Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mary Jane Spiller, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, University of East London

I have a form of time–space synaesthesia, so the new year arrives for me in a very physical way. I feel myself move around the year, almost like I’m travelling along a structure. December sits low and to my left; January lifts and slides forward. The transition has a weight to it, as though the calendar itself shifts in space.

Synaesthesia is a perceptual condition where one sense triggers an experience in another sense. For some people, sounds trigger colours and shapes, or words might have tastes.

For others, like me, sequences such as months of the year or days of the week have precise places in space around our bodies. It is most commonly a developmental condition, which means that “synaesthetes” have experienced the world this way for as long as they remember. These synaesthetic experiences happen automatically, and are generally consistent over time for the person. Today is in front of me, tomorrow is to my left, and yesterday is to my right. If I ever woke up to find time had moved somewhere else, I would feel confused and lost.

For me, this makes the start of the new year feel like a physical transition, a time for new beginnings, as we move around the bend of time, leaving the old year behind me.

Like most people, between Christmas and new year, I completely lose track of what day it is — the whole week feels like a strange, timeless blur. Because of my time-space synaesthesia, this disorientation is amplified for me. The usual mental map I rely on to anchor dates and days seems scrambled, leaving me feeling unmoored.

As a cognitive psychologist, I have spent the last 20 years researching synaesthesia. I am fascinated by the way our minds help us experience the world around us, and particularly in the way we all experience the world differently. As well as helping to understand and document the synaesthetic experience itself, I am also interested in understanding the impact synaesthesia might have on other aspects of our lives.

Time-space synaesthesia provides an excellent way to explore how the brain organises time. For example, one of the benefits of these mental time-space calendars is an association with a better memory for historical events or important life events such as anniversaries or birthdays.

People with time-space synaesthesia may have cognitive advantages because their spatial mapping of time can serve as a powerful mnemonic aid. Research shows we learn skills like calendar calculation – such as knowing that December 1 1937 fell on a Wednesday, while December 1 2037 will be a Monday – faster and more accurately than people without synaesthesia. So our unique mental representations may help to boost memory and pattern recognition. This helps us understand the benefit of time being represented spatially and visually, rather than simply linearly.

Time-space synaesthetes also tend to have enhanced memory and attention for ordered information, such as dates and sequences, which may contribute to our strong performance in tasks involving time organisation, such as planning.

These mental timelines are so ingrained that they can override external cues — a phenomenon called the spatial Stroop effect. These automatic mappings can subtly influence decision-making when speed and spatial judgement matter.

It seems that it is not simply the effect of synaesthesia that drives these cognitive advantages. Research has highlighted differences between the brains of synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. These differences may also give rise to wider cognitive differences unrelated to the sensory experiences. For example, time-space synaesthetes not only have good memories for times and dates, but also other aspects of memory too such as word lists, pictures or colours. Additionally, a 2015 study suggested time-space synaesthesia may be linked with more vivid mental pictures.

The question that has always fascinated me is, why doesn’t everyone have
synaesthesia? We now know that synaesthesia has a genetic basis, and around 4% of the population experience a form of it. If you experience it, mostly likely a few others in your family will too, although it may be a different combination of senses involved.

Our environment and learning also plays a part in its development. The influence of cultural norms can often be seen in the spatial layout of synaesthetes’ mental calendars. For synaesthetes with a language that is read from left to right for example, the passage of time will also often move from left to right, or vice versa for those who read right to left. My own shape for the year is a kind of oval shape, with January at one end and August at the other, and I can’t help but feel that my experience of growing up in the UK with the September starting school year influenced it.

All in your brain

Brain imaging research is also helping us understand what is happening in the brain during synaesthetic experiences. For example, people with synaesthesia have brains that are wired for extra connectivity. Brain regions that normally handle separate senses (like colour, sound and spatial processing) talk to each other more. Imaging studies show pathways in central nervous system tissue linking perception with higher-level thinking, which helps explain why synaesthesia feels so seamless. Brain imaging research published in 2020 adds another layer: synaesthetes use spatial-processing regions when working with numbers, showing that our brains literally integrate space and sequence.

Time is associated with space within many cultures, with people who grew up in the UK, Europe and US tending to think of the future in front of them and the past behind. Time-space synaesthesia helps us to remember that even within different cultures, there will be differences in the way we experience the “movement” of time, as scientists think synaesthesia exists in all cultures. The new year is a reminder that time is not only something we measure but also something we inhabit. And our personal journeys through time may have strikingly diverse landscapes.

Mary Jane Spiller 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. How my time-space synaesthesia affects how I experience and ‘feel’ the new year – https://theconversation.com/how-my-time-space-synaesthesia-affects-how-i-experience-and-feel-the-new-year-272465

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lianganzi Wang, PhD Candidate, Sound and Music Computing, Queen Mary University of London

I was walking in Alice Holt Forest on England’s Surrey-Hampshire border when I stopped to listen. Despite there being nobody nearby, a slow “breathing” sound filled my ears. This was not a trick. An artwork was turning live forest data into sound, making the air feel like it was gently rising and falling. In that moment, “climate change” stopped being abstract and became something I could hear.

The piece I could hear is called Dendrophone by composer Peter Batchelor. It maps sunlight, humidity and carbon dioxide readings into a multichannel sound field in real time. Wetter air sounds “stickier”, drier air “crisper”, bright light introduces a fine hiss. When CO₂ uptake is high, you can hear longer, steadier “breaths”.

