Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Roger J. Kreuz, Associate Dean and Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor​, University of Memphis

Which terms best represent 2025?

Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a “word of the year.”

Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. “Pandemic,” “lockdown” and “coronavirus,” for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022’s “goblin mode,” “permacrisis” and “gaslighting.”

This year’s slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts – when words like “w00t,” “blog,” “tweet” and even “face with tears of joy” emoji (😂) were chosen – this year’s selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation and fake relationships.

When seeing isn’t believing

A committee representing the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English settled on “AI slop” for their word of the year.

Macquarie defines the term, which was popularized in 2024 by British programmer Simon Willison and tech journalist Casey Newton, as “low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.”

AI slop – which can range from a saccharine image of a young girl clinging to her little dog to career advice on LinkedIn – often goes viral, as gullible social media users share these computer-generated videos, text and graphics with others.

Images have been manipulated or altered since the dawn of photography. The technique was then improved, with an assist from AI, to create “deepfakes,” which allows existing images to be turned into video clips in surreal ways. Yes, you can now watch Hitler teaming up with Stalin to sing a 1970s hit by The Buggles.

What makes AI slop different is that images or video can be created out of whole cloth by providing a chatbot with just a prompt – no matter how bizarre the request or ensuing output.

Meet my new friend, ChatGPT

The editors of the Cambridge Dictionary chose “parasocial.” They define this as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series … or an artificial intelligence.”

These asymmetric relationships, according to the dictionary’s chief editor, are the result of “the public’s fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles,” and this interest “continues to reach new heights.”

As an example, Cambridge’s announcement cited the engagement of singer Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce, which led to a spike in online searches for the meaning of the term. Many Swifties reacted with unbridled joy, as if their best friend or sibling had just decided to tie the knot.

But the term isn’t a new one: It was coined by sociologists in 1956 to describe “the illusion” of having “a face-to-face relationship” with a performer.

However, parasocial relationships can take a bizarre or even ominous turn when the object of one’s affections is a chatbot. People are developing true feelings for these AI systems, whether they see them as a trusted friend or even a romantic partner. Young people, in particular, are now turning to generative AI for therapy.

Taking the bait

The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year is “rage bait,” which the editors define as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.”

This is only the latest word for forms of emotional manipulation that have plagued the online world since the days of dial-up internet. Related terms include trolling, sealioning and trashposting.

Unlike a hot take – a hasty opinion on a topic that may be poorly reasoned or articulated – rage baiting is intended to be inflammatory. And it can be seen as both a cause and a result of political polarization.

People who post rage bait have been shown to lack empathy and to regard other people’s emotions as something to be exploited or even monetized. Rage baiters, in short, reflect the dark side of the attention economy.

Meaningless meaning

Perhaps the most contentious choice in 2025 was “6-7,” chosen by Dictionary.com. In this case, the controversy has to do with the actual meaning of this bit of Gen Alpha slang. The editors of the website describe it as being “meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”

Although its definition may be slippery, the term itself can be found in the lyrics of the rapper Skrilla, who released the single “Doot Doot (6 7)” in early 2025. It was popularized by 17-year-old basketball standout Taylen Kinney. For his part, Skrilla claimed that he “never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to.”

“6-7” is sometimes accompanied by a gesture, as if one were comparing the weight of objects held in both hands. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently performed this hand motion during a school visit. The young students were delighted. Their teacher, however, informed Starmer that her charges weren’t allowed to use it at the school, which prompted a clumsy apology from the chastened prime minister.

Throw your hands in the air?

The common element that these words share may be an attitude best described as digital nihilism.

As online misinformation, AI-generated text and images, fake news and conspiracy theories abound, it’s increasingly difficult to know whom or what to believe or trust. Digital nihilism is, in essence, an acknowledgment of a lack of meaning and certainty in our online interactions.

This year’s crop of words might best be summed up by a single emoji: the shrug (🤷). Throwing one’s hands up, in resignation or indifference, captures the anarchy that seems to characterize our digital lives.

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

– ref. 2025’s words of the year reflect a year of digital disillusionment – https://theconversation.com/2025s-words-of-the-year-reflect-a-year-of-digital-disillusionment-270769

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jonathan Deutsch, Professor of Food and Hospitality Management, Drexel University

Working in restaurants is physically, mentally and emotionally taxing and often thankless work. So it was wonderful to see so many hardworking friends in the Philadelphia dining industry recognized at the Michelin Guide’s 2025 Northeast Cities Ceremony in Philadelphia on Nov. 18, 2025.

