Six years have passed since presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump last met, but the substance of discussions remains largely the same. Back in 2019, trade and Taiwan also rode high on the agenda.
But how has the needle moved on these three issues – trade, Taiwan and China-Russia relations – since the last meeting between Trump and Xi? Rana Mitter, professor of U.S.-Asia relations at Harvard Kennedy School, explains what has changed since 2019 and the geopolitical background to the upcoming bilateral talks.
Taiwan: US hawks in retreat
Compared with where the two countries were in 2019, the biggest variable that has changed is whether the U.S. has softened its position on Taiwan.
In the first Trump administration, Taiwan policy was shaped by figures such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who were decidedly hawkish on China and the issue of Taiwan. The U.S. was seemingly pushing then to bolster its assurance – falling short of commitment – to help Taiwan pursue a path of autonomy, but not outright independence.
During the Biden administration, the U.S. position on Taiwan was shaped by other, wider China-U.S. events, such as the spy balloon and then the controversial visit to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – both of which damaged Washington-Beijing relations and resulted in an uptick in tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
A pro-China supporter steps on a defaced photo of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a protest in Hong Kong against her visit to Taiwan on Aug. 3, 2022. Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
Trump’s current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has also traditionally been very hawkish on Taiwan – but there is a wider sense that this hawkish approach isn’t dominant in the second Trump administration.
Much of this centers on Trump himself and questions over whether he is looking to find a different compromise agreement with China that includes the U.S. stance on Taiwan.
Evidence of this could be seen earlier this year when the Trump administration prevented Taiwan President William Lai Ching-te from stopping off in New York on his way to Central and South America – something that could be interpreted as a concession to Beijing. Similarly, the Trump nixed US$400 million of U.S. weapons earmarked for Taiwan over the summer.
The other main difference now, compared with when Xi and Trump last met, is that they are dealing with a politically different Taiwan. In 2019, the U.S. and China were dealing with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who had a practical and flexible approach to the issue of Taiwanese independence – something that Beijing vehemently opposes.
The new Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te, hasn’t pushed for independence, but certainly a lot of analysts have said he is more enthusiastic in wanting to stress the separation of Taiwan from the mainland. That is a position that the U.S. doesn’t want to give any signal that it is supporting.
Meanwhile, Beijing has continued to push hard on Taiwan – days before the Trump-Xi meeting, Chinese state media announced that “confrontation drills” involving Chinese H-6K bombers had taken place near Taiwan.
But this is typical. The Chinese government has traditionally pushed a maximalist line on Taiwan before meetings and then scaled back rhetoric during negotiations.
So what does Beijing want? In recent weeks and months, the Chinese Communist Party has indicated that it would like Washington’s phrasing on Taiwan to change from “the U.S. does not support independence” to “the U.S. opposes independence.”
But I would not expect any move from Washington in the short term on this. The preferred settlement on Taiwan for the short to medium term is status quo. However, that gets harder and harder due to China’s increased presence in Taiwanese air and naval space.
Trade: Trump tools are blunted
In 2019, the U.S. and China were in the process of working out a “phase one” economic and trade agreement, which was supposed to develop into a much bigger deal.
But the wider deal didn’t come about. Both sides were finding it hard to achieve the terms of the deal, and then the pandemic in 2020 threw global trade and supply chains out of kilter.
We are now in a very different tariff environment than during the first Trump administration – tariffs are now universal, and Trump wants everyone to pay them.
That creates in the short term a harder negotiating position for Trump – there is less incentive for U.S. allies to help pressure China with additional restrictions of their own. Take the U.K, for example. In the first Trump administration, a succession of phone calls from the White House pressured the Boris Johnson government to ban Chinese giant Huawei from having a slice of the U.K. telecommunications market. But at that point, there was no U.S.-imposed 10% tariff on the U.K. And while 10% is low compared with that imposed elsewhere, it is still an obstacle when trying to impose pressure on allies and partners against China.
And compared with 2019, the vulnerability of supply chains has become even more apparent. We have seen evidence of that with China’s actions over restricting rare earth materials. But in the intervening years, Beijing has inserted itself even more so into global supply chains – making it harder for Trump to also pressure American companies.
Take Apple. It has, under pressure from the Trump administration, moved more of its production of iPhones to India – a rival to China. But in practice, iPhone component production and assembly still take place in China – as no other place can do the job with such precision and volume.
Russia: China continues balancing act
China’s approach to its relationship with Russia hasn’t really changed since the first Trump term – Beijing still makes its decisions on Russia with little regard to what the U.S. thinks.
China didn’t condemn Russia for those actions, but it noticeably abstained in the U.N. on those issues. And it never acknowledged Russia’s annexation of those areas.
Similarly today, Beijing has never acknowledged Russia’s claims over the parts of eastern Ukraine it occupies.
So China has continued its balanced, cautious position. Its priority is not offending Russia, which it increasingly eyes as a key market for Chinese goods. It provides tech that has dual-use capability useful for Russia’s military sector, and oil – but drives a hard bargain. These are no “mate’s rates.”
China wants nothing to disturb that trade, so it has been at first suspicious, then relieved by the relative warmth of the Trump administration toward Russia.
As to the war itself, China evidently understands that Russia may not win the war, but it is able to maintain it – and that is just fine. An isolated Russia, dependent on Chinese goods, is to Beijing’s benefit.
Rana Mitter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Creative experience might enhance brain health, which could slow down the brain’s ageing.
That’s according to a study by a group of international scientists across 13 countries. They found that creative activities, like dance classes – the tango proved particularly effective – or art classes or music lessons or a hobby like gaming, had a positive impact on an artificial intelligence (AI) “brain clock”. And the more the participant practised their art form, the “younger” their brain clocks were.
We asked the lead researchers, neuroscientists Carlos Coronel and Agustín Ibáñez, to explain their study.
What is brain health?
Brain health is the state of cognitive, emotional and social functioning that allows people to realise their potential, maintain their wellbeing, and adapt to changes across the course of life. It is not defined by the absence of disease but by the brain’s ability to sustain efficient, resilient and integrated activity that supports everyday life.
Brain ageing is the biological and functional changes that happen in the brain over time. It includes changes in structure, connectivity and metabolism that may or may not impair performance. While some decline is natural, the rate and pattern of these changes vary greatly between individuals, reflecting both vulnerability and resilience.
“Brain clocks” are machine learning (AI) models designed to estimate how old a brain looks, based on brain scans or neural activity patterns. They compare neuroimaging, electrophysiological, or neuromolecular data to normal brain patterns across the lifespan.
So, by using a brain clock we can try to understand what makes a brain more resilient and what ages it faster.
What did you want to find out?
We wanted to know whether being creative isn’t just fun or emotionally rewarding, but actually biologically good for the brain. There’s growing evidence that arts engagement supports wellbeing, but we still lack a solid understanding of how creativity might shape brain health.
Many believe that art is too mysterious and intangible to study scientifically or to make a biological difference. We wanted to challenge both ideas.
Could creative experiences, something that feels joyful and deeply human, also be measured in the brain? Could they help delay brain ageing in the same way that physical exercise helps the body?
Our study tested whether creativity might influence the brain clock. If your brain clock says you’re younger than your real age, it means your brain is functioning more efficiently than expected.
How did you go about it?
We collected data from almost 1,400 people across different countries. Some were expert tango dancers, musicians, visual artists or gamers. Others were non-experts matched for age, education and gender from the same countries. Non-experts had no previous experience in the different disciplines.
We recorded their brain activity using techniques called magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography. They can be used to measure brain activity in real time. Then we trained computer models (machine learning models) to create a brain clock for each participant.