This is part of a soundscape installation called Sensing the Forest that has been produced by a cross‑disciplinary team at Queen Mary University of London, De Montfort University and the public agencies, Forest Research and Forestry England. The aim is straightforward: to help people make sense of forests and climate through listening, not screens.

Dendrophone captures three easy‑to‑tell textures from live data. Humidity is heard as a “dry/wet” sound; sunlight energy as a subtle hiss (more juddery when activity is high, smoother when calm); and carbon dioxide uptake as “breathing” that becomes longer and steadier when uptake is higher, shorter and more uneven when uptake is lower.

Played over several speakers around the site in the woods, these sounds blend with birds, wind and visitors’ footsteps so people can hear the forest’s state as it unfolds in real time.

The team also installed two DIY, solar‑powered off‑grid audio streamers (essentially tiny radio stations) that broadcast the forest online and auto‑record at sunrise, midday, sunset and the midpoint between sunset and the next sunrise. Recordings are uploaded and stored online, building a long‑term installation soundscape dataset.

Sounds can also include species cues, the noises that various animals make. Tree Museum, by sound artist Ed Chivers, is another installation in the same exhibition that uses artificial woodpecker drumming to draw attention to the lesser-spotted woodpecker (an endangered species down in numbers by 91% since 1967 in the UK). If a sound disappears, what else do we lose?

The mix of the soundscape changes constantly. Listen at different times and you’ll notice the balance of natural sound, human sound and installation sound shifting. Weeks of rain make everything feel “wetter”; bright days bring out the hiss; busy weekends sound busier. Each is a clue to what the forest is experiencing at that moment.

In the forest, there’s a survey QR code to capture instant reactions, plus a guided walk to make “how to listen, what to notice” clear for everyone.

Sensing the Forest doesn’t claim to fix the climate crisis, but it offers something valuable – a sensory language for data and a not‑so‑distant threat. In a time of ecological strain, technology here is less about control and more about translation; a way to foster ecological empathy.

Next time you step into a forest, pause and listen. You might hear not just the present, but the future we share.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Lianganzi Wang is pursuing a PhD at the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), Queen Mary University of London, supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).

– ref. How to listen to a forest – https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-a-forest-268225

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

As Christmas fades into memory, many of us turn our attention to the new year and the promise of a fresh start. For millions of people, that means joining a gym in the hope of exercising more and improving their health.

In the UK alone, more than ten million adults hold gym memberships, and January attendance is around 28% higher than in December as people act on new year resolutions.

And it is a good idea. In the depths of January, physical activity can give you an endorphin kick, caused by the release of natural brain chemicals that improve mood and reduce stress. Regular exercise is also linked to a lower risk of serious conditions including cancer, heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes and many more.

The problem is not exercise itself. It is how people start.

The body adapts to exercise gradually. When it is pushed beyond what it is ready for, the risk of injury rises sharply, and pain does not always appear straight away.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (Doms) is the stiffness and tenderness that typically shows up one to three days after unfamiliar or intense exercise. It occurs because exercise causes tiny microscopic damage to muscle fibres, especially when you are returning after a long break or trying a new type of movement.

Doms is common and usually harmless, but it is also a useful warning sign. It signals that your body needs time to adapt before you increase intensity, weight or volume.

Shoulder injuries

Some parts of the body are more prone to injury than others. Joints that move a lot or carry heavy loads are particularly vulnerable.

The shoulder is often top of the list for gym-related injuries. Its wide range of movement is ideal for daily tasks but risky under load. Anatomically, the shoulder connects the arm to the torso and is not designed to carry heavy weight.

When people suddenly start lifting weights or doing pull-ups, strain often falls on the rotator cuff, a group of tendons that stabilise the joint. These tendons are easily irritated, slow to heal and rarely get a rest, as most exercises for the arms, chest, back and even some leg exercises place load through the shoulder.

Knees and lower back

The knees are generally well adapted to everyday movement, but long periods of inactivity weaken the muscles that support the joint. When those muscles waste away, the knee can move in ways it should not. Starting intense exercise on top of this instability raises the risk of serious injury, including damage to the cruciate ligaments.

Going too heavy in weight, too early is a common trigger. Squats, lunges and leg extensions are frequent culprits.

The lower back is another major injury hotspot. Even before exercise begins, the spine already carries a high load from body weight and posture alone. The pelvis links the upper and lower body, so weakness or instability in the legs can transfer strain upwards to the back. Add heavy lifting or poor technique, and the spine can quickly become overloaded.

Read more:
Pelvic floor dysfunction: what every woman should know

Lower back pain from muscle strain is so common among weightlifters that it has its own label, “weightlifter’s back”. Exercises most often linked to back injuries include sit-ups, squats and deadlifts, burpees and movements that involve twisting while holding weight.

In gyms, free weights are more likely than machines to cause fractures, dislocations and soft tissue injuries. The group most likely to get hurt is not complete beginners, but young men under 41 who already have several months of training and exercise regularly. Confidence, it seems, can be as risky as inexperience.

Home discomforts

Injuries are not limited to gyms. In the US, more than 70,000 emergency department visits over a four-year period were linked to home exercise equipment. Treadmills accounted for 66% of these injuries. Older women were more likely to sustain serious head injuries and were 14 times more likely to require hospital admission.

