Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eleri Sian Jones, Lecturer in Sport Psychology, Bangor University

Today’s sporting landscape increasingly accepts that athleticism doesn’t end when motherhood begins. High-profile athletes such as middle-distance runner Faith Kipyegon and rugby player Abbie Ward have helped redefine what’s possible after giving birth.

But for most athletic mothers, the picture is far more complicated than the stories in the media suggest. Understanding those complexities is essential if women are to receive the support they need to thrive postpartum.

Triathlon, which is built on three disciplines demanding relentless training, adds an extra layer of challenge. Mastery isn’t achieved in one arena but across swimming, cycling and running. Each aspect carries its own technical and physical load.

For many women, this intersects with another critical moment. The peak performance age in triathlon often overlaps with the average age of childbirth. In the UK, most women have their first child at around 31. This is precisely when many endurance athletes are hitting their prime. When these timelines collide, returning to training and competition becomes especially complex.

Research my colleagues and I published earlier this year explored the postpartum experiences of ten triathlete mothers, from enthusiastic amateurs to world-class competitors. Their accounts reveal a largely invisible psychological journey, including shifting identities, guilt and resilience.

When expectations meet reality

Before giving birth, most of the women we interviewed expected their return to training to be straightforward. They thought they’d wait for medical clearance, rebuild gradually and carry on. But almost all described a divide between expectation and reality. Some assumed the “rules” of postpartum recovery wouldn’t apply to them, especially those used to high-performance environments.

The challenges weren’t just physical. Many were unprepared for how mentally draining early motherhood would be – the relentless tiredness, the emotional upheaval and the unpredictability of routines that made structured training challenging.

To cope, mothers became experts in efficiency, timing childcare handovers to the minute, squeezing in short but intense sessions and reshaping long-standing training habits to meet the new constraints of family life.

For many women in our study, triathlon wasn’t just a hobby, it was a core part of their identity. Motherhood enriched that identity but also complicated it. Some felt in limbo, unsure whether they could still call themselves athletes. Others found new meaning in training, seeing each hard session as evidence of strength gained rather than strength lost.

Motivation changed too. Some wanted to prove that athletic ambition doesn’t end with childbirth. Others leaned on training as an essential part of their wellbeing.

Every woman in our study encountered social pressures that shaped how they viewed their training. Guilt was ever-present – guilt for leaving children to train, guilt for not training enough, guilt for wanting something outside motherhood.

This was often tied to the “ethic of care”, which is the social expectation that mothers should put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. Even within supportive relationships, many felt that childcare defaults to them and that their training was something that required justification.

Social media added another layer. While some drew inspiration from athlete-mothers online, many also recognised how curated these stories were. Rarely did they mention childcare support, financial resources or physical setbacks. Several mothers told us they hid their own struggles to avoid appearing negative or ungrateful.

Nearly all of the women we spoke to described exercise as central to their mental wellbeing. Several felt that continuing to be physically active made them better mothers. But training could also threaten their wellbeing. Reduced training time, physical fatigue and pressure to bounce back led some to feel frustrated. A few questioned whether it was worth continuing if they could never reach their previous performance level.

What needs to change

These stories highlight an urgent need for change across the sporting landscape. Return-to-sport pathways must be holistic, recognising psychological, identity-based and social factors, not just physical clearance. Coaches need better training on postpartum realities. Understanding emotional shifts, fluctuating motivation and identity loss could dramatically improve support for returning mothers.

Partners and families also have a role. Shared responsibility and acknowledgement of the invisible labour of motherhood are essential for sustainable training. And public narratives need greater honesty. More realistic accounts of postpartum recovery, especially on social media, could help challenge comparison culture and reduce stigma.

Triathlete mothers are challenging outdated assumptions about what women can achieve after childbirth. Their stories aren’t about superhuman feats but about navigating ambition, care and physical recovery in tandem.

Returning to sport after childbirth isn’t a simple comeback. It’s a reshaping of identity and a shifting of priorities. It’s time for the systems around them to catch up and provide support that allows these women not only to return, but to thrive.

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

– ref. Why returning to sport after childbirth is tougher than it looks for triathlete mothers – https://theconversation.com/why-returning-to-sport-after-childbirth-is-tougher-than-it-looks-for-triathlete-mothers-271668

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frank Chouraqui, Senior University Lecturer in Philosophy, Leiden University

We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of truth. Trust in public institutions of knowledge (schools, legacy media, universities and experts) are at an all-time low, and blatant liars are drawing political support around the world. It seems we collectively have ceased to care about the truth.

The nervousness of democrats before this epistemic crisis is partly based on a widespread assumption that the idea of democracy depends on the value of truth. But even this assumption has a cost. Sadly, the democratic tendency to overemphasise the value of truth enters into conflict with other democratic demands. This leads us into contradictions that become fodder for the enemies of open societies.

Philosophers have presented several arguments for this connection between truth and democracy. The most widespread is also the crudest: democracy stands for all the things we like, and truth is one of them.

But there are more sophisticated ways to make the point. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues that a healthy democracy has a deliberative culture and deliberation requires “validity claims”. When we talk about politics, we must bother to try and make sure what we say is true.

Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist and a Nobel peace prize laureate, similarly argues that democracy needs truth because: “Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it – and all meaningful human endeavours – are dead.”

But do we really need truth to share a reality? In practice, most of our experiences of shared realities are not involved in truth. Think of myths, neighbourly feeling, or the sense of community, perhaps even religion and certainly the ultimate shared reality: culture itself. It would be hard to argue that we share in our community’s cultural reality because our culture is true or because we believe it to be true.