The models can be trained in less than an hour. The challenge was to collect the data – from Argentina to Poland – of hundreds of participants. That would be impossible without the collaboration of many researchers and institutes worldwide.
So we used the brain clocks to predict each person’s age from their data. If someone’s predicted brain age was lower than their real age, it meant their brain was ageing more slowly.
Finally, we used something called biophysical modelling. These models are “digital brains”, and we used these virtual brains to understand the biology behind creativity.
The problem with the machine learning models (the “brain clocks”) is, although they can learn patterns in the data to make predictions, they can’t reproduce real brain activity. The biophysical models, on the other hand, are “real” brains in a digital world, that is, they are a mirrored copy of the brain inside a computer. These models use detailed biological and physical rules to simulate how a brain works. So, they aren’t AI models. They’re “generative models” that can, in fact, generate brain activity from mathematical equations.
While brain clocks can be used to measure brain health (accelerated or delayed brain ageing), the biophysical models can explain why creativity is associated with better brain health.
What did you find out?
Across every creative field, the pattern was strikingly consistent: creativity was linked to a younger-looking brain.
Tango dancers showed brains that appeared more than seven years younger than their chronological age. Musicians and visual artists had brains about five to six years younger. Gamers, about four years younger.
We also ran a smaller experiment where non-experts trained for just 30 hours in the strategy video game StarCraft II to see whether short-term creative learning could have similar effects.
Even in the short-term experiment, after only 30 hours of creative training, participants’ brain clocks ticked backward, showing a reduction of brain age between two and three years.
The more people practised their art, the stronger the effect. And it didn’t matter what kind of art it was. It could be dancing, painting, music, or gaming. All helped key brain areas work better together.
These areas, important for focus and learning, usually agefirst, but creativity seems to keep their connections stronger and more flexible.
Creativity, we found, protects brain areas that are vulnerable to ageing and makes brain communication more efficient (similar to building more, larger, and higher-quality roads to communicate between cities within a country).
Why is this important?
The arts and sciences, often seen as opposites, are in fact allies. Creativity shapes not only culture but biology. Our study reframes creativity as a biological pathway to brain health and resilience, not only a cultural or psychological phenomenon.
By showing that artistic engagement can delay brain ageing, this research helps us reimagine the role of creativity in education, public health, and ageing societies.
In the big picture, it expands our understanding of healthy ageing beyond disease prevention. It highlights creativity as a scalable, accessible and deeply human mechanism to sustain cognitive and emotional wellbeing across diverse populations and lifespans.
So if you’re wondering whether being creative is “good for you”, the answer seems to be “yes”. Scientifically, measurably, and beautifully so. Your next dance step, brush stroke, or musical note might just help your brain stay a little younger.
Agustín Ibáñez receives funding from the Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat), supported by the Fogarty International Center (FIC), the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Aging (R01 AG057234, R01 AG075775, R01 AG21051, R01 AG083799, CARDS-NIH 75N95022C00031), the Alzheimer’s Association (SG-20-725707), the Rainwater Charitable Foundation – The Bluefield Project to Cure FTD, and the Global Brain Health Institute. AI is also supported by ANID/FONDECYT Regular (1250091, 1210176, 1220995) and ANID/FONDAP/15150012. He is affiliated with the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Santiago de Chile, Chile; the Cognitive Neuroscience Center, Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Carlos Coronel 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 – Global Perspectives – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University
As the future of Gaza hangs in the balance, the Palestinian Authority (PA) needs renewal if it’s to eventually govern the strip and play a key role in making the two-state solution a reality.
The PA has not proved effective under Mahmoud Abbas, the heavily criticised, unpopular 89-year-old leader. Abbas’s time has passed. There’s a massive need for a more dynamic figure to replace him and reform the PA into a more legitimate and instrumental governing body that can unite the various Palestinian factions.
Under the circumstances, no one fits the bill better than Marwan Barghouti who has been languishing in Israeli jails since 2002.
How Abbas rose to power
Abbas was elected to a four-year term in January 2005. He succeeded President Yasser Arafat, who had been under siege from Israeli forces and died in mysterious circumstances in late 2004.
Arafat was disliked by right-wing forces in the Israeli establishment, who opposed the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestinian leader and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist for his peace efforts in 1995. The peace process fell apart soon after, largely due to the opposition of Benjamin Netanyahu (whose first term as prime minister was from 1996–99) and Ariel Sharon (PM from 2001–06).
Abbas was a close associate of Arafat, and a founding member of Fatah – the core of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Favoured by Israel and its main ally, the United States, Abbas won the Palestinian presidential election in 2005 against another prominent Palestinian figure, Mustafa Barghouti.
Yet, Abbas was not popular among the younger generation of Palestinians. They regarded him as an “old horse” who had spent decades living in exile abroad.
Hamas, founded as a radical Islamist movement in 1988, boycotted the election, vowing to fight until the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
There was one candidate who could have beaten Abbas, but he didn’t run. This was Mustafa’s cousin, Marwan Barghouti, who was – and still is – in an Israeli jail and very popular among Palestinians across the political spectrum.
Who is Marwan Barghouti?
Marwan Barghouti was a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank in the late 1990s and had established many close relationships with Israeli politicians and members of the peace movement.
During the Second Intifada from 2000–05, he became a leader of the street protests against Israeli occupation. In 2002, he was jailed for allegedly orchestrating attacks against Israelis and was convicted of murdering five people. He was sentenced to five consecutive life terms.
Initially, Marwan entered the 2005 Palestinian presidential race from jail, but after discussions with Fatah, he withdrew.
As a long-time analyst of the Middle East, I thought at the time that Marwan was the right person to lead the PA. I believed he could work with Israel and the Bush administration to implement the Oslo Accords and realise the statehood aspirations of the Palestinian people.
In an op-ed piece for the International Herald Tribune in 2004, I wrote:
He is regarded by many young Palestinians as a hero, his popularity second only to Arafat’s. He is well-educated about the Israelis and fluent in Hebrew, with wide-ranging cross-border contacts with Israeli peace advocates.
He fully supported the Oslo peace process and backed the intifada only when he was convinced that [then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon was determined to end that process in pursuit of his long-standing strategy to give the Palestinians as little as possible.
Nearly 20 years later, he remains relevant. In a recent poll of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Barghouti would win a presidential election against two other leading candidates, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and Abbas.
Among those who said they would vote, Barghouti got 50% of the support, followed by Mashal at 35% and Abbas at just 11%.
Campaign to release him
Hamas included Marwan, now 66, in its list of Palestinians to be freed from Israeli jails in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages held by the group. Israel, however, refused to release him.
Not much is known about his living conditions as he has been shifted to different prisons every six months. A video surfaced recently that shows him appearing very frail and being taunted by the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir telling Barghouti in prison: ‘Whoever harms the people of Israel … we will wipe them out.’
Marwan’s son, Arab Barghouti, has appealed to US President Donald Trump for his release, saying “my father is a politician, he is not a security threat”. He has lately been joined by his mother (and Marwan’s wife), Fadwa Barghouti, in this appeal.
If the Israeli and American leadership really wants the Gaza ceasefire to hold and lead to the implementation of the second and third stages of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, Marwan needs to be freed.
Viewed by the Palestinian people as a Nelson Mandela-like figure, he is the one most capable of reforming the Palestinian Authority and enabling it to govern for all Palestinians.
And among all potential future Palestinian leaders, he stands out as the one who can deliver on the peace plan and move to the eventual, internationally backed two-state solution.
