of harmful substances. That is a real biological process, but it is not something you can switch on with a tea, a supplement or a three day cleanse. Detoxification happens continuously. The liver neutralises chemicals and breaks them down into forms the body can use or safely remove, with waste leaving mainly through urine and faeces. This process is well described in human physiology and toxicology research, including detailed accounts of liver metabolism.

If you are generally healthy and not repeatedly overwhelming your system, you do not need a reset. What the liver needs most is time and consistency, meaning fewer repeated insults and enough recovery time to repair itself between them.

Alcohol: the liver can cope, until it can’t

Alcohol is a useful example of how detoxification works, because everything you drink is processed directly by the liver. After drinking, alcohol is absorbed through the gut and carried in the bloodstream straight to this organ. Liver cells, called hepatocytes, break alcohol down in stages. One intermediate product, acetaldehyde, is toxic and contributes to hangover symptoms before being broken down further into acetate, which the body can use or eliminate.

---

Read more:
Hangovers happen as your body tries to protect itself from alcohol’s toxic effects

---

Problems arise with binge drinking or sustained heavy drinking. Under these conditions, the liver relies more heavily on alternative processing pathways that generate larger amounts of acetaldehyde and increase oxidative stress. This means toxic by-products are produced faster than they can be cleared. Over time, this damages liver cells, triggers inflammation and contributes to fibrosis, which is the build-up of scar tissue. If scarring becomes extensive, it can progress to cirrhosis, a stage where normal liver structure and function are severely disrupted, increasing the risk of liver failure and liver cancer.

---

Read more:
How alcohol contributes to the epidemic of liver disease

---

This is why how you drink matters, not just how much. Spacing drinks out keeps blood alcohol levels lower and gives the liver a better chance to keep up with detoxification.

Liver ‘cleanses’

When people replace alcohol and ultra-processed foods with liquids made from fruit, vegetables and herbs for a few days, they often feel better. That does not mean toxins have been pulled out of the liver. More often, it reflects lower calorie intake, fewer additives, increased fluid consumption and sometimes more fibre.

A short, sensible “cleanse” is unlikely to harm most healthy adults, but risks increase with very low calorie regimens, poorly regulated herbal ingredients or repeated long-term use.

Many detox products are sold as supplements rather than medicines, which means quality, dose and purity can vary widely. Higher doses and prolonged use increase the chance of adverse effects.

Some supplements have evidence in specific clinical settings. Vitamins D and E have been studied in certain liver diseases, and antioxidants such as N-acetylcysteine are used medically in cases of acute liver injury. These are targeted interventions used under medical guidance, not general detox tools, and they do not offset ongoing harmful behaviour.

Some high-dose detox “natural” supplements, such as green tea extract, can lead to liver inflammation, reflected in elevated liver enzymes on blood tests. This indicates liver cells are under stress or being damaged and, in severe cases, supplement-induced liver injury can progress to liver failure requiring a transplant.

Milk thistle and turmeric

Milk thistle and turmeric contain biologically active compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and there is some evidence suggesting potential benefits in specific liver conditions. Milk thistle, for example, has been studied in alcohol-related liver disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, but results are mixed and not strong enough to support routine use.

---

Read more:
Turmeric: here’s how it actually measures up to health claims

---

The main issues with both substances are dosing, formulation and study quality. Turmeric in food is poorly absorbed, which is why supplements often use concentrated extracts or additives to boost absorption. At that point, a culinary spice becomes a pharmacological dose. Higher doses increase the risk of side effects and interactions, and turmeric supplements, which are often concentrated sources of the active compound curcumin, have been linked to cases of acute liver injury. The UK Committee on Toxicity has warned about a potential risk to human health from turmeric and curcumin supplements. “Natural” does not automatically mean safe.

Activated charcoal

Activated charcoal binds substances, which is why it is used in medical settings for certain poisonings. It is non-specific, however, binding whatever is present rather than targeting toxins alone. That makes it useful in emergencies and risky in everyday use. Taking charcoal alongside medication may reduce how much of that medication your body absorbs. Charcoal supplements are not a safe response to suspected poisoning and do not replace medical advice.

Coffee enemas

Coffee, when consumed normally, is associated with better outcomes in several liver diseases and may be protective in some contexts. That evidence does not support putting coffee into the colon.

Enemas can cause burns, infections, dangerous imbalances in the salts your body needs to control nerves, muscles and heart rhythm, and bowel perforation. If you want coffee for potential liver benefits, drink it.