Among adults over 25, the most common injuries were strains and sprains affecting the legs. For those over 65, stationary bikes were a more frequent source of harm.

Some equipment carries rarer but severe risks. Abdominal rollers have been linked to spinal cord injuries. For people over 40, especially those returning to exercise after years of inactivity, there is also a small but real risk of a heart attack. This is why gradual progression matters.

The good news is that safe options do exist. Many apps and online programmes are designed to build fitness gradually, including for people with existing health conditions. Any movement is better than none, as sedentary behaviour carries its own serious risks.

Adam Taylor 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. New year, new gym injuries – https://theconversation.com/new-year-new-gym-injuries-271412

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annemieke Apergis-Schoute, Lecturer in Psychology, Queen Mary University of London

Most of us have experienced it: a deadline approaches, the task is perfectly doable, yet instead of starting, we suddenly feel compelled to tidy a drawer or reorganise the apps on our phone. Procrastination feels irrational from the outside but gripping from the inside. Although it’s often framed as a failure of discipline, research shows it is far more linked to how flexibly (or inflexibly) our brains respond to discomfort and uncertainty.

In other words, procrastination isn’t a time-management problem – it’s an emotion-regulation problem. People don’t delay because they lack planning skills; they delay because their brains want to escape a difficult internal state. When I ask students why they procrastinate, their answers are strikingly consistent: “I don’t know where to start”, “I feel lost”, “I get anxious”, “I’m overwhelmed”. Not one says, “I don’t care” – procrastination usually comes from caring too much.

Crucially, avoidance prevents the brain from discovering something important: that starting is often rewarding. Even a tiny first step can release dopamine. This helps motivation increase after we begin – not before. But when we avoid the task, we never experience that reward signal, so the task continues to feel just as threatening the next day.

Cognitive flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to update expectations when circumstances change, shift strategy and break out of unhelpful patterns. It’s a basic building block of learning: the brain predicts, receives new information and adjusts accordingly.

Imagine waiting for a bus that’s stuck in traffic. A flexible thinker quickly switches to a normally longer but now faster tube route. An inflexible thinker keeps waiting – not because they don’t know the alternative, but because switching feels effortful or “wrong”, and their mind stays locked on the original plan.

I see this pattern clearly in my research on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While very different from procrastination, both involve difficulty shifting out of an initial prediction, especially when uncertainty or the risk of mistakes is involved. When the brain can’t update, it gets fixated.

Students today face a perfect storm. Phones and social media shrink attention spans. Perfectionism magnifies self-criticism. And anxiety is at record levels across UK universities. Together, these factors weaken the brain’s ability to update and adapt – exactly the ability needed to begin a challenging task.

Neuroscientifically, procrastination is a tug-of-war between two systems. One is the threat system, activated when a task feels uncertain, effortful or evaluative. This gives rise to thoughts such as “What if this is terrible?”, “What if I fail?”. The other is the reward system, activated by anything that feels good right now (scrolling, tidying, messaging with friends).

When the threat system dominates, it can be impossible to get started. For rigid thinkers, in particular, the brain struggles to update its initial prediction that the task is threatening or overwhelming. Avoidance becomes the only option – and that tiny hit of relief teaches the brain to repeat it.

Indeed, research shows procrastination is essentially a short-term mood repair: a quick escape from discomfort that creates more stress later.

A generation ago, procrastinating required creativity. You had to find distractions. Today, they find you. Social media is engineered to trigger dopamine-driven novelty seeking. For someone already anxious or overloaded, the phone becomes an ever-present escape hatch. As one student put it: “It is easier not to do the work.” Not because the work doesn’t matter – but because the alternative offers instant reward.

Flexibility can be trained

So how can we avoid procrastination? It isn’t about becoming more disciplined, but rather strengthening the brain systems that allow you to begin. Here are a few ways to do that.

1. Shrink the task. Break the work into concrete, manageable units – write a title, draft a few bullet points, or read one page. This reduces the perceived threat of a large, “amorphous” task and gives the brain small, frequent dopamine rewards for each step completed.

2. Use micro-shifts. Micro-shifts are tiny initiation actions – opening the document, placing your notes on the desk. They don’t shrink the task itself, but they interrupt the “stuck” state and gently nudge the brain into motion.

3. Shift perspective. Reframe the task as if advising someone else: “What would I realistically tell a friend in this situation?” This softens rigid, threat-focused thinking and helps the brain generate alternative, more flexible interpretations.

4. Build emotional tolerance. The discomfort of starting peaks quickly, then drops. Reminding yourself of that can make avoidance less compelling.

5. Make rewards immediate. Pair the task with something enjoyable – music, a warm drink, or working alongside others – so that the first step feels less punishing and more rewarding.

Taken together, these strategies strengthen the form of cognitive flexibility most relevant to procrastination – the ability to shift out of avoidance and into action when a task feels uncomfortable. Other forms of cognitive flexibility (such as rule-switching or motor flexibility) can be improved too, but through different kinds of training.

If you recognise yourself in the students describing feeling “anxious”, “overwhelmed” or “not sure where to start”, it doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It means your brain is struggling to shift state. Procrastination tells us far less about willpower than about how our minds cope with uncertainty and discomfort.