Amin Saikal 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.
Late on an October Monday night, George Springer smashed a three-run homer to send nearly 45,000 fans in Toronto’s Rogers Centre — and a record national television audience — into a frenzy.
It had the feeling of a denouement. Yet, like other famed home runs in Blue Jays history, Springer’s blast was just one step in the long journey through baseball’s three playoff rounds.
A year earlier, Jose Bautista’s then-audacious bat flip followed a dramatic home run — also like Springer’s hit in the seventh inning — that moved the Blue Jays onto the same championship series round that they had not won since 1993. Until this year.
The enduring legacy of 1993
Invoking 1993 holds special resonance for Blue Jays fans. It’s the last time the team won, let alone reached, the World Series.
It is easy to tell the story of the Blue Jays through the lens of dramatic game-winning home runs. However, the context of the team’s championships —and near misses — offers a more nuanced tale.
Following a handful of dire losing seasons, Blue Jays management earned a reputation for talent development. The first crop of stars — Dave Stieb, George Bell and Tony Fernandez — won a division championship in the team’s ninth season. They fell one game short of qualifying for the World Series, losing the only seventh game in a post-season series in franchise history prior to this year.
Modernity came to Toronto in 1989 when the team moved into SkyDome, a then-state-of the-art domed stadium complete with retractable roof (and by then, beer vendors) that was funded and operated by a public-private partnership.
The Blue Jays 2025 success — realizing the promise of a new generation of star prospects headlined by Vladimir Guererro Jr. and Bo Bichette — has rekindled memories of these past glories: the first winning teams of the 1980s, the back-to-back champions in 1992-93 and the bravado of the Bautista-Encarnacion-Josh Donaldson teams from a decade ago.
Lost in this pantheon of star players and dramatic moments, however, is the two decades of mediocrity that followed the heights of the Carter home run.
A more dispassionate, bottom-line ownership led to teams that failed to reap the talents of Hall of Famers like Roy Halladay and major stars like Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green.
Rogers Communications purchased 80 per cent of the Blue Jays in 2000, with Interbrew retaining 20 per cent. The on-field performance changed little, but the business model evolved significantly.
Rogers acquired the remaining 20 per cent of the team in July 2004. Before the year was out, it had gained control of SkyDome for $25 million, a fraction of the $600 million that the stadium has cost to build only 15 years earlier. Now fully privately owned, it was renamed the Rogers Centre.
Today, the Blue Jays reflect the vertical integration of modern commercial sports. The team is the primary tenant in a stadium operated by their owners. Their games are broadcast on television channels, radio stations and streaming services owned and operated by Rogers Communications. These channels market other Rogers-owned content during Blue Jays games.
Meanwhile, fans consume this content on cable subscriptions and internet services that are Rogers’ core businesses. The newest extension of this revenue-generation model is the increasing prominence of sports betting, which is integrated fully into broadcasts by on-screen commentators providing odds as though delivering sports “news,” not paid advertising
Canada’s team
The production and circulation of dominant narratives is a consequence of such a structure, what sociologist David Whitson termed “circuits of promotion.”
One of the most powerful is that the support for the Blue Jays is nationwide. They are Canada’s team. There is an element of truth to this. The Blue Jays’ fan base is considerable, particularly when they are winning.
But this is also a marketing construct — one that benefits from the Blue Jays being the only remaining Canadian-based team in a U.S.-operated professional sports league. This would be a much harder narrative to sell if the Montreal Expos were not now the Washington Nationals, and it is not entirely novel.
Basketball’s Toronto Raptors, themselves the beneficiaries of the relocation of the Vancouver Grizzlies, capitalized on both the team’s appeal as well as its monopoly on Canadian markets with its wildly popular 2019 marketing campaign, “We The North.”
Come Friday night, when Trey Yesavage throws the first pitch of the 2025 World Series, the absence of other Canadian-based teams and the centralization of media outlets in Toronto will ensure there will be a ready (and passionate) audience across the country all ready to chant: “Let’s go, Blue Jays!”
Russell Field 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.
Sixty-three years ago, President John F. Kennedy single-handedly brought the world back from the brink of nuclear war by staring down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev over the Cuban missile crisis. At least, so goes a standard U.S.-centric interpretation of events.
But despite the narrative of presidential strength and American resolve saving the day, the truth is more complicated – and involved a wider cast of continental characters.
As an expert in Latin American and Cold War history with a new book on the topic, I argue that when it comes to the Cuban missile crisis, it took a proverbial regional village to avert catastrophe. Indeed, the United States did not solve or experience the drama alone. Much as in geopolitics today, the Cuban missile crisis took place in a complicated environment where the entire hemisphere both reckoned with and helped shape the realities of American power and regional dominance.
Regional assistance during the crisis
On the evening of Oct. 22, 1962, Kennedy took to the airwaves and revealed to a live international audience that the Soviet Union had secretly placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba capable of reaching most of the mainland U.S. and Latin America.
In a nationwide address, President John F. Kennedy publicly reveals details about Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Throughout his speech, Kennedy consistently emphasized that the missiles threatened the security not just of the U.S. but of the entire hemisphere. And because the missiles were a regional threat, they required a regional solution. Kennedy called upon the Organization of American States, a regional body created in 1948 to coordinate hemispheric affairs, including security, to invoke the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance “in support of all necessary action” to remove the missiles.
U.S. regional neighbors responded immediately to Kennedy’s call for action.
During the crisis, Mexico and Brazil were the two Latin American countries that most enthusiastically supported a peaceful resolution. The leaders of both countries were moderate leftists and had demonstrated sympathy with the Cuban Revolution before the missile crisis. Mexico and Brazil were two of the few remaining nations in the Americas that still had official ties with Cuba and, as a result, their leaders could help facilitate shuttle diplomacy.
Mexico’s president, Adolfo López Mateos, sent a personal message to Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós as soon as he learned about the missiles. López Mateos made a special appeal “in the name of the friendly relations that unite and have united our countries.” He stated that he believed it was his duty to “cordially call upon your government so that those bases are not used in any form whatsoever and the offensive weapons are withdrawn from Cuban territory.” By communicating directly with the Cubans, Mexico’s president treated them as full participants in the crisis on their island, not as mere victims, puppets or observers.
On Oct. 23, 1962, Cuban leader Fidel Castro replies to the U.S. decision to quarantine the island. AP Photo
Mexico’s government also helped maintain surveillance in the waters around Cuba and clamped down on any pro-Cuban protests during the missile crisis. Mexico’s navy sent 10 ships to patrol the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. The U.S. ambassador noted the lack of violent demonstrations in Mexico and attributed the peaceful public response to the “firm control maintained by national and local police and military forces.”
Like López Mateos, Brazilian President João Goulart tried to use his country’s special relationship with Cuba to convince the Cubans to make concessions during the crisis. Goulart secretly reached out to Cuban leaders through his ambassador in Havana, the Cuban ambassador in Rio de Janeiro and Cuba’s representative to the United Nations. Through these channels, he tried to convince the Cubans to open their territory to an investigative U.N. commission.
Goulart also sent a special envoy to Havana who pleaded for a peaceful resolution. This mission was actually a top secret favor to the Americans, who had asked the Brazilians to use their special relationship with Cuba to serve as mediators and suggest to Cuban leader Fidel Castro that giving up the nuclear weapons could be the first step in improving Cuba’s relations with its neighbors. “From such actions many changes in the relations between Cuba and the OAS countries, including the U.S., could flow,” the message promised.
Crafty diplomacy
Most importantly, Mexican and Brazilian leaders changed their position in international organizations in response to the Cuban missile crisis.