For most healthy people, the best liver support is unglamorous. It means keeping alcohol within recommended limits, avoiding binge patterns, eating a diet rich fibre and fresh fruit and vegetables, staying hydrated and allowing regular rest days from alcohol.

The liver is an extraordinary organ. It detoxifies the body every day without needing a cleanse, a tea or a reset. If you want to support it, focus less on dramatic short-term detox routines and more on reducing repeated strain over time. Consistency beats gimmicks.

And whatever you do this January, do not put coffee where it does not belong.

---

In the first episode of Strange Health, a new visualised podcast from The Conversation, hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt put detox culture under the microscope and ask a simple question: do we actually need to detox at all?

Strange Health explores the weird, surprising and sometimes alarming things our bodies do. Each episode takes a popular health or wellness trend, viral claim or bodily mystery and examines what the evidence really says, with help from researchers who study this stuff for a living.

Katie Edwards, a health and medicine editor at The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, a GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol share a longstanding fascination with the body’s improbabilities and limits, plus a healthy scepticism for claims that sound too good to be true.

Strange Health is hosted by Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt. The executive producer is Gemma Ware, with video and sound editing by Sikander Khan. Artwork by Alice Mason.

Dan and Katie talk about two social media clips in this episode, one from 30.forever on TikTok and one from velvelle_store on Instagram.

Listen to Strange Health via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Trish Lalor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The truth about detoxes – by a liver specialist – https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-detoxes-by-a-liver-specialist-272761

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Mokhefi-Ashton, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Nottingham Trent University

The key difference between Donald Trump’s first and second presidencies can be summed up by his two official portraits. The first after his victory in 2016 shows a smiling Trump, probably delighted to have won against the odds and, at least in theory, willing to work with his opponents.

The second shows a more brooding figure glaring into the camera – a man who recognises that a sizeable chunk of the country is never going to like him and does not care. This second image encapsulates what I see as the twin themes of Trump’s second term: revenge and legacy.

In 1973, American political scientist Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr introduced the concept of the “imperial presidency”. He argued that the separation of powers that lies at the heart of US democracy had become overbalanced under the presidency of Richard Nixon in favour of the executive branch.

In response to the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal, where operatives working for Nixon bugged the Democrat National Committee’s headquarters and he tried to cover it up, Congress reasserted itself. The war powers resolution of 1973, for example, required the president to consult with Congress before committing US armed forces to conflict.

The Obama administration also shows how effectively a president’s agenda can be derailed when one party puts its mind to it. Republicans blocked Obama’s appointments to the judiciary and significantly watered down his main achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

However, Trump’s second administration has seen the imperial presidency reach its peak. He has wielded this power against his political enemies, whether other politicians, media organisations or foreign governments, more forcefully than at any point during his first presidency.

This has been shown by various legal cases, as well as his threat to sue Paramount over a pre-election interview with rival presidential nominee Kamala Harris on CBS News that Trump felt unduly favoured her. Paramount settled by agreeing to pay US$16 million (£11.9 million) to Trump’s future library.

It is also striking how much more organised Trump’s second administration has been. There will forever be a debate about whether Trump really expected to win back in 2016, but it’s obvious there had been a lack of planning. This was shown by the disjointed policy agenda and appointments to key positions of people who were either not as loyal as he would have wished or not up to the roll.

Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, lasted only 24 days in his post, while communications director Anthony Scaramucci lasted ten. Trump’s government is staffed by ultra-loyalists this time round, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

There have still been embarrassing mistakes, including the leak of information about imminent military strikes in Yemen. But Trump’s government has been notably more focused and organised than in his initial presidency.

Miller’s America First Legal Foundation, for example, spent the Biden years creating policy agendas and drafting executive orders. Because of this pre-planning, Trump could appoint his second cabinet much faster than his first and hit the ground running. What followed was a flurry of executive orders and legislation on immigration, federal regulations and the economy.

---

On January 20 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. His first year in office has seen profound changes both in his own country and across the globe. In this series, The Conversation’s international affairs team aims to capture the mood after the first year of Trump’s second coming.

---

Cementing his legacy

Trump cannot run for the presidency again according to the US constitution, despite his trolling on the subject. While his first presidency was focused on his ultimately failed efforts at reelection, the next three years are all about legacy.

