Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ansgar Wohlschlegel, Associate Professor in Economics, Swansea University

Universal basic income (UBI) has supporters across the political spectrum. The idea is that if every citizen received a payment from the state to cover their living costs, it this will allow them the freedom to live as they choose.

UBI could, for example, let people decide whether to work and let them live in dignity after AI has made their labour redundant. Everyone gets the transfer, so the bureaucratic costs of monitoring who is eligible are removed. At the same time, it seems like a just arrangement as taxpayers also receive their fair share. What’s not to like?

But voters who turned down a UBI pilot in a recent referendum in the German city of Hamburg apparently found something to dislike. A frequent argument against UBI is that recipients will decide to work less. This in turn will make labour (and consequently labour-intensive products) more expensive.

Indeed, a recent study on a UBI experiment has found that recipients of an unconditional monthly transfer of US$1,000 (£760) were significantly less likely to work. And if they did work, they put in fewer hours than a control group who received only US$50 per month.

Supporters of UBI may still argue that the increase in recipients’ wellbeing reported by research is worth these mild economic costs. However, the most striking costs of implementing UBI in practice are often overlooked. If a country implemented a UBI on a large scale, the money to be distributed would have to be raised via new taxes.

The Hamburg pilot would have required public funds to the tune of €50 million (£44 million). Paying out the monthly US$1,000 from the US study to all 55 million adults in the UK would require the government to raise an extra £500 billion per year to fund this scheme.

But why should we care about the public funds needed to finance a UBI scheme? After all, the whole point of UBI is that these funds are going to be equally distributed among everyone. So isn’t this just some rearranging of money from some rich people to the less well-off?

The simple answer is no. In practice, taxes are always based on some economic activity. If I earn more labour income, I will pay more income tax. If I spend more money at the grocer’s, I will pay more VAT. Income tax reduces my compensation for the leisure time I sacrificed and makes leisure artificially more attractive as compared to working.

All this will affect my decision on how much to work, and means that decision will differ from what I would do if there were no taxes. Economists call this a distortion.

Counting the costs

Due to the distortion that most taxes create, raising public funds imposes costs on society over and above the amount of the money to be raised. One could think of this as if the tax was water that the taxman taps through a leaking hose – some of it will be lost before it is collected.

For instance, economists estimate for the UK that this distortion imposes costs between a tenth and a quarter of an additional pound raised in a proportional increase in labour income tax.

To imagine what this means, suppose the UK wanted to replace the current universal credit system of welfare benefits with a UBI that pays every adult citizen the standard universal credit allowance of £400 per month.

Imagine you are a middle-income taxpayer whose monthly income tax bill would rise by £400 to finance this scheme. Although it might seem fair that you also receive the same transfer as everyone else, you are no better off than you were under the old system due to the tax increase.

Even worse, this extra tax makes working less attractive for you, as explained above. This distortion makes your labour supply choices less efficient. It implies that this imposes further costs of £40-£100 on society.

The total funds needed to pay £400 per month to every adult in the UK is £22 billion, compared to the £7.3 billion that the government currently spends on universal credit. This means (based on the example above) that the extra funds needed for a UBI of that size would impose a loss between £1.5 billion and £3.7 billion per month purely due to the distortion that raising these funds creates.

Pilots on UBI typically distribute money that was gained through a windfall such as a donation. Consequently, studies based on these events focus on the effect on the people receiving the UBI transfer. However, governments cannot rely on windfalls – and the costs of raising the funds needed to implement a large-scale UBI system cannot be ignored.

Economists aren’t all naysayers against redistribution. Redistribution is an important feature of a fair society. However, there’s a strong arugment that UBI is a bad way of achieving this.

Instead, governments should aim to avoid taxes that distort behaviour. A carefully designed means-tested benefits system can have the same redistributive effect as UBI – at less cost to the state.

Ansgar Wohlschlegel thanks Benjamin Anthony, MSc candidate at Swansea University, for research support and discussions during supervision meetings for his dissertation on universal basic income. Dr Wohlschlegel is on the Research Advisory Committee of the Vegan Society.

– ref. Voters in Hamburg have rejected universal basic income. Many economists would agree with them – https://theconversation.com/voters-in-hamburg-have-rejected-universal-basic-income-many-economists-would-agree-with-them-269327

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kristin Aune, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Coventry University

This year’s new university students are settling into life on campuses often notable for their diversity – and that includes in religion. Over 33,000 Buddhist students started university in the UK in 2023-24, for instance, alongside 769,220 Christian and 37,520 Sikh students.

Universities have a role to play in helping their students relate to others of different religious backgrounds, especially at a time of concern over antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

Our research has pinpointed some key things universities can do that make a positive difference. We can also highlight the things they shouldn’t do.

We surveyed 1,000 students twice, one year apart. We wanted to investigate how the university environment, or campus climate, influences how students engage with other religions and worldviews. To assess this we asked students how far they agreed with statements such as “there are people of other faiths or beliefs whom I admire”, “I try to build relationships with people who hold religious or non-religious beliefs that I disagree with”, and “my faith or beliefs are strengthened by relationships with those of diverse religious and non-religious backgrounds”.

We call students’ positive engagement with differences in religion and worldview their “pluralism orientation”.

Diversity, discussion and safety

We found that three key features of the campus climate affect how positively students feel about difference in religion and worldview.

First, students feel more positive about difference when they see a diversity of worldviews around them. When students think of their campus as a place inhabited by students of a wide range of religious and non-religious worldviews, this correlates with growth in pluralism orientation. Interestingly, this is less about actual diversity than perceived diversity. We tested an analysis of actual diversity, and it wasn’t significant. It’s what students perceive that makes a difference.