Prior to the crisis, these two countries had resisted all multilateral actions against Cuba and had abstained from Organization of American States votes that put sanctions on the island. But on Oct. 23, 1962, they changed their position and joined the unanimous vote to establish a quarantine around Cuba. The quarantine laid out a large zone where ships approaching the island could be intercepted and searched for offensive military equipment.
The OAS action provided the legal foundations for the quarantine. Establishing the quarantine under the auspices of articles 6 and 8 of the Rio Treaty made it a multilateral “act of common defense.” Had the U.S. acted alone, interdicting ships in international waters would have legally been considered a “blockade,” or act of war.
President John F. Kennedy hosts Brazilian President Joao Goulart in 1962, some months before the Cuban missile crisis. AP Photo/Bob Schutz
By voting in this manner, Latin American countries demonstrated their support not necessarily for the U.S. or U.S. imperialism, as some critics claimed, but for multilateralism. Latin American leaders were protecting their own countries, not just the U.S., when they demanded the removal of the Soviet missiles. The unanimous vote also helped the U.S. demonstrate to the rest of the world that other countries in the Americas agreed that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba posed an unacceptable threat.
Another Latin American country, Venezuela, not only joined the unanimous vote to establish the quarantine but also participated in it. Venezuela contributed airplanes, two destroyers and the country’s only submarine to the Inter-American Quarantine Force, a combined group of Latin American armed forces that constituted the southernmost part of the quarantine line. The Cuban missile crisis marked the first time in modern Venezuelan history that the country’s forces had participated in international military actions.
“My government will comply with each and every one of its international compromises,” declared Venezuela’s President Rómulo Betancourt, “not only out of loyalty to written agreements in treaties that impose inevitable obligations, but also out of a sense of national survival.”
Inevitable obligations and national survival
The Venezuelan president’s declaration about his country’s response to the crisis reminds Washington what it may be forsaking and risking with today’s current policy toward Latin America.
During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy and Latin American leaders took their international obligations seriously and used international law to their advantage instead of defying it. In comparison, recent months have seen the Trump administration flout international norms by carrying out unilateral strikes on ships in Caribbean and Pacific waters.
Kennedy resisted the temptation to use preemptive airstrikes during the Cuban missile crisis because it would have violated international norms and undermined the U.S. reputation at home and abroad. In avoiding extrajudicial violence and finding a peaceful, multilateral solution, Kennedy and his Latin American partners strengthened the rule of law and defended their national and international security.
During the crisis, the U.S.’s neighbors in Latin America helped Kennedy take a step back from the brink and find a peaceful solution. That the world avoided nuclear war in 1962 was a triumph of multilateralism, rather than U.S. unilateralism.
Renata Keller received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.
Three frogs, a shark, a unicorn and a Tyrannosaurus rex dance in front of a line of heavily armoured police in riot gear.
Over the past few weeks, activists taking part in protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the United States have donned inflatable animal costumes. The aim is to disrupt the Trump administration’s claim that the protests are violent “hate America” rallies.
The result is a sight to behold, with many encounters between police abd protestors going viral.
Whether they know it or not, these costumed activists are contributing to a rich history of using humour and dress to mobilise against and challenge power.
The ICE crackdowns
Since its creation in 2003, ICE has enforced immigration laws on the ground, arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of criminal activity.
During Donald Trump’s first term as president (2017–2021), the agency expanded its operations to target and deport many people with no criminal record.
This expansion sparked the June 2018 Occupy ICE protests, inspired by the broader global Occupy movement challenging corporate power and economic inequality.
The first major Occupy ICE action in 2018 occurred in Portland – a city known for its creativity and dissent. It grew from a rally organised by the Direct Action Alliance into what federal officials called a “very, very peaceful” encampment with kitchen tents, kids’ spaces and media hubs.
The protesters forced the temporary closure of the facility for about eight days, before federal officers cleared the site and erected a fence around its perimeter.
Following Trump’s re-election this year, ICE operations have intensified again, with the repealing of policies that prevented enforcement operations in sensitive areas such as schools and hospitals. Protests have followed.
In Portland, tensions escalated again this September, when Trump described the city as “burning to the ground” and “overrun with domestic terrorists,” announcing his plans to deploy the National Guard.
A federal judge has so far blocked Trump from doing so, saying the protests don’t meet the requirements for rebellion. He will likely keep trying.
Operation inflation
Protesters in Portland and across the US have long used humour and costume in their demonstrations. In October, a TikTok video showing an ICE agent spraying pepper spray into the air vent of an activist’s inflatable frog costume amassed more than two million views.
The clip exposes the absurd levels of police force against peaceful demonstrators. The protester, Seth Todd, said his intention was to contradict the “violent extremists” narrative, and “make the president and the feds look dumb”.
The Portland frog has quickly became emblematic of resistance, appearing on shirts, signs and street art, including parodies of artist Shepard Fairey’s iconic OBEY design – the authoritarian face replaced by a cartoon amphibian surrounded by the words DON’T OBEY.
And the frog costume has spawned imitators, with creatures multiplying in protests across the country, including at the recent No Kings rallies. One group of activists launched Operation Inflation, a website that crowdfunds inflatable suits for protesters, aiming to make resistance more visible, playful and safe.
Strategic silliness
One example that echoes Portland’s blow-up menagerie is London’s Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). Members of CIRCA dressed as clowns during anti-war protests in the early 2000s. They played tag around police lines, hugged officers, and marched in absurd choreography.
As scholar Eve Kalyva notes, such actions employ “strategic frivolity”: silliness or absurdity in a way that disrupts the scripts between police and protester. By appearing playful rather than menacing, costumed activists directly counter narratives that paint them as violent threats.
The Portland frog and its friends work with the same strategies of silliness. Their dancing and cartoon-like actions make it impossible to frame them as thugs. Their soft forms bounce in contrast to the hard utility of riot gear.
From suffragette sashes to handmaids
Beyond frivolity, activists throughout history have also used dress and costume to more serious effect. In Britain in the early 20th century, suffragettes wore coordinated purple, white and green sashes to project unity in the fight for women’s voting rights.
In the US, dress and costume have played important roles in successive movements for African American liberation. During the 50s and 60s Civil Rights Movements, many marched in their best suits and dresses to assert their dignity against dehumanising racism.
The Black Panther Party had an unofficial uniform of sunglasses, berets and black leather jackets, embodying a more defiant style.
More recently, demonstrators in the US, Northern Ireland and Argentina have donned the red cloaks and white bonnets of The Handmaid’s Tale to protest abortion bans.
Similarly, The Extinction Rebellion–affiliated group Red Rebel Brigade stages actions in flowing red robes to mourn environmental loss.
And the wearing of the fishnet-patterned keffiyeh has now become a global symbol of Palestinian support.
Naked solidarity
On October 12, Portland’s anti-ICE demonstrators – many in their inflatable suits — were joined by thousands of naked cyclists in the Emergency World Naked Bike Ride. As costume designer and historian Camille Benda writes in Dressing The Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest (2021), nakedness in protest lays bare the body’s vulnerability to state violence.
In Portland, the mix of bare skin and soft blow-up animals heightens both the absurdity and tenderness of the scene. These protesters offer new avenues for direct action at a time when many people’s rights and freedoms are at stake.
At the time of writing, ICE was reported to have increased its weapons budget by 700% from last year.
Whether Trump will ultimately deploy the National Guard remains unclear. But across the US, the frogs (and their friends) keep multiplying. Their placards declaring “frogs together strong” remind us of the strength to be forged in unity and laughter.