And the encouraging part is that procrastination isn’t fixed. Flexibility improves with practice. Every time you take even a tiny step – opening the file, writing the first line – you’re not just progressing on the task. You’re showing your brain that starting is doable, survivable and often rewarding.

Over time, those small shifts accumulate into something powerful: a mind that moves toward what matters, rather than away from discomfort.

Annemieke Apergis-Schoute received funding from The Wellcome Trust for previous OCD research.

– ref. Why procrastination isn’t laziness – it’s rigid thinking that your brain can unlearn – https://theconversation.com/why-procrastination-isnt-laziness-its-rigid-thinking-that-your-brain-can-unlearn-270838

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Rodway, Lecturer in Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth University

The Celtic languages spoken today – namely Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton – all descend from Celtic languages once spoken across Britain and Ireland in antiquity. While the modern languages are well documented from the early middle ages onwards, what came before is far more mysterious.

Only fragments of earlier evidence survive, leaving major questions about where these ancient Celtic languages came from and how they connect not only to each other, but also to related languages once spoken on the European mainland, such as Gaulish.

Much of this early linguistic story unfolded before widespread writing reached the islands. Before the Romans arrived, Britain was barely known to the literate cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Only a handful of early travellers recorded anything about the languages spoken there.

So, we have only sparse clues as to the languages spoken in Britain, notably a handful of plausibly Celtic place names recorded by Greek voyagers such as Pytheas of Marseilles, who visited Britain around 325BC.

Once Britain became part of the Roman empire, everything changed. We have plenty of written material from and about Roman Britain. It is almost all in Latin, the official language of the empire. But scattered within it are Celtic place names and ethnic names, along with a small number of inscriptions in Celtic itself.

Of huge interest to scholars are the handful of inscriptions in Celtic from Bath and Uley in Gloucestershire. These small traces may offer rare glimpses of the languages spoken by local people at the time.

Ireland and its settlers

Ireland presents a different picture. As it was never incorporated into the Roman empire, written evidence appears later. Not until the middle of the second century AD do we get a substantial amount of data in the form of the place and ethnic names recorded by the Greek geographer Ptolemy.

Literacy, like Christianity, arrived late in Ireland through contact with Roman or sub-Roman Britain. The earliest written material from Ireland dates from the early fifth century, or perhaps a bit earlier. It mostly consists of inscriptions on stone in the Ogham alphabet which, despite its exotic appearance, seems to have developed from a cipher based on the Roman alphabet.

Irish settlers later took Ogham to parts of western Wales and Cornwall. Though short and simple, these inscriptions are vital because they capture an early stage of Irish at the edge of the historical record.

Together, these fragments form the puzzle pieces through which we try to understand how Celtic languages spread across Britain and Ireland. But the Celticity of Britain and Ireland has been questioned in recent decades.

Some archaeologists have argued that the people of Britain and Ireland may never have been “Celtic” in the same sense as communities on the continent. They have pointed to differences in material culture and a lack of clear evidence for major prehistoric migrations.

They also noted that classical authors from the Greek geographer and historian Strabo (born around 64BC) onwards contrasted Britain and Celtica on the continent. This led a rejection of the mid-20th century orthodoxy of hordes of warlike Celts from central Europe pouring in to these islands during the iron age.

It has been supposed that Indo-European may have arrived early in the islands and developed there into Celtic, or that Celtic languages may have spread from the continent without much movement of people. The argument even spilled into popular commentary, most recently in a polemical and misleading book by journalist Simon Jenkins in 2022, who, contrary to all evidence, cast doubt on whether the Celts, as a people, even existed at all.

Reshaping the debate

But recent research is challenging those assumptions. Recent studies of ancient DNA have revealed waves of migration into Britain from regions that are now in France during the late bronze age and to a lesser extent, the iron age. These movements of people were not visible to archaeologists.

Of course, you cannot guess someone’s language from their genes. But these migrations provide a plausible vehicle by which Celtic speech may have arrived in Britain. And a recent study has shown that Pytheas, in the fourth century BC, placed Celts in Britain.

Read more:
Ireland, Wales and the scholar who helped unravel their Celtic connections

When taken together, these findings may support the old idea that Celtic languages were brought to the islands by migrating Celts after all. It’s certainly an exciting time to be studying ancient Celtic in Britain and Ireland.

This is the backdrop to new research underway by myself and colleagues at Aberystwyth University. We are gathering every surviving piece of evidence for early Celtic languages in Britain and Ireland before around 500AD. We shall compile the first comprehensive dictionary of the ancient Celtic languages of these islands.

Bringing all of this material together will help answer longstanding questions about how the Celtic languages are related and how they fit into the wider Celtic world of ancient Europe.

We will never recover the full picture of the Celtic languages spoken in Britain and Ireland more than 2000 years ago. But by piecing together the clues left behind, we can begin to understand the linguistic landscape that shaped the Celtic languages still spoken today.

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, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Simon Rodway receives funding from Leverhulme Foundation. He is affiliated with Plaid Cymru.

– ref. How Celtic languages spread across Britain and Ireland: why we need to reconsider the early story – https://theconversation.com/how-celtic-languages-spread-across-britain-and-ireland-why-we-need-to-reconsider-the-early-story-271338

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stuart Walker, Research Fellow in Sustainabilty Assessment, University of Sheffield

It’s a Wednesday evening in a town hall in Penryn in Cornwall, and my friend Pete and I are volunteering at our local repair cafe. We set up tables, get our tools ready, put up a sign outside and wait for people to arrive.