Second, students’ pluralism orientation grows when they have spaces to express their religion or worldview. Having spaces where students feel safe to be themselves, with like-minded others, leads them to have a more positive attitude to those who are different from them.

It might seem paradoxical. But feeling safe on campus, such as through having a chaplaincy space to pray at lunchtime, a student society for others of the same worldview, or a religious diet that’s catered for by the university cafeteria, gives students the resilience they need to engage well with different religions and worldviews.

Third, it’s important that students have critical conversations that help them challenge their own and others’ worldviews.

We call these “provocative encounters”. They are conversations that provoke students to question the stereotypes they hold about others, as well as their unexamined assumptions about their own beliefs. These happen both in the classroom and outside it, as students socialise or live in student accommodation. A Sikh student we interviewed talked about the dinners she cooked for her white Christian and non-religious flatmates. Eating together sparked conversations about their different faiths and cultures.

Striking a balance

We also found that aspects of the campus climate led to students’ pluralism orientation declining. One example is when they heard insensitive comments about their worldview. These might be from friends, peers or staff.

This is a tricky area, as one person’s insensitive comment is another person’s provocative encounter. The key point is that when students feel their worldviews are under significant threat, they’re less likely to engage with religiously different others in a positive way. Instead, they will close down, compartmentalise life and study, and miss out on the value university provides.

Healthy debate is vital to ensuring freedom of speech and helping students grow intellectually. But if students feel under threat, or that their religious views are seen as incompatible with student life, they’ll stop discussing their views, stop sharing their lives with anyone who thinks differently, and interfaith relations will be impaired.

It can help student relations when universities demonstrate that the campus is religiously diverse and represents a wide range of worldviews. This can be done through communications from universities to students, such as by posting “Happy Vaisakhi” or “Eid Mubarak” on social media to acknowledge religious festivals, or by advertising events, such as World Humanist Day.

Creating opportunities for students to have the provocative encounters they need to mature in their own views should be central to what universities do. Students are good at doing this in their own social spaces. But sometimes staff shy away from classroom discussions of students’ worldviews, perhaps out of fear of causing offence.

Some students we spoke to talked about feeling their views were “shut down” by lecturers who didn’t want to discuss religion. This needs to change. Provocative encounters should not turn into coercive or hate-filled shouting matches, but universities should nurture robust debate and dialogue about religion, politics and social relations.

Religion is global and ubiquitous. So it’s something universities should highlight – not avoid. Our findings show the need for institutional practices that promote pluralism. This can be done through providing supportive spaces for students to engage with worldview differences in ways that ensure safety and exploration, creating climates where students learn about religion.

Kristin Aune receives funding from Porticus.

Mathew Guest receives funding from Porticus and the Spalding Trust.

Matthew J. Mayhew receives funding from the Templeton Religions Trust, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Merrifield Family Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Merrifield Family Trust, Porticus, and the United States Department of Education.

– ref. How ‘campus climate’ affects students’ attitudes to people of different religions – https://theconversation.com/how-campus-climate-affects-students-attitudes-to-people-of-different-religions-266947

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of Westminster

The resignations of the BBC’s director general and director of news were shocking. Perhaps just as shocking is the US$1 billion legal threat the broadcaster now faces from US president Donald Trump.

The full story of what has happened at the BBC may take months (or years) to emerge. But it’s become evident that a combination of poor editorial judgement and political meddling by longstanding BBC critics contributed to Tim Davie and Deborah Turness’s departures.

That there were editorial mistakes is not in question. The BBC Panorama documentary on Trump spliced together two different parts of Trump’s notorious January 6 2021 speech on Capitol Hill, without making the edit clear.

The programme itself, which was broadcast a few days before the 2024 US presidential election, was arguably carefully balanced, containing an equal number of Trump supporters and detractors. Notably, it did not receive a single complaint at the time of transmission.

It was broadcast a week before the 2024 US presidential election – nearly four years after the speech itself. It wasn’t a programme that was likely to sway anyone’s views of the president, who was impeached for “incitement of insurrection” after January 6. He was later acquitted.

---

Read more:
Why has the BBC’s director general resigned and what could happen next?

---

Nevertheless, it was wrong to edit the speech in this way. That error was one of many allegations of institutional bias included in a dossier by Michael Prescott. Until June, Prescott – a former political editor for Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times and longtime PR professional – was an external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.

The report was leaked to the Telegraph, which splashed with selected excerpts alleging that the programme had been “doctored”, and listing other editorial problems that he claimed the BBC had failed to put right.

Political influence

The Telegraph, like much of the British press, has for decades waged an editorial war against the BBC. As a publicly funded, free-to-air broadcaster, which is by some distance the most trusted news provider in the UK, the BBC is a serious challenge to news publishers’ commercial interests. It also offends the political sensibilities of those opposed to public funding interventions more generally.

It was therefore only a matter of time before the Telegraph “exclusive” on BBC bias and the Panorama programme escalated, especially once noticed by the White House. As the crisis gathered steam, one of the many burning questions was: why on earth is the BBC not responding?

It has now been reported – including by the BBC’s media editor Katie Razzall and BBC presenter Nick Robinson – that an apology was drafted by the BBC news team and was ready to be signed off a week ago.

Unfortunately, the BBC board reportedly prevented Turness from putting out the apology, instead opting for a letter to MPs on the media select committee. What followed was a damaging vacuum, with the BBC unable to defend itself or acknowledge its error. As internal arguments raged, it simply issued a bland statement that it would respond in writing to the select committee.