Some might argue that democracy is bound to truth because the truth is somehow neutral. Of course, populist suspicion of experts is often couched in democratic language: the value of truth is meant to support a so-called tyranny of experts.

But a key point here is that experts who aim to tell the truth, unlike liars or post-truth populists, have to be accountable. They are subject to the rules of truth. Democracy is therefore potentially more bound to accountability than it necessarily is to truth.

‘Meaningful human endeavour’

Be that as it may, the problem remains that, as Ressa and Habermas themselves recognise, the point of democracy is to promote “meaningful human endeavours”. Democracy is in the business of building a world in which humans can live humanly. And this, crucially, cannot be delivered by truth alone.

A truly human life demands not only knowledge of facts about reality, but also a subjective understanding of the world and of one’s place in it. We often forget that although they often go together, these two requirements can also conflict with each other. This is because truth deals in facts while meanings deal in interpretations.

Understanding, unlike knowledge, is a matter of how we look at the world, of our thinking habits and of cultural constructs – chiefly identities, values and institutions. These things fulfil their function of making us feel at home in the world without making any claim to truth.

All too often, the democratic spirit disqualifies these things as prejudice and superstition. The champions of democratic truth would do well to remember that the world democracy tries to build is a world of meaningful human endeavour, not just dry knowledge and fact-finding.

Current events have illustrated that overlooking this has dire political consequences. The insistence on truth and devaluation of meaning has led to the well-known modern depression often described as a sense of alienation – a breaking of social, historical and traditional bonds with each other and with ourselves.

This alienation has provided a feeding ground for populists and anti-democrats, who present themselves as a corrective to the crisis of meaning. It is not for nothing that the recurring themes of contemporary populism are those of belonging, tradition, identity, origins and nostalgia.

We are experiencing a crisis of truth – but we are also confronting a crisis of meaning. When we overemphasise truth over and against meaning, we foster a sense of alienation and deliver the public into the hands of its enemies. We might instead recall that a commitment to truth is only one, very partial condition for a truly human life, among many others, and build our democracies accordingly.

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

Frank Chouraqui is a non-active member of the Dutch political party Groenlinks-PvdA (center left)

– ref. Is democracy always about truth? Why we may need to loosen our views to heal our divisions – https://theconversation.com/is-democracy-always-about-truth-why-we-may-need-to-loosen-our-views-to-heal-our-divisions-269038

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation

In 2025, there was a lot of excellent art and culture to rave about.

Anora, a film about a sex worker who gets caught up in the world of a Russian oligarch’s son, won best picture at the Oscars. Nnena Kalu was the first disabled artist to win the coveted Turner Prize for her hypnotic multimedia work.

Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, a tale about the ongoing fallout of the Holocaust in 1980s Holland, won the Women’s Prize For Fiction – a book that was loved by the arts team.

Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection about the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, won the International Booker. Flesh by David Szalay, an exploration of modern masculinity, won the Booker.

We consulted with our academic experts to whittle down the year’s cultural offering, presenting you with lists of the best books, films and albums. But here are the novels, movies, dramas and music that really left a lasting impression on the Something Good team.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

I’ve learned a lot about Korean history – and the trauma that still lingers – through literature.

This year, I read Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, a haunting indictment of the US-backed Jeju 4.3 massacre, and Yeji Y. Ham’s The Invisible Hotel, which examines inherited trauma through the Korean ritual of “washing bones”.

The book that stayed with me most, though, was Susan Choi’s Booker-shortlisted Flashlight.

Set in motion by the disappearance of Serk – a Korean man raised in Japan – on a Japanese beach in 1978, the novel traces how his life led to that moment, and the emotional fallout for his interracial American family. Moving from pre-war Japan to 1980s America, Flashlight is both an intimate family drama and a sweeping meditation on identity, imperialism and the hidden currents of history.

It recalls, and is a great companion to, Min Jin Lee’s seminal novel Pachinko in its exploration of Korean life in Japan and the lasting scars of post-war East Asia. Drawing on the real North Korean abductions along Japan’s coast in the 1970s, Flashlight is, as our reviewer Sojin Lim writes, “an ambitious, emotionally resonant work that rewards close reading”.

Honourable mentions

The epic work of musical fusion that is Lux, by Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalia.

The film Friendship is a surreal, absurd and surprisingly deep mediation on male mental health.

Fundamentally is a darkly funny novel about an academic forced to test her theories while running a UN programme to de-radicalise Islamic State brides. Nussaibah Younis draws on a decade of real-world experience peace-building in the Middle East.

Naomi Joseph, Arts and Culture editor

One Battle After Another

I have a bad habit of finishing my popcorn before the trailers have even ended. But during One Battle After Another, I barely touched it. I couldn’t risk drowning out a second of the dialogue with my munching.

This is Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth film, and to my mind, his best yet. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob, a former member of the radical collective the French 75, now a permanently stoned single father. His daughter’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (an astounding performance by Teyana Taylor), once led the group. After her arrest, she became a “rat”, cutting a deal with Lockjaw (an unrecognisable Sean Penn), the collective’s sworn enemy.

Anderson reveals the French 75’s past in jagged flashes: migrant holding cell breaks at the Mexican border and bank robberies to fund their activism, interspersed with the present-day lives of the revolutionaries, now scattered and on the run.

Watching One Battle After Another felt like splashing my face with ice water again and again. And forget about just 2025 – the much-talked-about car chase is one of the most electrifying moments I’ve experienced in a cinema ever.