By the time we pack up three hours later, along with two other volunteers we have helped repair three vacuum cleaners, a pair of jeans, a laptop, a desk lamp, a clock and an electric skateboard, as well as replacing many buttons, zips, fuses, and bulbs. Some products have returned home with their owners, either to come back next time to fit a part we’ve ordered, or sadly because their design means we can’t repair them.

Repair cafes are often busy in the weeks post-Christmas when people discover their gifts are either broken or damaged in the post and they want to save them. One report found nearly half of toys received at Christmas will be broken and end up in landfill by spring.

The repair cafe movement tries to reduce the effect of this on the environment by encouraging citizens to repair rather than replace items. We regularly repair coffee machines, headphones, torches and fit new screens for computers.

The Repair Cafe International Foundation currently identifies 3,823 cafes globally, including 446 in the UK and 550 in Germany, and a total of 2,500 across the EU.

The “right to repair law”, officially the European Directive on Repair, was passed in April 2024, and is helping to drive the movement to repair more everyday items across Europe, by forcing manufacturers to do more to help consumers to get items repaired. A recent study found that around 35 million tonnes of goods were discarded across Europe, when they could have been repaired.

The value of the movement is in showing people they don’t need to replace products, and helping them learn how to fix themselves. Even if a volunteer ultimately does the fixing, sitting opposite someone as they realise their Christmas gift is no longer broken is a really positive experience. It can get quite emotional.

We always start with the simplest repair: cleaning. Often a proper clean either fixes a problem or reveals the cause. Then perhaps we’ll teach someone how to successfully glue parts back together using clamps to hold things in place, or to use a cotton bud to clean up after leaking batteries.

With complex products or electronics, I teach people to methodically work through the product, removing parts and testing with our tools as they go, until we can identify exactly which part isn’t working and why, making what seemed an overwhelming problem into a simple repair. We can then either fix, replace or remove any broken parts.

Recently I helped someone find the cause of their broken drill (a small wire disconnected from a light on the top). I showed them how to solder, and after a few practice runs on some spare parts they reattached the wire and repaired the tool. As they put it, “fixed drills and brand new skills”.

Repairs takes time. If you try to do it quickly, the repairer just ends up doing it all. That is less rewarding for most people. It makes the owner feel like they have to pay, changes the dynamic, and doesn’t teach anyone anything.

I’ve had lovely experiences repairing heirlooms and jewellery for elderly ladies, and toys for kids. Volunteer repairers don’t charge for their time, so a repair is either free or done for a small donation.

What we repair

Vacuum cleaners are one of the most common items brought in, and consistently in the top three items reported by 80 of the UK’s 446 repair cafes. Repairing a machine can delay the emission of the 70kg CO₂ related to the materials and manufacture of a new one.

Fixing things can be expensive if you take objects into commercial repairers. A 2021 study in Norway found the “consistently low price of new products” to be the most common barrier to commercial repair. If things are cheap, it can feel easier to just buy something new, and we don’t always think about the waste we are creating.

Repairs save people money, and by slowing the constant influx of new purchases it reduces global emissions as well, and we hope, over time, we are helping the wider public learn some of these forgotten skills too.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Stuart Walker works for the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures. He is affiliated with Hope Valley Climate Action and the Repair Cafe Movement.

– ref. I volunteer in a repair cafe: we can help you learn to fix your broken Christmas gift – https://theconversation.com/i-volunteer-in-a-repair-cafe-we-can-help-you-learn-to-fix-your-broken-christmas-gift-271459

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Yarrow, Professor of Anthropology, Durham University

“Let’s face it, we’re just not that into emotions,” Brian tells me with a smile talking with other volunteers at a heritage steam railway in northern England. They are discussing a popular TV restoration show. Allan grimaces, parodying the presenter: “He’s always jumping around, shoving the microphone in their faces, like, ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Does this make you sad?’ You can almost see his glee when people actually cry!”

This parody of emotional disclosure captures something important about the values of a group of men I’ve spent years working alongside.

In public discourse and mental health campaigns, emotional expression is often viewed as essential to mental health. This weighs particularly heavily on discussions of older men. Research routinely links male emotional “repression” to “traditional” and even “toxic” forms of masculinity, connecting an inability to talk about feelings to social isolation and self-alienation.

My research suggests that this narrative misses something crucial about how connection actually works. To research this subject, I spent over four years working closely with volunteers at a heritage railway, observing their everyday interactions, and talking to them about their friendships.

The volunteers – mostly retired men from former industrial towns in north-east England – explicitly reject the modern emphasis on emotional disclosure. Through the work of restoring railways, they are preserving a form of friendship which is elsewhere increasingly rare – one characterised by the more “old-fashioned” value of taciturnity, where the discussion of emotions is not expected or required.

Rather than dismiss their approach as “repression”, I argue in a forthcoming paper that we need to appreciate how people can develop intimate and caring relationships, without naming emotions.

Feeling without emotion

Among the men I came to know, I was initially struck by the lack of talk about their personal lives. Even when facing difficult circumstances including health problems and bereavement, they rarely spoke about their feelings. Instead, they talked about shared interests in railways, and the work that they engaged in. It took me a long time to realise that this did not reflect a lack of care.