Key to this institutional paralysis and the fallout that followed were the political appointees to the BBC board. When the BBC charter was renewed in 2016, the then Conservative government introduced a new governance structure. The BBC would be governed by a unitary board of 14, including a chair, and four part-time members, each representing one of the UK’s nations. These five were all government appointees.

That boardroom dissent was, it now appears, led by those political appointees, in particular Sir Robbie Gibb. Following time as a BBC executive in charge of political programmes, Gibb was Conservative prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications. He was subsequently involved in the founding of GB News, an avowedly right-wing news channel.

In the words of Prospect magazine and former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Gibb “does not pretend to be impartial on issues related to British politics or Israel”.

Gibb was appointed to the BBC board by Boris Johnson, reappointed by Rishi Sunak, and his term runs until 2028. It is therefore unsurprising that Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has called for Gibb’s immediate removal from the board and for an end to the practice of political appointments.

The Conversation has reached out to Gibb for comment.

In his letter to the chair of the media select committee on Monday, BBC chairman Samir Shah acknowledged the Panorama mistake and apologised for the news team’s “error of judgement”. He made it clear, however, that Prescott’s report “does not present a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken”.

Changes for the future

This peculiar arrangement of political appointments appears to have effectively given partisan appointees a veto over a crucial senior management decision, resulting in the forced departure of the BBC’s two most senior news executives.

While Davey is right that this anomaly needs to be rectified, the whole BBC governance structure is in need of an overhaul. At a time of increasing polarisation and social media misinformation, it is more important than ever that the BBC is protected from political interference.

The next BBC charter, starting from January 2028, offers a perfect opportunity to provide the kind of protective structure that the BBC requires. As part of a campaign to support public service broadcasting in the UK, the British Broadcasting Challenge – a group of academics and media professionals that includes myself and The Conversation’s CEO Chris Waiting – published a report last month calling for a “genuinely independent public appointments process for the chair and trustees, insulated from covert and overt government influence”.

This could be done through a dedicated body set up under the same terms as the wholly independent Press Recognition Panel, with no links to any political party or partisan campaigning group. Such a body could be responsible not just for non-executive BBC appointments (including its chair) but also for the chair of regulator Ofcom and the chair of Channel 4 – both currently in the gift of government.

The Labour government is about to kickstart a debate on the next BBC charter. Lisa Nandy, as the responsible secretary of state, has it in her hands to rectify some of the egregious damage inflicted on the BBC’s reputation by the political meddling of the last few days. Let’s hope that she rises to the challenge.

Steven Barnett is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the Advisory Board of the Charitable Journalism Project which campaigns for public interest journalism and on the board of Hacked Off which campaigns for a free and accountable press.

– ref. The political meddling that led to BBC crisis – and how to stop it in the future – https://theconversation.com/the-political-meddling-that-led-to-bbc-crisis-and-how-to-stop-it-in-the-future-269453

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Pleasance, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature, York St John University

The John Lewis Christmas advert has become as much a part of the festive season as tinsel and crackers. These adverts function as short films that don’t just sell products, they sell feelings. They work not through product placement but through sentiment, nostalgia and connection.

This year’s advert, which centres on a teenage boy buying his father a vinyl record, strikes a particularly resonant chord. The story invites us to think not only about family and festivity, but about how music and the technologies that carry it, allow us to travel in time and revisit the past, and to understand who we are.

At York St John University, our Music, Memory and Narrative Research Group has spent the past decade exploring exactly these questions. In Music, Memory and Memoir and Venue Stories, we gathered people’s stories of musical experience, not simply as nostalgic recollection, but as acts of constructing identity.

Through these projects, we discovered that when people tell stories about music, they are also telling stories about themselves: where they were and who they were and what this means for their older selves. These stories reveal how deeply music is woven into our sense of self and place. Music becomes, in effect, an emotional map of a person’s life.

Our current project, the forthcoming Turntable Stories, extends this exploration by focusing on the specific technologies of record players and vinyl. For those who grew up in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the turntable was more than a playback device.

The act of placing the needle on the record, of flipping the disc and studying the sleeve notes, shaped how we experienced music as both sound and an object. In collecting these stories, one of the most poignant themes to emerge has been intergenerational connection. Vinyl records link parents and children, not only through shared listening but through the stories and memories embedded in the grooves.

Back in time

This theme sits at the very heart of this year’s John Lewis advert. The boy’s decision to buy his father a vinyl record is about more than a gift – it’s about recognition. The moment the record begins to play, his father is transported back to his younger self, moving to the rhythm of a 1990s dance banger.

The music collapses time. The father’s younger self flickers momentarily in the present, and in that moment the son glimpses his parent anew: as a person with a past, the music a soundtrack of his father’s youth. The advert gives us, in miniature, a father-and-son biography told through music, fusing memory, identity and affection.

Our research helps to explain why such a story resonates so powerfully. Music psychologists and cultural theorists alike have suggested that songs act as “time machines” of emotion. They allow us to revisit versions of ourselves long after the circumstances of those memories have faded.

In the process, listening becomes a form of autobiography. As our Turntable Stories contributors tell us, the act of hearing an old record often feels like a dialogue across time. In one chapter, author Amy McCarthy beautifully reverses the dynamic of the John Lewis advert. Rather than a son giving to a father, Amy’s father gives her a box of his old vinyl records from the 1980s, including the Smiths.