Honourable mentions

Watching Severance season two I lost more hours than I care to admit trawling Reddit for Lumon theories.

Love in Exile by Shon Faye is a whip-smart and deeply researched book exploring love and self-worth.

Mayhem by Lady Gaga is camp, dark and gloriously theatrical.

Anna Walker, Senior Arts and Culture Editor

Slow Horses

I have to confess I am bereft ever since season five of Slow Horses ended. I waited dutifully for the new episode to drop every week (how terribly old-school – but the delayed gratification just made it even more delicious).

Every episode is a joy, mixing top-thrills espionage with top laughs. From the snooty idiot toffs in charge of MI5, to the bored office bantz and casual gun-slinging at Slough House (an arms-length office for demoted loser spies), all the real-world grimness is leavened by the japes, sarcasm and arm-punching that go on.

Best of all is the obnoxious Jackson Lamb and his unparalleled insults, grubby mac and two-thirds-gone bottle of whisky. (Sir) Gary Oldman is just superb – you can practically smell his stinky socks from your telly – and he never overplays it. That Lamb tries so very hard to hide the fact that he does actually care about his little band of MI5 misfits, just adds a layer of unexpected tenderness. There had better be a season six.

Honourable mentions

I saw Christmas Comes to Moominvalley, a magical festive show, this week with an entranced 11-year-old.

Patti Smith’s Horses at 50 is an extraordinary album by a trailblazing genius.

I read our review, then immediately bought the book, then watched the film Train Dreams. It’s one of those dreamy, ambiguous, richly visual films you can’t get out of your head afterwards, but the book haunts you more.

Jane Wright, Arts and Culture Commissioning Editor

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

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– ref. A story about North Korea and Japan, an exhilarating political film and a funny spy thriller – the three best releases of 2025 – https://theconversation.com/a-story-about-north-korea-and-japan-an-exhilarating-political-film-and-a-funny-spy-thriller-the-three-best-releases-of-2025-272471

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth University

This year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas is an adaptation of E. F. Benson’s 1912 tale of vampiric horror and haunted sleep, The Room in the Tower.

The unnamed narrator begins the story by relating a recurring nightmare he has suffered for 15 years. In the dream, he has been invited to the mansion of the Stone family. The dream begins pleasantly, with card games, cigarettes and light conversation. But it always takes a turn when the family’s fearsome matriarch, Mrs Stone, tells the narrator that he’ll now be shown to his room for the night – the titular room in the tower. Upon entering the room, he is overwhelmed with abject horror, and wakes up before he sees the object of his fear.

While visiting a friend one stormy summer’s day, the narrator finds himself at the very home he saw at least once a month in his dreams. Sure enough, he’s led to the room in the tower, where he finds a hideous portrait of the demonic Mrs Stone. The portrait is removed from the room at his request, but leaves curious bloodstains on the narrator and his friend’s hands. During the night, however, the narrator’s sleep is once again disturbed by the nightmare made manifest.

Many ghost stories take place in bedrooms. One of the BBC’s first ghost stories adapted for television was M. R. James’ Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, which features a bumbling academic terrorised in his hotel room by a ghost quite literally wearing a bed sheet. Horror comes from a twisted reversal of what we expect to see and experience, and since the bed should be the place of utmost safety, it is ripe to be distorted into a place of existential dread.

Sleep, too, is a state of pure vulnerability. Those few breathless seconds after waking from a nightmare remind us just how defenceless we are. No tale of the supernatural from the early 20th century examines the way our troubled sleep can haunt us quite like The Room in the Tower.

Benson grew up with ghosts. His father, Edward Benson, was the archbishop of Canterbury. He was good friends with novelist Henry James, and allegedly told his son a spooky story he’d heard that James later turned into The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Benson’s mother was Mary Sidgwick, whose brother Henry was a founding member and first president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). The SPR’s aim was to investigate strange and paranormal phenomena, with particular interests in thought transference (or telepathy), visions and hallucinations, and ghosts and hauntings.

Begun in 1882, the SPR almost immediately set about collecting a massive amount of data under their Census of Hallucinations. They sent out a questionnaire to the public, and received thousands of responses over several years, some with fascinating anecdotes about being terrorised by ghosts and monsters in the middle of the night. The SPR compiled these in an issue of their periodical in 1894.

To read them in light of The Room of the Tower, it seems that Benson, too, knew what it feels like to be haunted by hallucinatory sleep disorders. Indeed, perhaps he even took direct influence from some of the anecdotes. The narrator in The Room in the Tower, being visited by a vampiric monster at the end of the story, describes himself as being “paralysed” – a typical sensation of sleep paralysis, which is often accompanied by a terrifying hallucination.

In Benson’s story, the narrator sees a “figure that leaned over the end of my bed”. In the SPR’s Census, a respondent referred to as Miss H. T. describes a horrifying visitation similar to the experience of Benson’s narrator. She wrote that she had seen the same figure three times, just as the narrator has the same nightmare over and over again. It would happen the same way every time; she would believe herself to be awake, and she would see a shimmer in the air that gradually solidified. Paralysed, she couldn’t move or scream to defend herself as the shape “took the form of mist and then developed into a dark veiled figure, which came nearer to me” and bent over the bed. Finally, the paralysis would lift, and the figure disappeared just as Miss H. T. threw her hands out towards it.