Blake Lawrence 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.
For more than 60 million years, venomous snakes have slithered across Earth.
These ancient, chemical weapon-wielding reptiles owe their evolutionary success in part to the effectiveness of their bite, which they deliver at an astonishing speed before their prey can escape.
Now, a study I coauthored reveals, in astonishing detail, exactly how these bites work. Published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, it is the largest study of its kind to-date, and uses advanced video techniques to show how various snake species have evolved very different strategies to deliver their deadly bites.
Thousands of snakes on Earth
There are approximately 4,000 species of snake on Earth – about 600 of which are venomous.
Scientists started visually recording the strikes of these snakes to better understand them in the 1950s, when high-speed photography and cinematography were first developed.
Since then, these technologies have improved dramatically, allowing scientists to capture and study the action of venomous snake bites in much greater detail. For example, past research has shown there are clear differences between strikes to capture prey, versus those used for defence.
But most recent studies that have examined snake bites have been limited by a number of factors.
Firstly, they have captured the bites using only one camera. This means we only get a side-on view, whereas the snakes can slither in all directions. Secondly, the recordings have been of a relatively low resolution – in large part because they were made in the field with low lighting conditions. Thirdly, they have often focused on a single snake species or a limited number of species. This means we miss out on seeing how many other species may behave differently, or strike faster.
Experimental setup for snake strikes. Silke Cleuren
Welcome to Venomworld
For our new study, my colleagues and I studied the bites of 36 different species of venomous snakes. These species were from the three main families of venomous snakes: vipers, elapids and colubrids. They included western diamondback rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), blunt-nosed vipers (Macrovipera lebetinus) and the rough-scaled death adder (Acanthophis rugosus).
All the snakes we studied were housed at an institution in Paris, France, called Venomworld. There, we built a small experimental arena consisting of plexiglass panels lined with a cardboard floor, in which we placed the individual snakes.
We presented the snakes with a simulated food source – a cylindrical hunk of medical gel, heated to 38 degrees so it resembled prey for those that can detect heat.
Two high-speed cameras, placed nearby at different angles, automatically captured the snakes striking the gel at 1,000 frames per second.
Using the footage from these two different views, we recreated the strike in 3D to investigate, in detail, its various components such as its duration, acceleration, angle, and how fast the snake’s jaw opened.
In total, we captured 108 videos of successful strikes – three for each of the species included in the study.
Striking and slashing
There were major differences between the strikes of the snakes we studied.
Vipers struck the fastest, moving at speeds of more than 4.5 metres per second before sinking their needle-like fangs into the fake prey. Sometimes they would quickly remove and reinsert their fangs at a better angle. Only when the fangs were comfortably in place did the snakes shut their jaws and inject venom.
Some 84% of the vipers included in the study reached their prey in less than 90 milliseconds. This is faster than the average response time for a startled mammal – the preferred prey of many vipers in the wild.
On the other hand, elapid snakes, such as the Cape coral cobra (Aspidelaps lubricus), crept towards the fake prey before lunging and biting it repeatedly. Their jaw muscles would tense, releasing venom.
Colubrid snakes, such as the mangrove snake (Boiga dendrophila), which have fangs farther back in their mouths, lunged towards the prey from further away. With their jaws clamped over it, they’d make a sweeping motion from side to side. In doing so, they tore a gash in the gel to inject the maximum amount of venom.
Our previous research highlighted how the shape of snakes’ fangs is closely tied to prey preference. We can now show how they use these deadly weapons in the blink of an eye – and why they have been able to survive for so long on Earth.
Alistair Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and is an Honorary Research Affiliate with Museums Victoria.
Between the end of a summer that had been going on too long and the beginning of a too-warm autumn that would crank up my climate change anxiety to ten, I joined a tai chi class.
I had noticed a sign when I was out walking. Immediately, I went online, paid some money and put my name down for the first available session. Looking back, I wonder why I thought this evening class, held in a suburban community centre, might soothe the assorted anxieties I was carrying. Signing up was an impulsive act, prompted by some deep, yet inarticulate knowing that the way I was feeling would not be eased by words; something different was needed, something physical.
I’d had two big bereavements: first my mother, then a beloved aunt. They had been the two most important women in my life, and suddenly they were gone. Meanwhile, I was under ongoing surveillance following surgery for cancer, caught in that uneasy post-treatment period that tests one’s nerve – because there is nothing to be done but wait.
Carol Lefevre. Affirm Press
At certain moments, usually in the middle of the night, a niggling voice would whisper that the cancer might be gone but it could return, that even as I lay there in the dark trying to sleep, some small, festering body part might be plotting treason. Sometimes the voice was that of the naturopath I’d consulted, who’d warned since my body had made a cancer, I needed to avoid the conditions that had allowed that to happen. Which, of course, I would – if only I knew what they may have been.
It was a time when at least once a day I would find myself on the verge of crying; sometimes, inconveniently, the tears broke through. It could happen anywhere – when I was out walking, or in the supermarket; sometimes it happened when I was driving, and I’d have to pull over until I was able to quieten my thoughts enough to drive on.
Inconvenient weeping
I’d almost progressed to feeling tearful about being tearful, when I came across the first of Deborah Levy’s trilogy of autobiographical writings, Things I Don’t Want to Know. In it, Levy documents her bouts of inconvenient weeping. It was riding on escalators at train stations that set off Levy’s tears, especially the upward escalator. She writes: “By the time I got to the top and felt the wind rushing in, it took all my effort to stop myself from sobbing.”
I recognised that effortful feeling of trying to control the sobs. Like Levy, I also knew something had to change. Her solution had been to book a flight to Palma, Majorca, where she was met at the airport by a taxi driver with white clouds floating in both his eyes. On arrival, Levy had bought Spanish cigarettes with the intention of taking up smoking again and when the driver abandoned her on the road to her hotel, she sat on a rock and lit the first cigarette.
It was also somewhat comforting to read, in Joan Didion’s essay Goodbye to All That, how as a young woman in New York, she had found herself crying in elevators and taxis and Chinese laundries. There were certain parts of the city she had to avoid, including Times Square in the afternoons, or the New York Public Library at any time, for any reason.
Her solution was to get married. But I was sorry to learn her crying continued even after her marriage to fellow writer John Gregory Dunne. Didion cried, she writes, “until I was not even aware when I was crying and when I was not”. It was a year in which, she tells us, she understood the meaning of the word “despair”. A doctor expressed the opinion she appeared to be depressed. He wrote down the name and number of a psychiatrist for her, but Didion did not go.
A friend had given me the name of a psychologist who she said had helped her, but I had given up on psychology. Or at least, the psychologists I had consulted when things had been going badly in the past had left me poorer without improving matters.
Now, everything was conspiring to cast me low, including that ever since the cancer surgery, my hair had been shedding – hair I had patiently nurtured through the transition from chemical dyes to natural health, hair I had joyously grown halfway down my back for the first time since childhood. My hair was everywhere in the house and in the car; it even migrated into our food. I knew I had been fortunate to have avoided chemotherapy, with its side serve of hair loss, but now it appeared I was to lose it anyway, albeit more slowly.
I read that both surgery and stress can contribute to thinning hair, and concluded although I had been anaesthetised when surgeons re-sectioned my colon, my body had been present and remained deeply shocked.
In signing up for the tai chi class, I was throwing myself upon the mercy of the universe.
A kind of poetry
The only time I had ever actually seen tai chi involved one of those surreal moments that occasionally occur in life. About five years earlier, I had been driving along the southern terrace that borders Adelaide’s parklands and the car radio was playing a piece of classical music by a Japanese composer.