Every US president has actions that can be undone by their successors. In Trump’s case, future Democratic presidents can change the renamed Gulf of America back to the Gulf of Mexico. But Trump’s second term has also seen him aim for seismic changes that cannot be easily reversed.

Chief among these is Greenland. What was initially perhaps a passing fancy to bring the Danish-administered territory under US control has turned into a key pillar of his post-presidency ambitions. If Trump succeeds in making Greenland part of the US, then he will have increased the size of the US’s land possessions by roughly 22%.

It would be difficult for any future president to hand it back without being accused of weakness and ceding territorial gains. Similarly, cementing Venezuela as a client state would reshape regional dynamics in ways that will be difficult to reverse. Appointing himself as chair of the Gaza “peace board” for life again speaks to a man trying to create a permanent legacy.

Another aim is reconfiguring the federal government. This process was started during his first term by reshaping the Supreme Court to give it a conservative majority that, barring accidents or illness, will last over 20 years. Trump has now turned his attention to the rest of the system.

His aim is to appoint judges and administrators that cannot be removed easily by future administrations, cementing his policy agenda on a generation. Trump has repeatedly stated his wish to fire Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, and replace him with someone more in tune with his thinking.

The main obstacle is Congress. Trump’s first term taught him that the much-lauded checks and balances of the US constitution are stronger on paper than in practice. With strength of will, billionaire supporters and a disposition to take legal action, these mechanisms can be circumvented or ignored. But they can slow him down.

This is why the midterm elections in November are so important. If a president’s party holds the House and Senate when they enter office, as was the case for Trump after the 2024 election, they often lose it two years later. And if the Democrats gain control of the House then they can hobble his legislative agenda.

In some ways, Trump’s biggest legacy will be the resurgence of the imperial presidency. He has shown future administrations what can be done if they’re willing to ignore political norms. On many occasions during his first term Trump voiced variations of “nobody has done what I’ve been able to do”. In his second term, he seems set on turning political rhetoric into indisputable fact.

Matthew Mokhefi-Ashton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump’s second term is proving different from his first. This time it’s imperial – https://theconversation.com/trumps-second-term-is-proving-different-from-his-first-this-time-its-imperial-273712

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dafydd Townley, Teaching Fellow in US politics and international security, University of Portsmouth

One year into his second term of office, Donald Trump’s foreign policy aspirations have led him to variously lay claim to Canada, the Panama Canal and, most contentiously at present, Greenland. He has kidnapped the head of state of Venezuela, saying that the US can run the country and exploit its oil, and he has issued threats against the sovereignty of Colombia, Mexico and Cuba.

Whatever the 47th president’s motivations, his expansionist vision has echoes of a little-known organisation that flourished briefly in the middle decades of the 19th century: the Knights of the Golden Circle. The Knights were a secret society founded in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1854 by Virginian doctor George W.L. Bickley.

Membership of the group is largely hidden from historians due to the secretive nature of the organisation. But legend suggests that its leaders included the likes of confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest (who would go on to be the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan) and Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

The society’s name was chosen to reflect the wealth that would be created by establishing a slaveholding empire that would initially consist of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. The so-called “Golden Circle”, with its headquarters in Havana, Cuba, would encompass much of the world’s supply of cash crops such as tobacco, rice, cotton, sugar and coffee, and the production of each depended on significant enslaved workforces.

The initial intention was not to have an independent empire but to annex the area to the American south, strengthening the cause of slavery. But the group shifted tactics as tensions escalated in the late 1850s, especially after the the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (1857) that ruled that African Americans were not and could never be citizens. And as the abolitionist movement in the north gathered pace, the Golden Circle society adapted to support the secession of the southern states from the Union to be absorbed into the other Golden Circle territories.

The exact number of members of the Knights of the Golden Circle is unknown. Bickley claimed it had 115,000 members at one point – although this seems unlikely due to Bickley’s failure to raise troops to invade Mexico.

The Knights’ goals were not simply territorial expansion. They were ambitions of ideological conquests rooted in the continuation of slavery, as viewed through the lens of a “manifest destiny”: the idea that the white man should expand its dominance across the continent of America to the exclusion of native populations.

While the organisation’s influence was limited, it reflected the 19th-century American premise that territorial expansion could forever secure a social order built on hierarchy and chattel slavery.

Trump’s Maga vision

Fast forward to the present day, and American imperialist expansion no longer wears the uniform of secret societies such as the Knights. Instead, it emerges through presidential rhetoric, policy signalling and deliberate ambiguity.