What both the Census and The Room in the Tower show is that ghosts don’t need to come from graveyards, gothic houses, or local legends. Often the most terrifying encounters, the experiences that prove most fruitful for ghost stories, are those our sleeping minds conjure up on the ethereal boundary between dreaming and waking.

The Room in the Tower will air on BBC One on Christmas Eve at 10pm, and will star Joanna Lumley as the terrifying Mrs Stone. For those of us prone to experience troubled sleep, it may well summon a nightmare of our own.

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

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

– ref. The Room in the Tower: the ‘real’ hautings that inspired this year’s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas adaptation – https://theconversation.com/the-room-in-the-tower-the-real-hautings-that-inspired-this-years-bbc-ghost-story-for-christmas-adaptation-272309

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Barry Smith, Director of the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Stuck in front of our screens all day, we often ignore our senses beyond sound and vision. And yet they are always at work. When we’re more alert we feel the rough and smooth surfaces of objects, the stiffness in our shoulders, the softness of bread.

In the morning, we may feel the tingle of toothpaste, hear and feel the running water in the shower, smell the shampoo, and later the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.

Aristotle told us there were five senses. But he also told us the world was made up of five elements and we no longer believe that. And modern research is showing we may actually have dozens of senses.

Almost all of our experience is multisensory. We don’t see, and hear, smell and touch in separate parcels. They occur simultaneously in a unified experience of the world around us and of ourselves.

What we feel affects what we see and what we see affects what we hear. Different odours in shampoo can affect how you perceive the texture of hair. The fragrance of rose makes hair seem silkier, for instance.

Odours in low-fat yogurts can make them feel richer and thicker on the palate without adding more emulsifiers. Perception of odours in the mouth, rising to the nasal passage, are modified by the viscosity of the liquids we consume.

My long-term collaborator, professor Charles Spence from the Crossmodal Laboratory in Oxford, told me his neuroscience colleagues believe there are anywhere between 22 and 33 senses.

These include proprioception, which enables us to know where our limbs are without looking at them. Our sense of balance draws on the vestibular system of ear canals as well as sight and proprioception.

Another example is interoception, by which we sense changes in our own bodies such as a slight increase in our heart rate and hunger. We also have a sense of agency when moving our limbs: a feeling that can go missing in stroke patients who sometimes even believe someone else is moving their arm.

There is the sense of ownership. Stroke patients sometimes feel their, for instance, arm is not their own even though they may still feel sensations in it.

Some of the traditional senses are combinations of several senses. Touch, for instance involves pain, temperature, itch and tactile sensations. When we taste something we are actually experiencing a combination of three senses: touch, smell and taste – or gustation – which combine to produce the flavours we perceive in food and drinks.

Gustation, covers sensations produced by receptors on the tongue that enable us to detect salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (savoury). What about mint, mango, melon, strawberry, raspberry?

We don’t have raspberry receptors on the tongue, nor is raspberry flavour some combination of sweet, sour and bitter. There is no taste arithmetic for fruit flavours.

We perceive them through the combined workings of the tongue and the nose. It is smell that contributes the lion’s share to what we call tasting.

This is not inhaling odours from the environment, though. Odour compounds are released as we chew or sip, travelling from the mouth to the nose though the nasal pharynx at the back of throat.

Touch plays its part too, binding tastes and smells together and fixing our preferences for runny or firm eggs, and the velvety, luxuriousness gooeyness of chocolate.

Sight is influenced by our vestibular system. When you are on board an aircraft on the ground, look down the cabin. Look again when you are in the climb.

It will “look” to you as though the front of the cabin is higher than you are, although optically, everything is in the same relation to you as it was on the ground. What you “see” is the combined effect of sight and your ear canals telling you that you are titling backwards.

The senses offer a rich seam of research and philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists work together at the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study.

In 2013, the centre launched its Rethinking the Senses project, directed by my colleague, the late Professor Sir Colin Blakemore. We discovered how modifying the sound of your own footsteps can make your body feel lighter or heavier.

We learned how audioguides in Tate Britain art museum that address the listener as if the model in a portrait was speaking enable visitors to remember more visual details of the painting. We discovered how aircraft noise interferes with our perception of taste and why you should always drink tomato juice on a plane.

While our perception of salt, sweet and sour is reduced in the presence of white noise, umami is not, and tomatoes, and tomato juice is rich in umami. This means the aircraft’s noise will taste enhance the savoury flavour.

At our latest interactive exhibition, Senses Unwrapped at Coal Drops Yard in London’s King’s Cross, people can discover for themselves how their senses work and why they don’t work as we think they do.

For example, the size-weight illusion is illustrated by a set of small, medium and large curling stones. People can lift each one and decide which is heaviest. The smallest one feels heaviest, but people can them place them on balancing scales and discover that they are all the same weight.

But there are always plenty of things around you to show how intricate your senses are, if you only pause for a moment to take it all in. So next time you walk outside or savour a meal, take a moment to appreciate how your senses are working together to help you feel all the sensations involved.

Barry Smith has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for his research on multisensory experience, which underpins the creation of this exhibition on the senses,

– ref. Humans could have as many as 33 senses – https://theconversation.com/humans-could-have-as-many-as-33-senses-270697

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alexander Sergeant, Lecturer in Digital Media Production, University of Westminster

Despite the reputation of It’s a Wonderful Life as a heartwarming Christmas classic, both its fans and detractors like to remind audiences that it’s no feel-good film. For at least two-thirds of its running time, it is essentially the story of a man’s suicide attempt.