Working together on restoration projects creates what they call “camaraderie”, a form of friendship that is grounded in doing things together, rather than in the reflection on interior feelings that has become an increasing expectation of modern intimacy.

Restoring and repairing railway infrastructure involves physically demanding manual labour. They work alongside one another in close proximity for long periods of time.

As we struggled with a particularly stubborn toilet seat installation in a cramped coach cubicle, one volunteer wryly observed in a bantering tone that is common: “There’s more than one way of killing a pig and stuffing its arse with butter!” He later explained: “If the job’s too hard, there’s a simpler way of doing it.” Friendships are forged through the process of facing and overcoming these practical problems. Shared tasks create a sense of shared purpose.

Over the decades, this creates a distinctive form of intimacy. Closeness is brought about through shared activities and interests, not personal revelation.

Paradoxically, the more intimate these relationships are, the harsher the “banter” can be. And the closer their friendships, the more they feel comfortable in sharing silence. It may seem that this is uncaring, but in fact the reverse is true.

Connecting through silence

Ron was a taciturn former merchant navy worker in his 70s. As a regular volunteer for over a decade, concern quickly grew among the group when he stopped appearing. When he finally returned several weeks later, he was visibly breathless and struggled to walk. Nobody asked directly what was wrong. Instead, they offered tea and made jokes.

After he left, discussion made it clear that this was deliberate. His friends had observed him carefully and were worried. Their silence was a thoughtful response to his own: a way of giving him the “normality” that he seemed to want.

I observed these patterns of interaction in many other situations. What might look like emotional inarticulacy is actually a deliberate ethic of care. These men aren’t unable to discuss feelings. But often they choose not to, viewing these silences as a way to respect the autonomy and privacy of others. In this respect, my research builds on ethnographic accounts, for example of firefighters and male hospital porters that draw attention to forms of intimacy and connection that do not depend on the discussion of personal feelings and emotions.

Though men at the railway rarely discuss feelings, these are understood by other means. The way someone looks, or the manner in which they work can be telling. In response, they show care through deeds: checking in via phone calls, offering practical help, creating space for silent companionship without pressure to explain or disclose – “just being there”, as they sometimes say.

Mental health services and support initiatives increasingly target men with messages about “opening up”. Indeed, my research doesn’t suggest emotional expression is wrong or unhelpful. However, either/or framings, which view connection in opposition to repression miss important aspects of the many ways people sustain intimacy and support.

My work with railway enthusiasts shows how it is possible to create meaningful support networks that offer genuine intimacy and connection, without explicit discussion of emotions. Connection and care take multiple forms. For some, silence shared between friends isn’t an absence of feeling, just a different way of sharing it.

Tom Yarrow 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. Heritage railway volunteers show how deep friendships can be formed without discussing emotions – https://theconversation.com/heritage-railway-volunteers-show-how-deep-friendships-can-be-formed-without-discussing-emotions-266435

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Janina Steinmetz, Professor in Marketing, Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London

Every year, many of us bravely announce our resolutions for the new year. A glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve might add to our confidence in our ability to do better in the coming year and save more, spend less, eat better, work out more, or binge-watch less.

But most of our resolutions fail. Even within the first weeks after New Year’s Eve, the majority of people have given up on them. Yet, not all tales of failure are the same, because the way you talk about the failure matters for your own motivation and other people’s confidence in your ability to try again.

So what can we do after we’ve given up on our resolution? We’ve announced our
good intentions to friends and family and now must admit failure. Research has shown the way you word your failed resolution can affect how people view it. And understanding the reasons most resolutions don’t work out can help us see it through in the future. Indeed, you can talk about your resolutions in a way that will make your failure more understandable and will sustain your motivation to keep going.

A constructive way to discuss your failed resolution is to focus on the controllability of the failure. Research shows that most resolutions will require some investment of time and of money. For example, getting in shape takes time for exercise and also normally requires money for a gym membership or for workout equipment. Because both of these resources are essential for pursuing our goals, many failed resolutions are due to the lack of either time or money, or both.

When talking about a failed resolution in the past, I’ve showed in my own research
that we should focus on how lack of money contributed to this failure, rather than
lack of time. In my 2024 study, people read about fictional as well as real panel participants who failed either due to lack of money or lack of time. Most participants felt the person whose failure was caused by lack of money would have more self-control going forward and was going to be more reliable at pursuing their goals.

This effect occurred because lack of money is seen as something that cannot be controlled very easily, so if this caused the failure, there wasn’t very much the person who failed could have done about it.

In this research, most of the failed resolutions were related to weight loss, better eating, or working out in the gym. Participants felt the same whether the person who failed was a man or a woman, presumably because it’s plausible that everyone needs some time and some money to pursue various goals regardless of gender or the specific resolution.

The role of controllability takes a different form when it comes to thinking about how we can do better next time.

The role of time

Research also shows the way we view time matters when it comes to failure. For the past, it’s better to think about things outside of our control that can help to take the negativity out of failure and bolster the belief that we can do better. This can mean, for example, to consider how our failure was due to lack of money or other resources outside of our control.

For the future, however, take an active perspective on time. Look at your schedule and make active decisions how to allocate time to your goal pursuit, by scheduling gym sessions or blocking time to prepare healthy meals. This can help to give us the motivation to try again because we’re not victims of our busy schedules.