Thinking about how my dad experienced listening to The Queen is Dead at 24, I realise I know very little about my parents’ lives before they had children. I wonder what my dad thought the first time he brought this record home.

During the pandemic, she listens to these records as a 24-year-old, the imaginative act of listening across time becoming a way of understanding him and herself. The records offer a shared space of reflection where two 24-year-olds, separated by nearly four decades, coexist for the duration of a song.

Other contributors in Turntable Stories describe similar experiences of time folding, where the sound of an old record creates a bridge between past and present. To play a record is to perform memory. It reactivates not only what was heard but where, when, and with whom it was first experienced.

Author Prasad Bidaye’s chapter expands this discussion, exploring how records circulate within diasporic communities. As part of a second-generation Indian family in Canada, Bidaye describes how vinyl became a means of continuity, carrying fragments of cultural identity from one continent to another, discovering “the ways music creates community, especially for families like mine who never fully fitted into the North American mainstream, nor the one of our ever-growing Desi diaspora”.

The power of vinyl

These accounts remind us that vinyl is more than nostalgia. Its material qualities shape how memory works; it is the weight of the record, the sleeve art, the beer stain on the inner sleeve, the crackles and jumps in familiar places.

Unlike digital formats, which render music as infinitely reproducible and placeless, vinyl situates music in time and space. It invites a slower, more embodied engagement. To hold a record is to hold a fragment of the past, a tangible link to a moment that can be reactivated through listening.

So when the John Lewis dad drops the needle on that record, the emotional force of the scene is not accidental. It draws upon a shared cultural understanding of how music, memory and materiality connect.

What we witness is clever marketing, but it is also a meditation on how music allows us to reconnect. In the end, the John Lewis Christmas advert succeeds because it mirrors a truth at the core of our research: that music is one of the most powerful narrative technologies we possess.

The grooves of a record don’t just hold sound waves, they carry emotional inscriptions. Each play is a small act of storytelling, one that spins us backwards and forwards through time.

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.

---

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

– ref. John Lewis Christmas advert reveals music as a time machine that creates connection – https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-christmas-advert-reveals-music-as-a-time-machine-that-creates-connection-269451

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marissa Martin, Analyst, Science and Emerging Technology Team, RAND Europe

More than 50 years after the last time humans walked on the Moon, China is working steadily towards landing its astronauts on the lunar surface.

On October 30, 2025, a spokesman for China’s crewed space programme said the country was “on track” to launch its lunar mission by 2030. So how does China plan to send astronauts to the Moon?

Among legislators and senior figures in the US space sector, China’s progress towards a crewed lunar mission has generated concern. Some fear damage to America’s status as a spacefaring nation if China lands before Nasa’s effort to return astronauts to the Moon.

The US space agency’s Artemis III mission should send the first American astronauts to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. It is scheduled to launch in 2027, but delays could bring it much closer to Beijing’s planned lunar flight.

The approaching date for China’s crewed Moon mission represents a remarkable trajectory for the country. Beijing launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, to space in 2003, aboard the Shenzhou 5 mission. China’s decades-long preparation for a lunar landing mirrors the milestones or “firsts” that characterised the space race between the US and Soviet Union in the 1960s and 70s.

China has moved from its first astronaut mission to launching a pair of astronauts, followed by a three person mission, which featured the first spacewalk for a Chinese astronaut. The country has since built a space station, Tiangong, in low Earth orbit. When the International Space Station is retired in 2030, it will leave China as the only country with a permanent outpost in Earth orbit.

On October 31, the Shenzhou 21 flight launched three crew members to the Tiangong orbital outpost. They took over operations from three other Chinese astronauts who have been on the space station since April 2025. Such crew rotations are now the norm for China and further demonstrate the country’s impressive capabilities as it prepares for the lunar mission.

However, the three departing astronauts’ return to Earth has been delayed after their capsule was hit by space debris. It’s a reminder that space is a hostile environment, however routine missions might appear to be.

The way that China has steadily built its presence in space highlights its technological prowess. Since the 1970s, China has developed more than 20 types of its Long March family of rockets – with 16 active today.

According to the state-run China Daily, Long March rockets have a 97% success rate. That falls just slightly under the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s 99.46% success rate.

With its reliable launchers, China has been able to accurately plan and build realistic timelines for its space milestones. In August this year, China conducted a ground test of their newest Long March 10 model.

This model is meant to launch astronauts to the Moon aboard the next-generation Mengzhou crew capsule in 2030. This will replace the Shenzhou spacecraft which has been the workhorse for crewed missions up until now.

The spacecraft consists of two different sections, or modules: a crew module and a service module. The crew module carries the astronauts. The service module provides power, propulsion and life support for the crew module. The modular design allows it to be tailored to meet the requirements of different missions.

Officials envisage two versions initially: one for use in Earth orbit to ferry astronauts to and from the Tiangong space station and a deep space version designed for lunar missions.

The crew module will be able to carry up to six astronauts compared to Shenzhou’s three. The first flight for the Mengzhou spacecraft, without crew, is scheduled for next year.

Mengzhou will also carry a lunar lander, called Lanyue. This name originates from a poem written by the late Chinese head of state Mao Zedong and translates as “embracing the Moon”. Lanyue consists of two segments, a landing stage and a propulsion stage.

The landing stage carries the crew. The propulsion stage carries fuel for the landing and separates during the final stages of touching down on the Moon. Lanyue will weigh nearly 26 tonnes and will accommodate two astronauts for the trip to the lunar surface.