We watch as kind-hearted George Bailey has his dreams quashed, his ambitions curtailed and his business ruined. Then it gets even worse. At about two hours in, we watch this poor, despairing man standing on a bridge outside his idyllic small town, crippled by anxiety, overwork, debt and depression, wishing that he had never been born.

The fact that It’s a Wonderful Life remains such a popular Christmas film despite this potentially upsetting subject matter highlights something worth remembering both at Christmas and any time of the year.

We live in an age where suicide remains the number one preventable cause of death for men under 50. Anxiety levels are rocketing among young people. The World Health Organization recently declared rising loneliness a global health threat. For increasing numbers of people, it is most certainly not feeling like a wonderful life.

Understandably, we want to do everything we can to help our fellow George Baileys. We try to think of ways to provide respite from suffering and distress, usually through some pleasant form of distraction. A well meaning boss might organise a mindfulness class on company time for their employees. A friend might take another friend to a wellness retreat.

All of this might work, temporarily at least. Finding space to relax and escape your worries is important, and cinema has provided that to so many people throughout its history. Yet, as many mental health experts will attest, distraction is not a long-term strategy for true wellbeing.

The more effective solution to suffering is to find a way of seeing the world differently. Replacing a negative narrative formed about life with a more positive one is not easily done, but it is possible. We might seek the advice of experts, consult privately with our friends or family, or read self-help books to assist us in this exercise. Or, we can go to the movies.

Alongside helping us to temporarily forget, cinema can help us to live. It’s a Wonderful Life is a great example of that.

As the film enters its final act, its most famous moment occurs. Just at the height of his despair, George is saved from jumping off the bridge by the arrival of a guardian angel named Clarence. At first, the angel distracts George, cracking a few jokes and forcing him to think about something other than his own perilous state. But then Clarence does something miraculous, showing George a vision of what the world would be like if he had never been born.

George is ultimately saved by this profound act of therapy. By showing a world without him, Clarence gives George not a magical solution to his problems, but an opportunity to see the events of his life differently.

Crucially, George gains three things as a result. He learns gratitude. By taking away his accomplishments and privileges, George is able to be reminded of them. He learns purpose. He sees that his life has not been a series of failings, but a series of actions that have helped to shape the world around him.

And he learns about the profound and meaningful connection he has with others around him. As the film’s climax emerges, we see those connections play out, and learn that life is troubling, messy, challenging, unfair, hard and unreliable. It is also utterly wonderful, exactly for that reason.

I’ve never liked “feel-good” films. I’m glad E.T. went home. I think Andy Dufresne shouldn’t have escaped from Shawshank prison. I don’t like it when Bill Murray stops reliving Groundhog Day. But I love It’s a Wonderful Life, not despite of its heartwarming capabilities but because of them.

For me, the film is not a distraction. It isn’t designed to make us feel better by distancing us from the hardship of life. Instead, it’s a profoundly therapeutic film about the hardship of life, one that remarkably finds a positive message that chimes with a lot of what we are finally beginning to learn about the basic principles that grounds human well-being.

Gratitude. Purpose. A sense of connection. These are things that will sustain us, at Christmas and throughout the years that follow. Cinema that profound isn’t just “feel-good”. It could be lifesaving.

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Alexander Sergeant 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. A Wonderful Life is not a ‘feel good’ Christmas film – but it is incredibly therapeutic – https://theconversation.com/a-wonderful-life-is-not-a-feel-good-christmas-film-but-it-is-incredibly-therapeutic-271806

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Damian Robinson, Director, Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Oxford

Beneath the shifting waters of Alexandria’s eastern harbour, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, lie the drowned remnants of a once-splendid city – ports, palaces and temples swallowed by the sea. Submerged by earthquakes and a rising sea level, these lost monuments have become the focus of survey and excavations by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, in conjunction with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Much of our recent work has centred around Antirhodos Island, revealing a temple to the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis which was renovated by Cleopatra VII, and the Timonium – a palace built by her partner, the Roman general Mark Antony.

The shipwrecks from the Royal Port of Antirhodos tell the story of how Alexandria changed from a place emphasising the great wealth and extravagance of the Ptolemaic dynasty to an economic powerhouse of the Roman world.

Our most recent excavations have revealed a shipwreck dating to the early Roman period. Buried beneath the sand were the remains of a thalamagos. This is a type of Nile yacht with a very colourful reputation in Roman literature as “party boats”. But the discovery of such a vessel in a busy commercial harbour was unusual. We asked ourselves: were we thinking about this wreck in the right way?

Discovering the ship

The wrecks in the Royal Port were discovered through a new high-resolution sonar survey of the seabed. This produced enormous quantities of data that was fed into a machine learning algorithm trained to recognise the “signatures” of shipwrecks. The initial results were promising, with excavations on targets generated by the algorithm revealing a small boat and a 30m-long merchant ship.

Together with a similar merchant ship found in the early years of the project, these finds illustrate the commercialisation of the Royal Port in the Roman period.

At the outset of the 2025 mission, we were confident the wreck was a merchant ship. But with each dive, new findings reshaped our understanding, gradually revealing a vessel unlike the one we thought we were investigating.

The wreck has many typical features of Roman Imperial shipbuilding, but the Greek graffiti carved into its planks suggests that it was built and repaired in Alexandria. And its shape is unlike the cargo vessels found elsewhere in the Royal Port. At around 28m long and 7m wide, the preserved remains indicated that we were working on a flat-bottomed boat with a relatively wide and boxy hull. The bow and stern were asymmetrical, giving sweeping curves to the extremities of the ship. But it lacked a mast step, suggesting that it was rowed. The wreck did not have the ideal shape or propulsion system of a seagoing freighter, making it something of a mystery.