---

On January 20 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. His first year in office has seen profound changes both in his own country and across the globe. In this series, The Conversation’s international affairs team aims to capture the mood after the first year of Trump’s second coming.

---

Under Trump, America’s ambitions in the western hemisphere have been framed as annexations driven by hemispheric dominance. Trump unironically called it the “Donroe doctrine”, a personalised and transactional reinterpretation of the Monroe doctrine’s core claim: that the Americas are solely within the United States’ sphere of influence.

Where the 1823 Monroe doctrine warned European powers against further colonisation while professing American restraint, Trump’s version dispenses with the pretence of mutual sovereignty. It treats neighbouring states not as equals but as strategic assets or bargaining chips. The language is typically Trumpian (blunt and improvised) but it argues that external powers have no role in the governance of the western hemisphere, and that the United States has the final say-so.

Cuba is at the centre of this worldview. While Trump has not openly advocated annexing the island, he has attempted to use coercive pressure as a substitute for territorial control. Efforts to disrupt Cuban energy supplies and renewed talk of regime change echo traditional American treatment of Cuba as an unfinished project. Consequently, Trump’s Cuba policy resembles the establishment of an informal American empire.

The Knights of the Golden Circle imagined Cuba not just within the American sphere of influence but as territory to be absorbed. Their obsession with Havana as the Golden Circle’s centre reflected an understanding that southern power depended on control of the Caribbean. Trump’s posture is less explicit, but the strategy is very similar. Cuba is viewed as a prize within America’s reach and yet denied.

The same logic appears elsewhere in the Americas. Trump’s threats toward Mexico blur the line between cooperation and coercion. America’s neighbours’ sovereignty becomes negotiable when framed as an American security problem. Pressure on Venezuela and Columbia also reflects a willingness to treat political outcomes in the Americas as matters of US entitlement.

What distinguishes the so-called Trump corollary from previous American hemispheric dominance is its tone. It is unapologetically hierarchical and dismisses multilateral norms. It harks back to a time when the US could act first and justify itself later. Where cold war policymakers cloaked intervention in ideological language, Trump’s rhetoric is strikingly transactional. Influence is something to be purchased or compelled.

This brings the comparison with the Knights of the Golden Circle into sharper focus. The Knights had a secret vision of empire, brought to life by slavery and racial hierarchy. Trump’s ambitions are in the public sphere, filtered through state power. But both reflect that geography confers entitlement and that the Americas exist in a fundamentally different moral category.

In this light, Trump’s policy is not a radical break with American history but an unvarnished return to its imperial ambitions. The map may no longer be redrawn by conquest, but the logic that once animated the Golden Circle, one of hemispheric control as destiny, has not disappeared. It has merely learnt to speak in the idiom of modern populism.

Dafydd Townley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 19th-century plan for a slaving empire based in US deep south and Caribbean resonates with Trump’s foreign policy today – https://theconversation.com/19th-century-plan-for-a-slaving-empire-based-in-us-deep-south-and-caribbean-resonates-with-trumps-foreign-policy-today-272871

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Lucia Passador, Assistant Professor, Department of Law, Bocconi University

For the UK after Brexit, it is tempting to imagine that regulation no longer comes from Brussels. Yet one of the most significant pieces of digital legislation anywhere in the world – the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act – is now coming into force, and its effects will reach UK companies, regulators and citizens.

AI is already threaded through daily life: in how loans are priced, how job applications are sifted, how fraud is detected, how medical services are triaged, and how online content is pushed.

The EU’s AI Act, which is entering into force in stages, is an attempt to make those invisible processes safer, more accountable and closer to European values. It reflects a deliberate choice to govern the social and economic consequences of automated decision-making.

The act aims to harness the innovative power of AI while protecting EU citizens from its harms. The UK has chosen a lighter regulatory path, but it will not be immune from the act’s consequences. Through the AI Office and national enforcement authorities, the EU will be able to sanction UK companies that have operations in the bloc, regardless of where they have their headquarters.

The act enables authorities to impose fines or demand that systems be changed. This is a signal that the EU is now treating AI governance as a compliance issue rather than a matter of voluntary ethics. My research outlines the power of the enforcement provisions, particularly their influence on how AI systems will be designed, deployed or even withdrawn from the market.