Testing of the lunar lander has been underway since 2024. A robotic prototype
is scheduled for trials in 2027 and 2028 and an uncrewed Mengzhou-Lanyue mission is planned for 2028 or 2029, ahead of the full crewed mission to the lunar surface in 2030.

In 2024, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) also unveiled the spacesuits designed to be used by astronauts on the Moon. At the unveiling event in Chonqing, a technician wearing the suit demonstrated its range of motion by crouching, bending over and climbing steps.

China will build on its successful robotic lunar exploration programme, which has already delivered several major milestones. These include the Chang’e-6 mission’s delivery of the world’s first samples from the far side of the Moon in June 2024, via a robotic probe. This headline-grabbing breakthrough underscored China’s growing technological reach in space.

China’s path to the Moon is realistic, feasible, and most importantly on track. Their multi-decade history in space means that it not only has the necessary know-how, but it also has what many other nations do not: a clear vision and deep pockets.

China was the second highest spender on government space programmes in 2024, though its US$19 billion spend was a remarkable US$60 billion less than that spent by the US. Its missions, at least on the face of it, are also subject to far less disruption through changing political winds.

A crewed Chinese lunar landing will carry profound symbolism, especially if the country gets there before Nasa’s planned return mission. But such a feat would go beyond simple prestige: “The countries that get there first will write the rules of the road for what we can do on the Moon,” former Nasa Associate Administrator Mike Gold told a recent US Senate hearing.

A Chinese Moon landing would enable the country to start shaping the rules, the research agendas and the geopolitical landscape of this new era in space.

Marissa Martin 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. China is going to the Moon by 2030. Here’s what’s known about the mission – and why it matters – https://theconversation.com/china-is-going-to-the-moon-by-2030-heres-whats-known-about-the-mission-and-why-it-matters-269306

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sophie E Harrison, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science, Bangor University, Bangor University

Marathons have quickly become a popular pursuit. Hundreds of thousands of people submit ballots each year to run in some of the most prestigious races. In 2024, a record number of people crossed the finish line at some of the world’s biggest marathons. If you haven’t run a marathon yourself, chances are you know someone who has.

While we know that running has a range of health benefits, including reducing your risk of illness, research also shows that runners are more likely to catch a cold after completing a marathon.

Scientists used to think this was caused by reduced immune function following prolonged exercise, alongside increased exposure to infection due to the large crowds that marathons attract. But our latest research shows that a person’s anxiety, stress and mood may also play a role in whether they’re more vulnerable to getting ill or not after a long run or marathon.

In our first study, we asked 406 runners to complete questionnaires about their anxiety and mood in the month and days before running a marathon. We also asked them to provide saliva samples before and after the race.

The mouth is one of the main routes of access for the majority of viruses and bacteria that cause respiratory infections. The saliva samples allowed us to detect whether there were signs that the defence systems that normally stop these pathogens from entering the body (known as mucosal immunity) were suppressed.

We then tracked their common cold symptoms during the two weeks after their marathon.

Runners who were more anxious generally and those who experienced greater mood disturbance before the race (such as anger, frustration or tension) were more likely to experience a respiratory infection during the two weeks after the marathon. They also had a greater reduction in mucosal immunity.

In the second study, we asked 45 adults to run on a treadmill for an hour inside our laboratory. We asked them to complete questionnaires about their anxiety, stress and mood before they completed the run. We also measured their mucosal immunity in saliva before and after the run.

Men with higher anxiety levels, stress levels and greater mood disturbance were more likely to have a reduction in mucosal immunity after the run compared to men who had lower anxiety and stress levels before the run.

When examining the influence of stress, anxiety and mood on the immune response to one hour of running in women, findings were not as clear cut. There are many potential reasons for this – with factors such as hormone fluctuations, contraceptive use and differences in immune response depending on menstrual cycle phase all potentially having an influence. It will be important for future studies to examine this.

Together, the findings from our studies indicate that people who are more stressed or anxious before a run might be at greater risk of getting sick or catching a cold. This effect seems to apply not only to marathon-length runs, but to moderate-length runs of around an hour, too.

Immune function

One possible reason for this link between stress and immunity is due to the way stress changes how the immune system functions.

Both psychological and physical stressors affect the body through similar mechanisms – specifically through the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and sympathetic-medullary axis. These pathways link the nervous system to the brain and play a role in the stress response. High psychological stress or prolonged exercise can suppress these axes and reduce immune function.

So when runners experience both psychological and physical stress, the impacts on the immune system might be more significant than if they were just experiencing psychological or physical stress alone.

For example, both mucosal immunity and the immune system’s ability to respond to new foreign pathogens are reduced following prolonged running in people with higher anxiety and stress levels. This shows just how significant the effects of both psychological stress and physical stress are when it comes to immune function.

But before you cancel that 10k or withdraw your marathon ballot, it’s important to remember that being physically active still reduces your risk of a respiratory infection compared to not exercising at all.

Physical activity also reduces risk of many other severe health conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. Running can also be beneficial for reducing psychological stress and anxiety.

Instead, it’s important to prepare yourself well before your run by dealing with your stress and anxiety beforehand. Finding ways to reduce stress before a run should be treated the same way as you would ensure that you’re hydrated and fuelled well.

Some things you can do to reduce stress include relaxation exercises (such as breathwork, mindfulness or yoga) and getting a good night’s sleep.

It can also help to monitor stress, anxiety and mood so that you can identify when your stress or anxiety starts to increase – or when your mood begins to worsen. This will help you identify triggers and take proactive steps to reduce the impacts before things progress and become worse.