In search of clues, we turned to the 500 or so fragments of Ptolemaic and Roman papyri (the material made from the pithy stem of a water plant that these civilisations used to write on) that document nautical subjects. About 200 of these name different types of river vessels, which were often referred to by the cargoes that they carried, from grain, wine and stone to manure and corpses.

One of the infrequently mentioned types of boat is the thalamagos or cabin boat. This kind of vessel is depicted on the Palestrina mosaic, a roughly contemporary landscape with the boat found in a temple outside Rome.

With its crescent shape and series of oars, the mosaic ship bears a striking similarity to the material remains from the Royal Port. While investigations into our wreck are just beginning, it seems that we have found a thalamegos – one of the infamous “party boats” of the Nile.

What happened on ancient party boats

The example on the Palestrina mosaic depicts a cabin boat being used to hunt hippopotami, a ritual associated with the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. The link between this type of boat and royalty is heard in the philosopher Seneca’s dismissal of them as “the plaything of kings”.

While the Ptolemaic royal family did have Nile yachts, and even supersized versions of them, we can assume that vessels the size of ours would have been a common sight on the river. Indeed, the ancient geographer Strabo wrote about Alexandrians holding feasts aboard cabin boats in shady spots on the waterways around the city. He described them as part of the revelry and licentious behaviour associated with the public festivals at the nearby town of Canopus.

These Roman authors, however, were likely playing up the culture of luxury and excess of their recently defeated enemy’s court and the “degenerate” lifestyles of its people. To simply think about our thalamagos purely as a party boat would be to cherry pick racy Roman stories and fall for their propaganda.

The mundane detail of the administrative papyri reveals that thalamagoi were more than luxurious yachts. They could carry cargo and were also used to transport officials up and down the river. Consequently, the discovery of a cabin boat in a bustling commercial port is not entirely unexpected.

There is, however, another possibility. Our boat was found close to the temple of Isis and may even have been destroyed in the same seismic event that caused the collapse of this sanctuary. Was it a luxurious temple barge used during festivals such as the celebration of the Navigation of Isis?

This celebrated the “opening of the sea” following the winter season was one of the festivals that got Strabo so worked up about the behaviour of its participants. It was actually a festival to ensure the protection of the grain fleet upon which Rome relied to feed its hungry urban population. Strabo chose to overemphasise aspects of the event to suit the anti-Ptolemaic prejudices of his Roman audience.

Detailed post-excavation analysis on this wreck is now underway. We want to understand exactly what our ship looked like and how it performed on the Nile. There is also more work to be done in the library with the ancient texts. What’s for sure is that we’re only just starting to get to know the secrets of this thalamagos.

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Damian Robinson receives funding from the Hilti Foundation.

Franck Goddio receives funding from the Hilti Foundation.

– ref. We discovered an ancient ‘party boat’ in the waters of Alexandria – here’s what might have happened on board – https://theconversation.com/we-discovered-an-ancient-party-boat-in-the-waters-of-alexandria-heres-what-might-have-happened-on-board-272133

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nessa Keddo, Senior Lecturer in Media, Diversity and Technology, King’s College London

Online adverts are sometimes so personal that they feel eerie. Even as a researcher in this area, I’m slightly startled when I get a message asking if my son still needs school shirts a few hours after browsing for clothes for my children.

Personal messaging is part of a strategy used by advertisers to build a more intense relationship with consumers. It often consists of pop-up adverts or follow-up emails reminding us of all the products we have looked at but not yet purchased.

This is a result of AI’s rapidly developing ability to automate the advertising content we are presented with. And that technology is only going to get more sophisticated.

OpenAI, for example, has hinted that advertising may soon be part of the company’s ChatGPT service (which now has 800 million weekly users). And this could really turbocharge the personal relationship with customers that big brands are desperate for.

ChatGPT already uses some advanced personalisation, making search recommendations based on a user’s search history, chats and other connected apps such as a calendar. So if you have a trip to Barcelona marked in your diary, it will provide you – unprompted – with recommendations of where to eat and what to do when you get there.

In October 2025, the company introduced ChatGPT Atlas, a search browser which can automate purchases. For instance, while you search for beach kit for your trip to Barcelona, it may ask: “Would you like me to create a pre-trip beach essentials list?” and then provide links to products for you to buy.

“Agent mode” takes this a step further. If a browser is open on the page of a swimsuit, a chat box will appear where you can ask specific questions. With the browser history saved, you can log back in and ask: “Can you find that swimsuit I was looking at last week and add it to the basket in a size 14?”

Another new feature (only in the US at the moment), “instant checkout”, is a partnership with Shopify and Etsy which allows users to browse and immediately purchase products without leaving the platform. Retailers pay a small fee on sales, which is how OpenAI monetises this service.

However, only around 2% of all ChatGPT searches are shopping-related, so other means of making money are necessary – which is where full-on incorporated advertising may come in.

One app, lots of ads?

OpenAI’s rapid growth requires heavy investment, and its chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, has said the company is “weighing up an ads model”, as well as recruiting advertising specialists from rivals Meta and Google.

But this will take some time to get right. Some ChatGPT users have already been critical of a shopping feature which they said made them feel like they were being sold to. Clearly a re-design is being considered, as the feature was temporarily removed in December 2025.