The sound was spare and melancholy, and when I glanced across to the park I saw a tai chi class in progress. That was not in itself unusual – people use the parklands all the time for various fitness activities. What made time swerve to a halt was that the slow movements of the tai chi people were perfectly in time with the music coming out of my radio.
I had stopped the car to watch. The group practising tai chi couldn’t hear the music, of course, but the synchronicity of movement and sound produced a kind of poetry. Perhaps, then, when I saw the sign advertising “tai chi for health and wellbeing” outside my local community centre, it was this memory of the unexpected beauty I’d witnessed that had nudged me over the hump of my inertia to join.
Tai chi is a form of mind-body exercise that originated in China. Its history is somewhat shadowy, with contributions attributed to various monks and masters reaching back as far as the 12th century, and possibly beyond. In T’ai Chi Ch’uan and I Ching: a choreography of body and mind, Da Liu, a tai chi master, credits the most complete foundations of tai chi to a famous Taoist, Chang San-feng, an ardent follower of Confucius who was known as “The Immortal”.
Da Liu writes that Chang San-feng famously observed a fight between a crane and a snake, and from the way the two animals moved he realised “the value of yielding in the face of strength”. He studied the behaviour of wild animals, clouds, water and trees moving in the wind and “codified these natural movements into a system of exercise”. Da Liu concedes: “We owe the present forms of T’ai Chi to numerous masters […] over many centuries.”
Tai chi has been influenced by Confucian thought, and by traditional Chinese medicine, but its roots lie deep in the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, which emphasises the natural balance in all things. In Taoist thinking, everything is composed of two opposite but complementary elements: yin and yang. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote eloquently of the principles of yin and yang in his famous work the Tao Te Ching.
In tai chi, the polarities of yin and yang are expressed through the form’s shifts of weight and balance, through hardness yielding to softness, tension releasing to relaxation, and moving the body in ways that expand and contract. Gentler and more meditative than the Chinese martial arts it evolved from, its slow, dance-like postures flow into one another, combining concentration, physical balance, stretching and relaxation, with natural, peaceful breathing.
Chang San-feng codified the natural movements of wild animals, clouds, water and trees moving in the wind into a system of exercise, in the 12th century. Gisling/Wikipedia, CC BY
There are different schools of tai chi. Chen, Yang, Wu and Sun styles are named after the Chinese families who developed them, and the skills are passed orally through the generations.
The form I was learning had been developed by a Taoist monk, Master Moy Lin Shin. The tai chi he brought to the West is a modified version of Yang style’s 108-move set. Its elements are borrowed from the Chinese internal arts of XingYi (a bare-handed fighting form), Bagua (a complex system of eight trigrams, which in tai chi relate to movement and body parts), and Liuhebafa, or “water boxing”, a form characterised by its flowing, fluid movements.
Taoist tai chi has been criticised for these modifications, which are sometimes seen as a dilution of classical tai chi. Criticism focuses on the fact Master Moy removed the “fighting” aspects from his form in favour of emphasising its health benefits. His decision was most likely influenced by the health difficulties of his own early years, as well as by the needs of the people he trained after he emigrated to Canada.
Lou Reed, legendary musician, songwriter and founding member of rock band the Velvet Underground, credits tai chi with saving him after years of self-destructive substance abuse. Reed began a martial arts practice in the 1980s; he came to love the fighting aspect of Chen style, but he was also in awe of tai chi’s power to heal. In a letter published by The New York Times in 2010, Reed wrote:
I wish I could convince you to change your life and save your body and soul. I know it sounds too good. But truly: Tai Chi – why not?“
A lesson in humility
My first class was a lesson in humility. Never a sporty type, never even an adequate dancer, awkward hardly does justice to the feeling of finding myself in the centre of a group of people who, at the instructor’s command, began a series of complex moves they seemed to know by heart. Later, I would learn ushering beginners into the middle is a kindness; it means when they turn, there is someone they can follow.
At the halfway point of that first class, Chinese pu’erh tea was served in tiny porcelain cups. Brewed from the leaves of a variety of tea plant native to Yunnan Province, pu’erh tea goes through a complex fermentation process and is reputed to have many health benefits. After the tea break, it was back to the centre of the floor for more repetitions of the move we’d been working on.
That night, we were practising move 18: Carry Tiger to Mountain. It evolves out of move 17, Cross Hands, which even I could manage. The body turns with the arms bent as if cradling a heavy bundle. Yes, I thought, this sorrow and anxiety I’d been holding was my tiger; a creature burning bright with memories that had become too painful, a body darkly striped with grief.
It felt as wild and dangerous in its way as a real live tiger, but if I could only master the correct way to carry it to the mountain, perhaps I would be able to leave it there and move on.
Tai chi requires complete focus, making it almost impossible to think about anything else. So when I came across American beat poet Alan Ginsberg’s poem about tai chi, it struck me as a somewhat inaccurate portrayal of what happens during tai chi practice. Ginsberg is in his kitchen in New York, the only place in his apartment with enough space to do tai chi, but his moves are interspersed with domestic concerns:
the Crane spreads its wings have I paid the electric bill?
White Crane Spreads its Wings is one of tai chi’s most subtly exhilarating moves. It involves a simultaneous rising and turning, a spine-expanding stretch that, for me, somehow generates a feeling of hope. What it doesn’t do is allow any room for thoughts of “the electric bill”. What was Ginsberg up to, I wonder, as his white crane spread its wings in his kitchen? I can only conclude his electricity bill was a pressing matter in his life at that particular moment.
Studies have shown tai chi can modulate the regions and networks in the brain associated with depression, with mood regulation and processing emotions, and with stress and distress.
A focus on life force
Of the Chinese martial arts, tai chi belongs to the internal arts known collectively as neijia. The focus is on mental, spiritual and “qi” (chi) – or life-force – aspects, rather than the physiological nature of the external martial arts.
The Eight Methods are qi, bone, shape, follow, rise, return, retain, conceal. At this early stage of my study of tai chi, they remain a mystery. But the principles of the Six Harmonies are evident in a muted way in the class teachings, where emphasis is placed on movement with intent, and on developing an awareness of what one is feeling during the moves – internally as well as externally.
For those of us who lose touch with what our bodies are doing and feeling, neglecting to pay attention until they threaten our wellbeing, or even our lives, this fusing of mind and body, spirit and movement, intent and qi, feels like an important survival skill.
For example, every year almost 7,000 women in Australia are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer. These cancers are characterised by low survival rates and are notoriously difficult to detect. Something like ovarian cancer can show up in many different ways and spread quite widely before being correctly diagnosed.
Increased awareness of our bodies could help us bring the information to our doctors that might assist in earlier diagnoses and better outcomes for these and many other conditions.
In 2020, tai chi was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. There have been claims for the practice’s beneficial effects on people living with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis: conditions that come with a debilitating loss of coordination and balance.
One year-long study of women with MS, carried out between 2019 and 2020, showed measurable improvements in the areas of their balance, gait, mood, cognition – and also in their quality of life.
Tai chi brings increased awareness of our bodies – which could help us bring important information to our doctors. Khan Do/Unsplash
Cancer as betrayal
My experience of cancer has been that it feels like a betrayal. For decades, my body has carried me through every kind of weather, both actual and emotional. It has reliably bounced back from every health breakdown. No words can adequately describe the sense of loss engendered by a cancer diagnosis, even one that is not yet deemed terminal.