If you’re taking part in a race or marathon, some easy ways to reduce stress include:

• Planning your travel route in advance and allowing extra time to avoid rushing and stress
• If you can, try to arrive the night before the race to scope out your route
• Plan some “what if” or “if/then” strategies to be prepared to deal with anything unexpected on race day.

Of course, some of the best ways to avoid getting sick involve sticking to the tried and tested techniques – such as washing your hands properly (and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth), aim to get at least seven hours of sleep each night, eat a well-balanced diet, plan a recovery week into your training every second or third week and never train if you have an injury.

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

– ref. Stress and anxiety before a marathon can leave runners at risk of getting sick – new research – https://theconversation.com/stress-and-anxiety-before-a-marathon-can-leave-runners-at-risk-of-getting-sick-new-research-267770

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Tsagas, Senior Lecturer in Law, Cybercrime & AI Ethics, University of East London

A variety of websites now have processes designed to verify the ages of their users. These checks are carried out in several ways. For instance, AI can be used to analyse whether a photo of the person looks old enough for the age threshold on a website.

Asking for photo ID, such as a scan of a person’s driving licence or passport, is another method, along with asking for a verified credit card.

However, the amount of personal data involved in completing age verification comprises a veritable treasure trove for hackers.

Recent incidents have further highlighted the privacy and security concerns around age verification. In October 2025, Discord, a social media and chat platform popular among gamers was hacked, with an unspecified amount of data extracted.

However, the company said it had identified 70,000 users globally who potentially had their photo IDs exposed to the hackers. Discord said the data was accessed through a third-party service provider, although it remains unclear exactly how the breach occurred.

Age verification checks for the UK were brought in by Discord in order to comply with the Online Safety Act. The act required that websites allowing pornography and harmful content introduce age checks by July 25 2025.

In July 2025, the Tea app, which allows women to anonymously share information about the men they date for safety purposes, was also hacked. The app requires a photo selfie and photo ID in order to register. The breach reportedly revealed these photos along with content and messages.

Grave consequences

These breaches highlight issues of compliance with website privacy policies, security practices and general data protection regulations (GDPR) legislation.

When Discord brought in age verification, its support website said it did “not permanently store personal identity documents or your video selfies”. It added: “Images of your identity documents and ID match selfies are deleted directly after your age group is confirmed, and the video selfie used for facial age estimation never leaves your device.”

The consequences of such breaches can be grave. Leaked images of selfies and photo IDs can lead to users facing a range of harms, such as identity theft and fraud. The kind of data that’s hacked also lends itself to particularly sophisticated forms of these crimes, particularly when you consider the availability of deepfake technology and generative AI tools.

In fact, third-party providers have represented a consistent vulnerability to be relentlessly exploited by cybercriminals, as seen in recent breaches of the UK Ministry of Defence, the Co-op supermarket and M&S to name but a few.

The proliferation of age verification checks in recent years is partly a response to new legislation, such as France’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space law, the European Commission’s Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Acts in the UK and Australia. These all deem checks where users self-declare their age as unfit for purpose. Instead, they require websites to use more effective methods, such as photo ID matching, or credit card checks.

In a recent press release, the UK’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology attempted to address the cybersecurity and privacy concerns arising from such checks. The department’s guidance says that any measures implemented by platforms to confirm a user’s age must be done “without collecting or storing personal data, unless absolutely necessary”.

This reiterates rules from the EU’s GDPR legislation. Further guidance is offered by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office and the regulator, Ofcom.

However, the Tea and Discord breaches highlight regulators’ inability to prevent data retention or enforce data deletion in practice. This is particularly relevant when the third parties are located outside of the UK.

The incidents show that the implementation and use of age verification requires genuine review; further regulation of data handling with enforcement powers – beyond mere guidance. This is a necessity to safeguard privacy, especially when third-party companies are involved.

Mark Tsagas 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. Online age checking is creating a treasure trove of data for hackers – https://theconversation.com/online-age-checking-is-creating-a-treasure-trove-of-data-for-hackers-268586

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol

The leaked memo raising concerns about BBC impartiality was an early Christmas present for those who believe the UK’s biggest public service broadcaster is biased and needs to be reformed and cut down to size.

For some, the crisis the memo has sparked – which has led to the resignation of the BBC’s director general and its head of news and a threat from US president Donald Trump of a US$1 billion lawsuit – reflects a terrible failure of internal governance. For others, it represents a “coup” at Broadcasting House, launched by a faction within the BBC’s senior echelons seeking to push the tone of the broadcaster’s news coverage to the right.

But whatever the case may be, this crisis comes at a pivotal moment in the broadcaster’s history, as it approaches the once-a-decade renewal of its royal charter.

This arcane-sounding instrument is the BBC’s foundational document. It gives the corporation independence from politicians and civil servants on a day-to-day basis, while also ensuring a measure of accountability to the public which owns and funds it.

Crucially, the charter does not run in perpetuity. Typically, it needs to be renewed every ten years. This gives parliament an opportunity to hold the BBC to account for its performance over the previous decade, and to decide whether fundamental reform is needed. Conceivably, parliament could decide that no new charter should be granted, effectively ending the BBC’s existence as a public corporation.

Negotiating with the government over charter renewal is, unsurprisingly, a major preoccupation for BBC leaders in the years before each charter expires. The current charter ends on December 31 2027. As a result of Tim Davie’s resignation, the BBC now lacks an experienced director general at a crucial time. Some believe that this crisis therefore represents an existential threat to the BBC.