So there will continue to be experimentation into how AI can be part of what marketers call the “consumer journey” – the process customers go through before they end up buying something.

Some consumers prefer to use customer reviews and their own research or experience. Others appreciate AI recommendations, but studies suggest that overall, some sense of autonomy is essential for people to truly consider themselves happy customers. It has also been shown that audiences dislike aggressive “retargeting”, where they are continuously bombarded with the same adverts.

So the option of ChatGPT automatically providing product recommendations, summaries and even purchasing items on our behalf might seem very tempting to big brands. But most consumers will still prefer a sense of agency when it comes to spending their money.

This may be why advertisers will work on new ways to blur the lines – where internet search results are blended with undeclared brand messaging and product recommendations. This has long been the case on Chinese platforms such as WeChat, which includes e-commerce, gaming, messaging, calling and social networking – but with advertising at its core.

In fact, platforms in the west seem far behind their East Asian counterparts, where users can do most of their day-to-day tasks using just one app. In the future, a similarly centralised approach may be inevitable elsewhere – as will subliminal advertising, with the huge potential for data collection that a single multi-functional app can provide.

Ultimately, transparency will be minimal and advertising will be more difficult to recognise, which could be hard on vulnerable users – and not the kind of ethically responsible AI that many are hoping for.

Nessa Keddo has previously received funding from the AHRC.

– ref. How ChatGPT could change the face of advertising, without you even knowing about it – https://theconversation.com/how-chatgpt-could-change-the-face-of-advertising-without-you-even-knowing-about-it-270330

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Hough, Lecturer Sport & Exercise Physiology , University of Westminster

The festive season has a reputation for undoing good habits such as eating well and exercising. Normal routines disappear, days become less structured and exercise habits can fade. The solution to staying active is not more willpower, but smarter planning. Research shows that simple, practical strategies can help people stay active through Christmas and into the new year.

At this time of year, articles often focus on the calorie content of festive foods and drinks, alongside advice on how to “burn off” festive indulgence. However, guilt-based motivation is ineffective in the long term.

You are more likely to stick with exercise when it feels rewarding rather than forced. This is known as intrinsic motivation, which comes from enjoying the activity itself, rather than exercising due to pressure, guilt or external rewards. Behaviour change research shows that physical activity habits are more likely to last when they are easy to start and driven by intrinsic motivation.

For example, someone is more likely to maintain a running habit because it improves their mood or helps them decompress, rather than because they are trying to burn a specific number of calories.

To support intrinsic motivation, it helps to choose activities you enjoy or are curious about and avoid rigid rules. Exercises should match your current ability and offer a sense of progress, such as improvements in strength, technique or stamina. Clear, achievable progress increases enjoyment and commitment. Training with others, joining group classes or sharing progress can also help sustain motivation.

Most people do not stop exercising over Christmas because they lose motivation. Instead, their routines change. Late nights, travel, disrupted schedules, limited gym access or exercising in unfamiliar places create practical barriers. In many cases, exercise habits fade because of logistics, not a lack of desire.

In behavioural science, anything that makes a behaviour harder to start than it needs to be is described as friction. Even small obstacles can increase the effort, time or mental energy required to begin, making people more likely to delay or abandon the behaviour.

Friction is often subtle. Forgetting login details for a fitness app, not knowing what workout to do, or wondering whether there is enough time for a session to be “worth it” can be enough to derail exercise plans. Each small obstacle adds hesitation and increases the chance of giving up.

Reducing friction makes it far easier to maintain fitness over Christmas. This can be done by preparing in advance, simplifying choices and making the first step as easy as possible.

Prepare and plan ahead

Preparing ahead of time reduces delays and procrastination. Keep a gym bag packed or lay out workout clothes the night before. If you train with music or podcasts, have them ready. Create a default route for outdoor activities such as running or cycling so you don’t have to decide where to go.

When routines change, the type of exercise often needs to change too. Many people turn to social media or YouTube for ideas, but the sheer number of options can lead to decision fatigue, where repeated choices drain mental energy and make it more likely that exercise is postponed altogether.

To avoid this, bookmark a small number of go-to workouts on your phone and label them by duration and location. For example:

15 minutes | Bodyweight cardio | Home – Star jumps x 20 Mountain climbers x 20 Step-ups x 20 High skips x 20 Rest 1 minute Repeat for five rounds

Choose workouts for the week in advance where possible. Use a fixed rotation of three or four sessions, such as full-body strength, a 30-minute run, then full-body strength again. Limiting options reduces decision fatigue and makes starting easier.

Simplify

When time is limited or the gym is busy, effective workouts can still be completed in under 30 minutes using time-efficient training methods.

1. Circuits

In the gym, instead of resting between sets on one machine, move between exercises that target different muscle groups. For example, rotate between chest press, seated row, leg press, shoulder press, lat pulldown and a core exercise. If equipment is unavailable, substitute with a similar movement using dumbbells or bodyweight.

2. Supersets

Pair exercises that work different muscle groups and perform them back to back, such as a dumbbell chest press followed by a chest-supported row.

3. Drop sets

After completing a set, reduce the weight by 20% to 30% and continue until fatigue. Repeat for two to four drops.

4. Myo reps

Choose a weight you can lift for 12 to 15 repetitions. After the first set, rest briefly, then perform mini sets of three to five repetitions, rest for 20 seconds. Keep going until until you can’t complete 3 reps.

Drop sets and myo reps are effective for muscle growth. For maximum strength goals, traditional or cluster sets are more appropriate.