I was fortunate to be diagnosed early, but I was still blindsided by my body’s deceitfulness, its silent treachery; even after surgery, it was a shock to realise the bounce-back appeared provisional. Was this payback for all the times I’d wished for a different physiology – longer legs, straighter hair, slimmer hips? Or for the times I’d just plain hated the way I looked, hated my own clumsiness in the world so much I’d mistreated my closest ally?
Tai chi asks us to turn our awareness to the body with gentleness and precision; to become better at hearing what it has to say. I have felt let down, so when tai chi’s difficult “separations” sequence requires the whole of my weight to be supported by one ankle, one foot, five toes, I ask my body: Will you hold me? Will you keep me from falling? Can I count on you effortlessly as I once did, as a child, as a young woman?
And each time I do not wobble, or have to save myself from falling, it feels like a baby step in a gradual rebuilding of trust, perhaps even of finding forgiveness for the betrayal, a re-bonding with the self at a profound level.
The Taoist Tai Chi logo is the circular yin and yang symbol, with the light and dark sections reversed. It is said to symbolise tai chi’s ability to reverse bad habits and the ageing process, and thus to promote good health. During practice, I hope to reverse the conditions, whatever they may have been, that prompted my body to turn against itself.
But I understand it is a gradual process, as slow and continuous as the movement and pace of tai chi itself, sometimes compared to pulling a silk thread from a cocoon. Pull it too quickly and it breaks; pull it too slowly and it won’t unwind. Slow and gentle doesn’t equate to “weak” or “ineffectual”. Fundamental to tai chi is the concept of “effortless effort”, in which relaxation enables the important inner work to take place.
In tai chi, relaxation helps important inner work to take place. Monica Leonardi/Unsplash
Less inclined to tears
For me, two months into the practice, my emotions felt more under control; I was less inclined to tears. Week by week, I was discovering that grief and loss are not only held in the heart and mind, but also in the body; muscles and tendons, all the complex systems of nerves and blood and lymph that circulate our distress, are open to being soothed by the language of movement.
As winter set in, I began taking extra classes, going two or three times a week. Pitching up at draughty memorial halls in outlying townships where huge stages were framed by crimson curtains, and where in one case, rows of two-bar electric heaters high up on the walls appeared to be the only heating.
Physically, I found the constant shifting of weight, the expansion and contraction of parts of the body, the striving for a sense of flow, the need to focus, all generated a tangible feeling of wellbeing – though I still felt like an awkward beginner.
In Taoist Tai Chi’s 108-move “set”, some moves – like White Crane Spreads Wings, and Hands Like Clouds – occur multiple times. Learning involves sharpening one’s observational skills, as each move is demonstrated three times by the instructor.
Another subtle aspect of the art is being helped by following those around you who are more skilled, and by their patience in “treading water” for a time while beginners settle in. In this way, tai chi becomes both an individual and a communal endeavour: expressing, through effortless effort, the Taoist ideal of service to others.
To practise the set outside class, the moves must be memorised. It requires patience, persistence and possibly years-long commitment, but studies show the benefits are well worth the effort, especially as we age. Even a tai chi practice of only 24 weeks has demonstrated improved cognitive function in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.
‘I don’t want to seem mystical …’
Lou Reed’s book The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, edited by his wife, artist Laurie Anderson, was published after Reed’s death. It contains his writings on tai chi and conversations with fellow musicians, artists and tai chi practitioners.
“I have often thought of tai chi as some kind of physical unity to the universe itself, some strange ancient methodology that could link us to the basic energy wave of existence,” he writes. “I don’t want to seem mystical, but something does happen to you when you practice this ancient art.”
Lou Reed credits tai chi with saving him.
Reed became a devotee of Master Ren Guangyi, practising Chen style tai chi for up to two hours a day, and for six or seven days a week. He took Ren on a world tour with him, eventually putting him on stage to do a tai chi set while improvising music to complement the form. The two performed together and engaged in tai chi with the public at Sydney’s 2010 Vivid Festival, which was curated by Reed and Anderson.
In The Art of the Straight Line, in a transcribed conversation between Laurie Anderson and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (with whom Reed had studied meditation), Anderson movingly recounts how
as Lou died, he was completely conscious. And he was doing Cloud Hands, a tai chi movement, while he died.
Reed had had cancer of the liver and hepatitis, and had undergone a liver transplant six months earlier.
In Things I Do Not Want to Know, Deborah Levy concludes it was the past, specifically her childhood in Africa, that had returned to her when she was sobbing on escalators. After weighing things up in Majorca, she settles down to write. In Goodbye to All That, Joan Didion leaves New York and returns to California. After a time, the moon over the Pacific Ocean and the pervasive scent of jasmine make her tears in New York seem “a long time ago”.
Even so, after the death of her mother, Didion wrote: “There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.” For a long time I had shared that view, but now, as I progressed with tai chi, I was beginning to think there might be ways.
For me, grief for the past has been as much a factor in my tears as my anxiety about the future. Helplessly poised between the two, I found in tai chi a way to manage this position – not by looking back, nor forward, but expanding and contracting into the present moment, shutting out the world’s noise and finding peace within myself through movement and mindfulness. If this sounds too mystical, I can only agree with Lou Reed: “Something does happen to you when you practice this ancient art.”
What is the “something” that happens? It’s difficult to define, and I suspect you feel it almost immediately if you’re going to feel it at all. I’ve noticed that people who’ve never done tai chi come to a first class and they either never return or, like me, embrace it with the zeal of missionaries. In searching for a way to explain the “something”, I can’t find a better place to start than the opening move.
‘I’m confident it’s happening’
The opening to tai chi appears the simplest of movements. The hands, from hanging at the sides with the palms open, rise in front of the body and then slowly float down. It’s the motion one uses when flinging a sheet over a mattress to make a bed, but so much slower. With the upward lifting of the hands, the body contracts; as the hands descend, the body expands and rises.
It is surprising how soothing this motion can be, how almost at once the mind and body calm. The upward lift is driven by pushing up from the floor, with the hands rising as if on puppet strings, but the downward drift comes from dropping the elbows. They are such subtle adjustments, yet the body responds with a palpable quietening.
There is a sense of return in this move, even though it is a beginning. It’s the feeling I get at the end of a long walk when I open the gate from the street and step into our garden. Or when I close the front door behind me and breathe in: home.
In The Art of the Straight Line, Anderson writes that after more than 25 years of practising tai chi, Lou Reed “could actually feel chi. He could pinpoint it, describe it, and trace the way it moved through his body”. She describes how Reed would demonstrate chi by passing one hand over the other.
When I felt that for the first time, I was electrified. I was holding a ball of unbelievably powerful energy and realizing that it could move through me and that this is also what I was made of.
I have not felt the chi moving through me, but it is early days yet. Eight months in, I remember to straighten my spine as I go about my day; I am calmer and have better balance. While I can’t actually see the new neural pathways forming in my brain, I’m confident it is happening.
I continue each week to carry my tiger to the mountain. In the kitchen, while I wait for the kettle or the oven, my white crane spreads its wings. At night, visualising the first 17 moves sends me to sleep. When I practice the difficult cloud hands, I am reminded of Lou Reed: the way he brought his art and his capacity for devotion to tai chi, and was rewarded.
I approach each class with beginner’s mind, and am hopeful of one day experiencing chi’s electrifying energy.
Carol Lefevre 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.
Taylor Swift’s latest studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, has just enjoyed a second week on top of the Billboard charts, after smashing all-time sales records on its debut.
Swift once again topping charts with her latest album probably comes as little surprise. What has turned heads is the way she did it. In just one week, she released 34 versions of the same album.