Many of the systems most relevant to everyday life, such as those used in employment, healthcare or credit scoring, are now deemed “high-risk” under the act. AI applications in these scenarios must satisfy demanding standards around data, transparency, documentation, human oversight and incident reporting. Some practices, such as systems that use biometric data to exploit or distort people’s behaviour by targeting vulnerabilities such as age, disability or emotional state, are simply banned.

The regime also extends to general-purpose AI – the models that underpin everything from chatbots to content generators. These are not automatically classified as high-risk but are subject to transparency and governance obligations alongside stricter safeguards in situations where the AI could have large-scale or systemic effects.

This approach effectively exports Europe’s expectations to the world. The so-called “Brussels effect” operates on a simple logic. Large companies prefer to comply with a single global standard rather than maintain separate regional versions of their systems. Firms that want access to Europe’s 450 million consumers will therefore simply adapt. Over time, that becomes the global norm.

---

Read more:
UK government’s AI plan gives a glimpse of how it plans to regulate the technology

---

The UK has opted for a far less prescriptive model. While its own comprehensive AI legislation appears to be in doubt, regulators – including the Information Commissioner’s Office, Financial Conduct Authority and Competition and Markets Authority – examine broad principles of safety, transparency and accountability within their own remits.

This has the virtue of agility: regulators can adjust their guidance as required without waiting for legislation. But this also shifts a greater burden on to firms, which must anticipate regulatory expectations across multiple authorities. This is a deliberate choice to rely on regulatory experimentation and sector-specific expertise rather than a single, centralised rulebook.

Agility has trade-offs. For small and medium-sized firms trying to understand their obligations, the EU’s clarity might seem more manageable.

There is also a risk of regulatory misalignment. If Europe’s model becomes the global reference point, UK firms may find themselves working to both the domestic standard and the European one demanded by their clients. Maintaining this will be costly and is rarely sustainable.

Why UK companies will be affected

Perhaps the most consequential – but least widely understood – aspect of the EU’s AI Act is that extraterritorial scope that I mentioned earlier. The act applies not only to companies based inside the EU but also to any provider whose systems are either placed on the EU market or whose outputs are used within the bloc.

This captures a vast range of UK activity. A London fintech offering AI-driven fraud detection to a Dutch bank, a UK insurer using AI tools that inform decisions about policyholders in Spain, or a British manufacturer exporting devices to France – all of these fall squarely within European regulation.

My research also covers the obligations for banks and insurers – they may need robust documentation, human-oversight procedures, incident-reporting mechanisms and quality-management systems as a matter of course.

Even developers of general-purpose AI models could find themselves under fire, particularly where regulators identify systemic risks or gaps in transparency that warrant closer scrutiny or corrective action.

For many UK firms, the more pragmatic choice will be to design their systems to EU standards from the outset rather than produce separate versions for different markets.

Although this debate often sounds abstract, its effects are anything but. Tools that determine your access to credit, employment, healthcare or essential public services increasingly rely on AI. The standards imposed by the EU – particularly requirements to minimise discrimination, ensure transparency and maintain human oversight – are likely to spill over into UK practice simply because large providers will adapt globally to meet European expectations.

Europe has made its choice: a sweeping, legally binding regime designed to shape AI according to principles of safety, fairness and accountability. The UK has chosen a more permissive, innovation-first path. Geography, economics and shared digital infrastructure all ensure that Europe’s regulatory pull will reach the UK, whether through markets, supply chains or public expectations.

The AI Act is a blueprint for the kind of digital society Europe wants – and, by extension, a framework that UK firms will increasingly need to navigate. In an age when algorithms determine opportunity, risk and access, the rules that govern them matter to all of us.

Maria Lucia Passador does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The EU’s new AI rulebook will affect businesses and consumers in the UK too – https://theconversation.com/the-eus-new-ai-rulebook-will-affect-businesses-and-consumers-in-the-uk-too-272467

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Juliane Kaminski, Associate Professor of Comparative Psychology, University of Portsmouth

Imagine Max, a well-trained border collie, manages to ignore a squirrel in the park
when his owner tells him to sit. His owner says, “Max, stop chasing that squirrel and sit down,” and Max obeys. Can dogs learn and understand words the way humans do?

A new study found dogs like Max may have learnt the names of objects (like a squirrel) from overhearing their owners talking. The study is the latest to try and understand whether intelligent dogs and humans can have real conversations.