Metabolic conditioning

Metabolic conditioning involves short bursts of high-intensity exercise that challenge both muscles and the cardiovascular system. It is particularly useful when time is limited.

1. Circuit training

Plan a circuit of several exercises. Perform each exercise for 30 to 60 seconds then move to the next exercise. Rest for one to two minutes after completing all the exercises and repeat for multiple rounds.

2. Every minute on the minute circuits

At the start of each minute, complete a set number of repetitions and rest for the remainder of the minute before starting the next exercise.

3. Tabata intervals

Alternate 20 seconds of intense exercise with ten seconds of rest. Perform a total of eight intervals before resting for two to three minutes. Repeat this for two to three minutes series.

4. As many reps as possible

Select four or five exercises with target reps for each exercise. Set a timer for 12 to 20 minutes and cycle through the exercises continuously, aiming to complete as many rounds as possible.

Even during the disruption of the festive season, it is possible to stay active. Skipping exercise entirely until January risks losing fitness and breaking momentum. Evidence-based strategies that reduce friction and make exercise easy to start are far more effective than relying on willpower. By keeping workouts simple and accessible, you can maintain fitness through Christmas without having to start again in the new year.

Paul Hough 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. Staying fit over Christmas using science-backed methods – https://theconversation.com/staying-fit-over-christmas-using-science-backed-methods-271720

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amy Brown, Professor of Child Public Health, Swansea University

Are you a parent to one child? Or are you considering having a child in the future, and wondering about what your family size should be?

Parents of only children are frequently asked when they are having another child, as if there is an expectation that they will be planning another – even though around 45% of families in the UK now have one child.

In research for my new book on only children, I asked over 3,000 parents who had one child about their reasons behind that decision. For some, having one child was a conscious choice. Parents enjoyed the lifestyle and balance that having one child brought, or wanted to limit their family for environmental reasons. Sometimes a difficult or distant relationship with their own sibling drove this choice.

Others, however, had wanted more than one child. Circumstances meant that they couldn’t, or had decided not to, have another baby.

These reasons were often deeply personal. Some parents had difficulties conceiving. Some had experienced miscarriage, baby loss or bereavement, meaning that their only child was the only child here. Others had such a difficult pregnancy or traumatic birth that they could not physically or psychologically experience another pregnancy.

The cost of living also affected decisions. Many had made the decision that they couldn’t afford another child due to childcare, housing costs or job insecurity. Some had separated from the child’s other parent or been bereaved. Health problems, for parents or their child, were common, including disability and serious illnesses such as cancer. Health problems, for parents or their child, were common, including disability and serious illnesses such as cancer.

Some mothers talked about how difficult they found the postnatal period, lack of sleep, feeding difficulties and loneliness, resulting in postnatal depression. Some wanted another baby but their partner did not, or parents had experienced significant disagreements in how to parent and care for a child.

Explaining and feeling that you need to justify reasons to family, friends or even strangers who feel entitled to ask, can clearly be distressing. What’s more, parents of one child are likely to have heard that only children are at risk of being lonely, spoiled or being unable to make friends.

This is simply not true. These myths about one child families (a term many prefer to “only child”) have been around for a long time, but the evidence just isn’t there.

Research on only children

The few studies that have shown differences for outcomes for children with or without siblings are often small, flawed, or conducted at a time when there was a lot of social and political pressure to have more children.

More recent research shows very little difference at all. Only children do not have poorer social skills. They are not more selfish or narcissistic. They aren’t less happy in life. They may spend more time alone but are not more likely to describe themselves as lonely, which is an important distinction.

In fact, only children often have slightly higher scores on self-esteem, emotional stability and contentment. Research shows small advantages in creativity, leadership, and curiosity. There is also a small advantage in motivation to achieve.

What affects childhood

Children’s lives are affected by so many different factors. Where there is an absence of a sibling, a different, positive opportunity often fills it. Only children have more time to spend connecting with other family members of friends, more time for hobbies, more family money for activities that they prefer, or simply more focused time alone. Life might look different, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse.

Every child is made up of their own unique strengths and personality that is a culmination of genetics, home life and more. There are far more influential differences between only children’s lives than the shared experience of not having a sibling.

One aspect people often worry about is whether only children will feel the strain in the future when looking after ageing parents. Although some people find great support in their siblings, one study found that adult children may leave care or support for older parents to their siblings.

Although some only children do wish they had a brother or sister, it’s also important to remember that having a sibling isn’t a guarantee they will get along or support each other. Children who feel bullied by their siblings have an increased risk of depression and self-harm. When we wish for more siblings we are wishing for a good relationship and supportive person, and that isn’t always the case.

Research does however show a difference in people’s views of only children. One study asked people to rate characteristics of a hypothetical only child versus one with siblings. People were more likely to believe that only children were higher in narcissistic tendencies. They then tested this belief, finding no difference in narcissism scores between people who had a sibling or not. This is an excellent example of how people believe in the stereotype of the narcissistic selfish only child, but it’s not actually true.

These stereotypes are harmful and importantly not based in reality. Families increasingly come in all different shapes and make ups. Let’s focus on how we make sure more children can feel loved, connected and secure, rather than how many siblings they have.

Amy Brown receives funding from UKRI. She is a volunteer for the charity the Human Milk Foundation.

– ref. There are countless reasons families have only one child – and they won’t grow up to be selfish or spoiled – https://theconversation.com/there-are-countless-reasons-families-have-only-one-child-and-they-wont-grow-up-to-be-selfish-or-spoiled-271142