This was more than clever marketing. It was economics in action. Swift’s release is a masterclass in pop economics, showing how artists turn attention, scarcity and emotion into revenue – on a record-breaking scale.
Taylor’s version(ing)
The Life of a Showgirl was released in dozens of formats, with physical and digital editions tailored to different levels of commitment.
In total, over the first week, there were 27 physical editions (18 CDs, eight vinyl LPs and one cassette) and seven digital download variants.
A range of covers, coloured vinyl, bonus tracks and signed inserts turned one album into a collectable series rather than a single product. Other artists – such as the Rolling Stones – have used this strategy before, but rarely at this scale or with such an intense response from fans.
Economists call this versioning: offering multiple versions of the same product so customers reveal how much they are willing to pay.
For many casual listeners, one version is enough. But for devoted Swifties, collecting extra editions can feel irresistible.
By tempting these superfans to buy special editions, often at a premium price, Swift captures consumer surplus – the gap between what a fan is willing to pay and what they actually pay.
Instead of leaving that money on the table, the strategy turns passion into profit. The cost of creating extra covers or vinyl colours is small, but the willingness of fans to pay more for them is high. That is exactly where versioning pays off.
The psychology of spending like a Swiftie
Swift’s strategy is not just about pricing. It relies on how people actually make decisions, with emotion, status concerns and social pressure, rather than as perfectly rational consumers in economic theory.
One of the strongest ideas in behavioural economics is loss aversion. People feel the pain of losing something more than the pleasure of gaining it. Swift’s release uses this to full effect.
For many fans, the thought of missing out on having a particular version forever feels worse than the cost of paying for it now.
Scarcity strengthens the pull. When items are available only briefly or in fixed quantities, they become positional goods, valued not only for what they are, but because others might not be able to get them.
Research shows that when something is scarce and uncertain, people act faster and spend more.
When one vinyl beats thousands of streams
These emotional decisions translate into commercial results. In major music markets, every physical purchase counts towards the charts, no matter the format. If one fan buys four editions, that counts as four sales. When thousands do the same, first-week numbers soar.
This strategy makes even more sense in the streaming era, where listening contributes far less to chart rankings than physical sales. On the US Billboard 200 chart, it takes about 1,250 paid streams or 3,750 ad-supported streams to equal one album sale.
Physical sales are once again a major source of revenue for the music industry. In the United States in 2024, physical formats generated around US$2 billion (about A$3 billion), up 5% from the previous year.
Vinyl sales rose for the 18th straight year and made up almost three-quarters of all physical music revenue.
Where the strategy meets its limits
Versioning works, but it has limits. Even the most devoted fans reach a point where excitement fades and cost starts to matter.
Economists call this diminishing marginal utility. The first version of an album brings a lot of satisfaction. The fifth or sixth brings less. Eventually, another version does not add enough enjoyment to justify the price. Fans begin to feel they have had enough.
Some fans are already asking how many versions are too many. That reaction matters. Trust and goodwill function like capital. They take time to build, but they can also be spent. If fans begin to feel taken for granted, loyalty becomes harder to maintain and even harder to win back.
The Life of a Showgirl was a lesson in the monetisation of fan devotion. But every show has a final act. If fans start to feel like customers rather than part of the performance, the applause can fade quickly.
Paul Crosby 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.
By examining decades of research, we found that for most people who think they react to gluten, gluten itself is rarely the cause.
Symptoms but not coeliac
Coeliac disease is when the body’s immune system attacks itself when someone eats gluten, leading to inflammation and damage to the gut.
But people with gut or other symptoms after eating foods containing gluten can test negative for coeliac disease or wheat allergy. They are said to have non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.
We wanted to understand whether gluten itself, or other factors, truly cause their symptoms.
What we did and what we found
Our study combined more than 58 studies covering symptom changes and possible ways they could arise. These included studying the immune system, gut barrier, microbes in the gut, and psychological explanations.
Across studies, gluten-specific reactions were uncommon and, when they occurred, changes in symptoms were usually small. Many participants who believed they were “gluten sensitive” reacted equally – or more strongly – to a placebo.
One landmark trial looked at the role of fermentable carbohydrates (known as FODMAPs) in people who said they were sensitive to gluten (but didn’t have coeliac disease). When people ate a low-FODMAP diet – avoiding foods such as certain fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereals – their symptoms improved, even when gluten was reintroduced.
Another showed fructans – a type of FODMAP in wheat, onion, garlic and other foods – caused more bloating and discomfort than gluten itself.
This suggests most people who feel unwell after eating gluten are sensitive to something else. This could be FODMAPs such as fructans, or other wheat proteins. Another explanation could be that symptoms reflect a disorder in how the gut interacts with the brain, similar to irritable bowel syndrome.
Some people may be truly sensitive to gluten. However, current evidence suggests this is uncommon.
People expected symptoms
A consistent finding is how expecting to have symptoms profoundly shapes people’s symptoms.
Some who expected gluten to make them unwell developed identical discomfort when exposed to a placebo.
This nocebo effect – the negative counterpart of placebo – shows that belief and prior experience influence how the brain processes signals from the gut.
Brain-imaging research supports this, showing that expectation and emotion activate brain regions involved in pain and how we perceive threats. This can heighten sensitivity to normal gut sensations.
These are real physiological responses. What the evidence is telling us is that focusing attention on the gut, coupled with anxiety about symptoms or repeated negative experiences with food, has real effects. This can
sensitise how the gut interacts with the brain (known as the gut–brain axis) so normal digestive sensations are felt as pain or urgency.
Recognising this psychological contribution doesn’t mean symptoms are imagined. When the brain predicts a meal may cause harm, gut sensory pathways amplify every cramp or sensation of discomfort, creating genuine distress.
This helps explain why people remain convinced gluten is to blame even when blinded studies show otherwise. Symptoms are real, but the mechanism is often driven by expectation rather than gluten.
So what else could explain why some people feel better after going gluten-free? Such a change in the diet also reduces high-FODMAP foods and ultra-processed products, encourages mindful eating and offers a sense of control. All these can improve our wellbeing.
People also tend to eat more naturally gluten-free, nutrient-dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, which may further support gut health.
But for most who feel better gluten-free, gluten is unlikely to be the true problem.
There’s also a cost to going gluten-free unnecessarily. Gluten-free foods are, on average, 139% more expensive than standard ones. They are also often lower in fibre and key nutrients.
Unlike coeliac disease or a wheat allergy, non-coeliac gluten sensitivity has no biomarker – there’s no blood test or tissue marker that can confirm it.
Diagnosis instead relies on excluding other conditions and structured dietary testing.
Based on our review, we recommend clinicians:
rule out coeliac disease and wheat allergy first
optimise the quality of someone’s overall diet
trial a low-FODMAP diet if symptoms persist
only then, consider a four to six-week dietitian-supervised gluten-free trial, followed by a structured re-introduction of gluten-containing foods to see whether gluten truly causes symptoms.
This approach keeps restriction targeted and temporary, avoiding unnecessary long-term exclusion of gluten.
If gluten doesn’t explain someone’s symptoms, combining dietary guidance with psychological support often works best. That’s because expectation, stress and emotion influence our symptoms. Cognitive-behavioural or exposure-based therapies can reduce food-related fear and help people safely reintroduce foods they once avoided.
This integrated model moves beyond the simplistic “gluten is bad” narrative toward personalised, evidence-based gut–brain care.
Jessica Biesiekierski receives funding from NHMRC, Rome Foundation, Yakult and Australian Eggs. She is affiliated with the Nutrition Society of Australia and the Australiasian Neurogastroenterology & Motility Association.