A study published in October 2025 that focused on how a lack of time contributed to failures showed that people can get back a sense of control by talking about “making time”, instead of “having time”. People who discussed their failures as an issue of not having made the time felt like they could do things differently in the future, and were more motivated to do so.

This is because “making time” suggests active control over one’s time and schedule, instead of “having time” that leaves us passive. For example, if you say you didn’t make the time to work out, that means you can make the time in the future if you choose to do so. In contrast, if you say you didn’t have time to work out, it feels like this lack of time is outside of your control and could happen again, preventing you from pursuing your exercise goals.

Find the joy

Another reason so many people struggle to keep to their new year resolution may be because they were too ambitious, or they neglected that joy and pleasure keep us going.

We need not only to have a goal in mind. Finding joy in the journey and belief in the ability to change is also important. For example, someone might want to get in better shape and work out more, but when they actually try to go to the gym, they lack the confidence to sign up for a class. Without some fun, it’s hard to follow through on a resolution even if we really want to pursue the goal. So, try to think of ways you can make the goal more enjoyable to work on and remind yourself you are capable.

The trend for new year resolutions isn’t a bad thing in itself. Although it might seem a bit paradoxical to start virtuous habits right after a big night with alcohol and overeating, research shows that we can indeed benefit from the “fresh-start” effect in which a new beginning in the calendar can provide a clean slate to start better habits.

But we don’t have to wait for the calendar to give us a fresh start. We can choose to make our own resolution (maybe a Valentine’s or Easter resolution?) to boost the motivation to pursue our goals.

Janina Steinmetz 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. What to do if you fail at your new year resolution – https://theconversation.com/what-to-do-if-you-fail-at-your-new-year-resolution-271050

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Damien Pollard, Assistant Professor in Film, Northumbria University, Northumbria University, Newcastle

If you walk into a video hall in Uganda your attention will probably go straight to a person sitting at the front of the audience. Speaking rapidly into a microphone, they comment loudly and continuously, often drowning out the sound of the film itself. You may well ask who this person is, and why they keep interfering with the film that people have come to watch.

I’ve been conducting research into Uganda’s film landscape for the last couple of years and I’ve been privileged to visit several different venues where movies are screened. Uganda has few cinemas – there are only three in the capital city, Kampala, with a total of ten screens. Instead, the country has an extensive network of video halls, known locally as bibandas.

Video halls are found throughout the country, particularly in outlying urban areas and entrance is relatively cheap; typically around 1,000 Ugandan shillings, or 21 British pence (a cinema ticket, meanwhile, usually costs around 20,000 shillings or a little over £4). Inside a video hall, benches or seats are laid out in front of televisions and films are screened throughout the day. These are often pirated works from the US, India, Nigeria, Korea, China and elsewhere. Some of the film industry players that I have met during my research estimate that there could be as many as 3,000 video halls in Uganda.

Video hall owners have always had a problem, though. Despite Uganda’s history as a British colony, English is not spoken fluently by everyone. Neither are Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese or Korean. In the 1980s, the “video joker” (VJ) emerged as a solution and soon became a key feature of the video hall.

The VJ sits at the front of the audience with a microphone and a sound mixer. Talking over the film, they explain its plot and paraphrase the dialogue in the Ugandan language appropriate to the location in which they are working (in Kampala this would generally be Luganda).

Importantly, the VJ’s version of what characters are saying and what is happening in the film may diverge significantly from the original version. They are known to give characters and locations Ugandan names, for example, and most interject hyperbole, jokes and social or moral commentary into their performances.

One of my interviewees told me of a VJ he had seen performing over Christopher Nolan’s 2023 film Oppenheimer, who frequently claimed: “This bomb is big enough to destroy the whole of Africa!” He was amping up the jeopardy (unnecessarily, perhaps) and bringing the film home by using a local frame of reference. The VJ, in other words, can only very loosely be considered a translator. Many of my interviewees likened them more to an MC or a sports commentator – someone who “spices” up a film by adding their own performance to it and keeping the audience “hyped”.

Many VJs are celebrities in Uganda and possess loyal fans who regularly turn out to watch them perform. In fact, the VJ is often more of a draw for audiences than the film they are voicing over. Celebrity VJs have sought to capitalise on their success by selling pirated films on DVD or via streaming platforms with their voice-over tracks baked in, so that their fans can enjoy their work at home.

Even Ugandan televisions stations have experimented with broadcasting foreign content overlaid with VJ tracks. Furthermore, the Kampala-based micro-studio known as Wakaliwood (after Wakaliga, the village where it is based) has raised the profile of the video joker outside of east Africa. It has released two films — Who Killed Captain Alex and Bad Black — on YouTube with an absurdly comic, English-language voice over performed by one of my interviewees, VJ Emmie. Wakaliwood have garnered a global cult following and their work has been screened at festivals and midnight-movie events around the world (sometimes with Emmie performing live).

VJ controversies

Back in Uganda, VJs remain very popular but they’re not without controversy. Their work raises significant issues around intellectual property protection since it relies on the pirating of films. The fact that VJs’ and video halls’ contravention of IP law often goes unpunished in Uganda has been a major stumbling block on the country’s path toward developing a sustainable domestic film production industry.

It’s hard for Ugandan producers to compete with VJs who get their films for free and face few overheads when selling their DVDs to the public. Many Ugandan filmmakers also take issue with the tradition of video joking on aesthetic grounds, arguing that it ruins the integrity of a film and trivialises the audience experience.