A widely reported case in 2004 brought this question into the spotlight. Rico, an eight-year-old border collie was the first dog who demonstrated under experimental conditions that he knew the names of over 200 different toys.

Dogs like Rico seem different to other ones. Scientists have a name for them: label-learner dogs. They seem so exceptional, it’s easy to wonder if they’re learning words in a similar way to humans. Research is starting to give us some answers. But first, it’s important to understand how these dogs have been studied.

In 2004, researchers, including myself, wanted to make sure Rico wasn’t simply reacting to subtle, unconscious signals from people. So Rico was tested in a room where he couldn’t see anyone. He still fetched the correct toys upon hearing the command “Fetch, xy”. That meant he was not using visual cues from his owner.

The next big question was whether Rico could learn new name-object combinations the way young children do. Children often learn new words through a process called fast mapping. They hear a new word, look at the options and figure out what it must refer to. For example, if a child knows what “blue” means but not “olive,” and you show them a blue object and an olive-green one, they’ll probably choose the olive-green one when you ask for “olive”.

Rico showed something similar in his behaviour. When researchers placed a brand-new toy among familiar ones and asked for a name he had never heard before, he picked the new toy. He even remembered some of these new name-object pairs weeks later. That means Rico could pick up new names for things without seeing people point at them or look at them or give any other obvious hints.

He just heard a new name and figured out what it referred to.

It seems that there is a group of gifted dogs that have realised that objects have names. These dogs appear to have an exceptional ability to learn the names of many objects. Like Rico’s ability to learn names through a process of elimination, these dogs can also learn independently, without needing additional cues to identify the object being named.

But what is it, that makes these dogs gifted in this way? To explore this question, my colleagues and I recently studied a group of these unusually talented dogs, of various breeds (border collies, mixed breeds, a Spanish water dog and a pug). Many label-learner dogs are border collies but lots of other breeds seem to have this ability too.

My colleagues and I gave them a set of cognitive puzzles to solve. Each dog completed eight tasks designed to measure curiosity, problem solving, memory, learning ability and their ability to follow human communicative cues like pointing or gazing. A second group of dogs – matched by age, sex and breed – (and without any special name-learning skills) took the same tests so we could compare the two groups.

The label-learner dogs consistently showed three key traits. They were obsessed with new objects. They showed strong, selective interest in particular items. And they were better at controlling their impulses when interacting with objects. However, more research will need to investigate whether these traits appear naturally in some puppies or whether they can be shaped through training as a dog grows.

The findings may eventually lead to something like a puppy “IQ test” that identifies young dogs with the potential to learn many object names. This could help trainers select dogs well suited for important roles such as assisting people with sight or hearing impairments or supporting police work.

But does this all now mean dogs learn words like children do? After all the new paper about overhearing used a approach designed to study understanding in human toddlers.

The answer is: not quite. Children learn thousands of words, and they do it rapidly and flexibly. Even at 18 months, children don’t just match a word to whatever they see at the moment.

They can understand what an adult intends to talk about by realising when a person is referring to something that isn’t there. For example, if a parent says, “Where’s the teddy we played with this morning?” even though the teddy is not in the room, the child may still understand what the parent means and go look for it. Children use shared context to understand others.

Even the highly skilled label-learner dogs seem to struggle to understand object-name links this way.

Although there is ample evidence that dogs seem specifically adapted to human use human given gestural communicative cues, like pointing and gazing, when it comes to “word-learning” the evidence we have is just that dogs can form object-name associations. We also know that some dogs can acquire hundreds of these associations or might have understood a rule that objects have names.

This is not comparable to word learning in children. By around age two, typical English-speaking children learn approximately ten new words each day, reaching an average vocabulary of about 60,000 words by the age of 17.

When they learn words, children apply rules and principles. Their language acquisition is based on the understanding of others as “intentional beings”, that other people have goals and intentions. They recognise that when someone talks, points or gestures, they are trying to share an idea, ask for something, or draw attention to something. For example, when a parent says “Look at the dog!” the child typically understands that the parent wants them to notice the dog, not that the words are just random sounds.

However, there is currently no conclusive evidence to suggest that this core principle, underpins dogs’ interactions with humans.

Dogs are amazing learners, but their abilities are not the same as human language learning. They learn names for objects, not language.

Juliane Kaminski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Some dogs can pick up hundreds of words – do they learn like children? – https://theconversation.com/some-dogs-can-pick-up-hundreds-of-words-do-they-learn-like-children-273620