Historical precedent

Allegations of political bias – generally that the BBC leans to the left – have existed for almost as long as the corporation has. Back in the 1920s, the government’s response was to impose restrictions on the type, amount and timing of news and current affairs coverage the BBC could broadcast.

The BBC had a monopoly on broadcasting at the time, and lawmakers worried what it would mean for UK politics if the BBC started to editorialise in support of one or other of the main political parties. As one early regulator put it: “Once you let broadcasting into politics, you will never be able to keep politics out of broadcasting.”

Yet others recognised that radio, and later television, were key means to disseminate news. The ban on “controversial” broadcasting could not last. The BBC itself pressed for the legal restrictions to be relaxed, and governments gradually gave way. By the outbreak of the second world war the BBC had become a significant, and increasingly trusted, source of news for audiences across the UK and around the world. After the war, it massively expanded its journalistic capacity and became the major news operation that it is today.

Yet allegations that the BBC was politically biased never disappeared. They reached a peak when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. Thatcher believed that the BBC was unsympathetic to her political programme and to the Conservative party more generally. She particularly resented the corporation’s news coverage of the Falklands War, the Miners’ Strike, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Thatcher used two strategies to bring the BBC into line. First, she sought to install a more sympathetic senior leadership team at the BBC. Two prominent Conservative supporters were put on the BBC board, with Stuart Ward as chair (replaced after his untimely death by another Thatcher loyalist, Marmaduke Hussey) and William Rees-Mogg as vice chair.

One senior BBC executive thought that Rees-Mogg acted less like a vice-chair, and “more like the leader of the opposition”. A long-running dispute over a BBC Panorama documentary broadcast in 1984 on far-right tendencies within the Conservative party allowed senior board members to oust director general Alasdair Milne.

The new regime at the BBC also drove through reforms designed fundamentally to change the way that the BBC worked. The corporation moved away from its old public sector ways of operating, towards commercialisation and outsourcing, in a bid to reduce costs and increase revenues. These reforms were championed by a new director general recruited from the private sector, John Birt. The wider aim was to reduce the monopolistic power of the BBC and allow more powerful commercial competitors to emerge. Birt also imposed a much tighter set of editorial guidelines on BBC journalists.

Thatcher even raised the prospect of abolishing the licence fee which funded the BBC. However, Professor Alan Peacock, the economist commissioned by the government to report on how to fund the corporation, shied away from recommending this drastic step.

What’s next for the BBC?

The BBC ultimately survived the existential threats of the 1980s. The price was radical transformation, as the BBC became leaner and increasingly driven by the need to generate commercial revenues to support its public service activities.

Some think that the current controversy reflects the attempts of previous governments to stack the BBC board with supporters, as Thatcher once did. The political loyalties of the next director general, and of any new appointees to the board, will as a result be intensely scrutinised.

Will charter review also involve fundamental reform of the way the BBC is governed and funded? The licence fee has become a lightning rod for hostility to the corporation and the future of this financing system is certainly in doubt.

In the coming battle over charter renewal, the outcome of debates about how the BBC is governed, and how it is funded, will determine what sort of BBC can survive past 2027. The next director general will need to restore public trust in BBC news, satisfy politicians that rigorous impartiality can and will be guaranteed, and navigate the financial challenges that may arise from potential legal settlements or the end of the licence fee system.

That is, of course, assuming that the BBC is able to learn the lessons of its own history, and adapt to survive its latest existential crisis.

Simon Potter received funding from the Leverhulme Trust, 2016-2019, for a research project on the history of international broadcasting.

– ref. BBC has survived allegations of political bias before – but the latest crisis comes at a pivotal moment – https://theconversation.com/bbc-has-survived-allegations-of-political-bias-before-but-the-latest-crisis-comes-at-a-pivotal-moment-269464

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

The NHS is embarking on a trial that could cut prostate cancer diagnosis times from weeks to a single day. The initiative uses artificial intelligence to analyse MRI scans, potentially transforming care for men with the most commonly diagnosed cancer in England.

Up to 15 NHS hospitals, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, will pilot the system over the coming months, processing around 10,000 MRI scans. If successful, it could be rolled out nationally – though questions remain about accuracy, costs and whether faster diagnosis always means better outcomes.

The trial represents the NHS’s latest attempt to address both the emotional toll of prolonged uncertainty and the practical problem of late diagnoses that have long characterised prostate cancer care. For many men, the wait between initial suspicion and confirmed diagnosis is marked by weeks of anxiety, often while the disease progresses unchecked.

Currently, men suspected of having prostate cancer face a lengthy process. After a GP referral, it can take days or weeks to get an MRI scan, have it interpreted by a radiologist and undergo a follow-up biopsy if needed. A national shortage of radiologists has created significant bottlenecks, with some men waiting over a month for results.

The AI system changes this timeline. Once a man has had his MRI scan, the software analyses the images in minutes. Building on major researchstudies, it identifies abnormal areas and generates a probability score, mapping the exact location of suspicious lesions in the prostate.

When the software flags a scan as high-risk, it is immediately prioritised for review by a human radiologist, and the patient can be booked for a biopsy the same day. For lower-risk scans, men could receive reassuring news almost immediately rather than enduring weeks of anxious waiting.

The system aims to deliver what clinicians describe as accuracy and speed that rivals traditional methods. In some settings, AI analysis has matched or exceeded human radiologist performance, though real-world implementation will test whether laboratory results translate to busy NHS hospitals.

The case for speed

Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in England, with about one in eight men expected to be affected in their lifetime. The number of diagnoses has risen steadily, and too many men are still diagnosed when the disease is already advanced, making survival less likely and treatment more challenging.