The debates around video joking in Uganda won’t be settled soon but the tradition helps us to appreciate two important facts about the exhibition of films. First, what is considered a “normal” way to watch a film varies enormously around the world and is connected to a location’s specific social, cultural and economic context. The way of watching films which is most common in mainstream cinemas in Europe or North America for example, where viewers sit silently in the dark, is only one way of “doing cinema”.

Second, when it comes to our experience of a film, the film itself is only the starting point. Anyone who has ever dressed up and attended a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Room will know this too. What those films mean to us has as much to do with the interpersonal experience of watching them as the movie itself. This is perhaps even true when we hold film nights at home, joking with friends as we watch.

So although the VJ is a Ugandan tradition, it has things to tells the rest of the world about the universal experience of watching films.

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The research presented in this article was supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant, awarded to Damien Pollard. Award number: SRG24241338.

– ref. Inside Uganda’s video halls, ‘video jokers’ transform Hollywood blockbusters into local entertainment – https://theconversation.com/inside-ugandas-video-halls-video-jokers-transform-hollywood-blockbusters-into-local-entertainment-270126

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yangang Xing, Associate Professor, School of Architecture Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University

On winter mornings in Harbin, where the air outside could freeze your eyelashes, I would wake up on a bed of warm earth.

Harbin, where I grew up, is in northeast China. Winter temperatures regularly dip to -30°C and in January even the warmest days rarely go above -10°C. With about 6 million residents today, Harbin is easily the largest city in the world to experience such consistent cold.

Keeping warm in such temperatures is something I’ve thought about all my life. Long before electric air conditioning and district heating, people in the region survived harsh winters using methods entirely different from the radiators and gas boilers that dominate European homes today.

Now, as a researcher in architecture and construction at a British university, I’m struck by how much we can learn from those traditional systems in the UK. Energy bills are still too high, and millions are struggling to heat their homes, while climate change is expected to make winters more volatile. We need efficient, low-energy ways to stay warm that don’t rely on heating an entire home with fossil fuels.

Some of the answers may lie in the methods I grew up with.

A warm bed made of earth

My earliest memories of winter involve waking up on a “kang” – a heated platform-bed made of earth bricks that has been used in northern China for at least 2,000 years. The kang is less a piece of furniture and more a part of the building itself: a thick, raised slab connected to the family stove in the kitchen. When the stove is lit for cooking, hot air travels through passages running beneath the kang, warming its entire mass.

To a child, the kang felt magical: a warm, radiant surface that stayed hot all night long. But as an adult – and now an academic expert – I can appreciate what a remarkably efficient piece of engineering it is.

Unlike central heating, which works by warming the air in every room, only the kang (that is, the bed surface) is heated. The room itself may be cold, but people warm themselves by laying or sitting on the platform with thick blankets. Once warmed, its hundreds of kilograms of compacted earth slowly release heat over many hours. There are no radiators, no need for any pumps, and no unnecessary heating of empty rooms. And since much of the initial heat was generated by fires we’d need for cooking anyway, we saved on fuel.

Maintaining the kang was a family undertaking. My father – a secondary school Chinese literature teacher, not an engineer – became an expert at constructing the kang. Carefully building layers of coal around the fire to keep it alive over the night would be my mum’s job. Looking back, I realise how much skill and labour was involved, and how much trust families placed in a system that required good ventilation to avoid carbon monoxide risks.

But for all its drawbacks, the kang delivered something modern heating systems still struggle to deliver: long-lasting warmth with very little fuel.

Similar approaches across East Asia

Across East Asia, approaches to keeping warm in cold weather evolved around similar principles: keep heat close to the body, and heat only the spaces that matter.

In Korea, the ancient ondol system also channels warm air beneath thick floors, turning the entire floor into a heated surface. Japan developed the kotatsu, a low table covered by a heavy blanket with a small heater underneath to keep your legs warm. They can be a bit costly, but they’re one of the most popular items in Japanese homes.

Clothing was also very important. Each winter my mum would make me a brand new thick padded coat, stuffing it with newly fluffed cotton. It’s one of my loveliest memories.

Europe had similar ideas – then forgot them

Europe once had similar approaches to heating. Ancient Romans heated buildings using hypocausts, for instance, which circulated hot air under floors. Medieval households hung heavy tapestries on walls to reduce drafts, and many cultures used soft cushions, heated rugs or enclosed sleeping areas to conserve warmth.

The spread of modern central heating in the 20th century replaced these approaches with a more energy-intensive pattern: heating entire buildings to a uniform temperature, even when only one person is home. When energy was cheap, this model worked, even despite most European homes (especially those in the UK) being poorly insulated by global standards.

But now that energy is expensive again, tens of millions of Europeans are unable to keep their homes adequately warm. New technologies like heat pumps and renewable energy will help – but they work best when the buildings they heat are already efficient, allowing for lower set point for heating, and higher set points for cooling.

This highlights why traditional approaches to warming homes still have something to teach us. The kang and similar systems show that comfort doesn’t always come from consuming more energy – but from designing warmth more intelligently.

Yangang Xing 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. I grew up in the world’s coldest city without central heating. Here’s what the world can learn from us – https://theconversation.com/i-grew-up-in-the-worlds-coldest-city-without-central-heating-heres-what-the-world-can-learn-from-us-271657