Reducing diagnostic delay could save lives, though diagnosing some cancers earlier isn’t always better. Some slow-growing prostate cancers may never cause symptoms or shorten life, and early detection can lead to unnecessary treatment and its associated side effects. The challenge is distinguishing aggressive cancers that need urgent intervention from those that can be safely monitored.

There is also troubling variability in cancer diagnosis across the UK, with significant differences in waiting times and outcomes depending on where a patient lives. By making specialist analysis instantly available regardless of whether a hospital has a subspecialist radiologist on hand, every man, regardless of location, could theoretically benefit from the same standard of diagnostic assessment.

The system also promises to ease pressure on NHS teams. By handling initial MRI interpretation, the AI frees up radiologist time to focus on complex or urgent cases. This matters particularly given workforce pressures – the NHS has struggled to recruit and retain enough radiologists to meet growing demand.

As the NHS seeks to do more with strained resources, AI-driven tools have the potential to save time and money.

The AI won’t work alone

The technology is designed to work alongside clinicians rather than replace them. AI acts as a “second reader”, complementing radiologist expertise to ensure nothing is missed. The aim is faster and more reliable decisions – sparing men unnecessary biopsies for benign conditions while swiftly directing those with troubling signs to the right care.

This partnership approach is considered crucial. Although AI can process vast amounts of imaging data rapidly, human judgment remains essential for interpreting results in the context of each patient’s individual circumstances, medical history and symptoms. The technology is not intended to make final diagnostic decisions, but to augment clinical decision-making.

Recent research suggests that most men would welcome the invitation to take part in a national screening programme, countering assumptions about reluctance to engage with health checks. As confidence grows in AI-powered diagnostics, this could encourage more men to come forward for testing, potentially catching cancers earlier in those most at risk.

Whether the pilot delivers on its promise of reducing the time from referral to diagnosis – and whether speed translates to better outcomes – will become clearer over the coming months. The results will be closely watched by other health services considering similar approaches.

Justin Stebbing 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. NHS trials AI tool for faster prostate cancer diagnosis – https://theconversation.com/nhs-trials-ai-tool-for-faster-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-268932

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David C. Gaze, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, University of Westminster

For generations, medicine treated the heart and brain as separate domains. However, a new study suggests the two are more closely connected than we thought, especially as we age.

A 25-year study of nearly 6,000 adults found that subtle heart muscle damage in middle age predicts dementia risk decades later.

The research, known as the Whitehall study, tracked UK civil servants aged 45 to 69 and measured levels of a protein called “cardiac troponin I” in their blood. Troponin I appears in the blood when heart cells are damaged and is used to help diagnose heart attacks.

The protein is detected using a standard blood test. These tests have become more sensitive in recent years, so even very small amounts of troponin can now be detected – levels far below those seen in a heart attack – and these small changes can signal many other conditions.

In the Whitehall study, people with the highest levels of troponin I in midlife were 38% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia later in life than those with the lowest levels. These small increases don’t cause obvious symptoms, such as chest pain, but they suggest the heart is under strain even if a person feels fine.

Over 25 years, people with higher starting troponin levels were more likely to develop dementia than those with lower levels. For every doubling of troponin, dementia risk rose by 10%, even after considering age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and other cardiac risk factors.

Fifteen years into the study, MRI brain scans of 641 participants showed clear differences. Those who had the highest midlife troponin levels had smaller grey-matter volume and more shrinkage of the hippocampus, the area important for memory, compared with the low troponin group. This was similar to around three extra years of ageing in the brain.

Why does heart health in your 50s foretell brain decline decades later? The answer lies in circulation.

The brain relies on a constant, rich blood supply. If the heart pumps less efficiently, or if the arteries are stiff and narrow due to atherosclerosis, the brain’s delicate network of small vessels become starved of oxygen. This chronic low-grade damage can accelerate the processes that lead to dementia.

The same study found that people with higher midlife troponin levels also experienced faster declines in memory and reasoning over time. By age 90, their cognitive performance was equivalent to that of people two years older than those with lower troponin levels.

Matters of the heart

These results fit neatly with what is already known. The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia estimated that 17% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by improving cardiovascular health, through lowering blood pressure, managing cholesterol, staying active, and avoiding smoking and excess alcohol.

Likewise, an earlier analysis from the same Whitehall cohort showed that people with good cardiovascular health at age 50 were less likely to develop dementia 25 years later. Taken together, the message is simple: what’s good for the heart is good for the brain.

The two organs share a vascular network, and damage to one inevitably affects the other. Yet the long time lag uncovered by the Whitehall study suggests that troponin elevations seen up to 25 years before dementia onset, pathological processes linking the heart and brain start far earlier than first thought.

Raised troponin doesn’t guarantee dementia. Levels can fluctuate with age, kidney function or even after vigorous exercise. But as a population marker, troponin may identify people whose cardiovascular systems are already under stress while they still feel healthy.

The idea that a single blood test in middle age might one day help flag those at higher risk of cognitive decline is appealing, not as a diagnosis but as an early warning.

Medicine often divides the body into organ systems, each treated in isolation. This study reminds us that biology doesn’t respect those boundaries. A struggling heart doesn’t just affect circulation – it may, quietly and imperceptibly, change the brain’s future too.

David C. Gaze 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. Poor heart health in middle age linked to dementia in old age – new study – https://theconversation.com/poor-heart-health-in-middle-age-linked-to-dementia-in-old-age-new-study-269324