Three Philadelphia restaurants each received a star: Provenance, Friday Saturday Sunday and Her Place Supper Club. In addition, 10 other food destinations received a Bib Gourmand for providing “exceptionally good food at moderate prices,” and 21 received Michelin-Recommended status. Pietramala was the sole winner of a green star for sustainability.

I’m especially proud that the Culinary Arts and Science program at Drexel University, where I teach, has had student co-ops and employees, as well as alumni, at all three starred restaurants.

As a classically trained chef, culinary educator and author of the textbook “Culinary Improvisation,” which teaches culinary creativity, I’ve been following the Michelin developments in Philadelphia closely. I am also a contributor to The Infatuation Philly, whose mission is to bring you honest and trustworthy opinions about where to eat. I spend a good amount of time experiencing and reviewing restaurants.

In “Culinary Improvisation,” my co-authors and I discuss the “ingredients” needed to foster culinary innovation: mastery of culinary technique, access to a diverse range of ingredients and flavors, and a collaborative and supportive environment to take risks and make mistakes.

I worried that Michelin, while good for bringing more tourist dollars and recognition to the city, would be bad for fostering some of the very qualities that already make Philadelphia one of the most innovative and high-quality dining cities in the country.

I was particularly concerned that the freedom to experiment, create and innovate would be stifled under the spotlight of outside inspectors.

According to the Michelin Guide, stars are awarded to outstanding restaurants based on: “quality of ingredients, mastery of cooking techniques and flavors, the personality of the chef as expressed in the cuisine, value for money, and consistency of the dining experience both across the menu and over time.”

The criteria do not mention innovation.

Some confounding snubs

The three Philly restaurants that were awarded stars are all deserving, but I believe there are so many oversights, especially on the creativity and innovation front. Reviewing the reviewers, I don’t think they deserve a star.

Within the city boundaries, Emmett, Fork, Vernick Fish, Ogawa, Rice and Sambal, Elwood, Alice, Fiore, a.kitchen, Perla, Bastia, Blue Corn, Little Fish, Mawn, Lacroix and Le Virtu all stand out to me as places that embody the creative energy of Philly’s dining scene and should be at least recommended.

While the guide refers to “Philadelphia and surroundings,” and a Michelin representative reportedly indicated that suburban restaurants would be considered, no restaurants outside the city limits were honored. Did the inspectors not want to battle rush-hour traffic to visit the comforting yet exciting things happening at Cornerstone, June BYOB, Hearthside, Zeppoli, Park Place, Ripplewood, Andiario, Lark and The Choice?

The three recommended cheesesteak places – Dalessandro’s, Del Rossi’s and Angelo’s – are arguably fine, but it’s a tourist stereotype to include so many.

In contrast, China Gourmet, Nom Wah, Bai Wei, E-Mei, Café Nhan, South Philly Barbacoa, Black Dragon, Doro Bet, Farina di Vita and John’s Roast Pork received no mention by Michelin – while all are on my short list to recommend to visitors looking for great food at a good value.

Philadelphians know that cheesesteak may be obligatory for visitors, but the roast pork sandwich – ideally with provolone, broccoli rabe and long hots – is the real reason to visit.

James Beard darling Mawn didn’t make the list, nor did the [omakase experience at Royal Sushi and Izakaya], which Philly food media thought was a given for a star. The casual izakaya part of the restaurant did receive a Bib Gourmand, but the review doesn’t mention the food at the omakase bar, leading chef-owner Jesse Ito and Philly food critic Craig LaBan to speculate that Michelin inspectors couldn’t get a reservation. If that’s the case, it’s inexcusable. When asked, a Michelin spokesperson said they don’t “reveal specifics.” Michelin inspectors should do the work to get into the critically acclaimed places.

As for Mawn: Wait in line for their no-reservation lunch like the rest of Philly.

Where to eat now?

As a strategy for building tourism, filling seats during lunch hours and early in the week, and recruiting out-of-town restaurant talent, Michelin makes a lot of sense for Philly. But many people don’t realize that Michelin is pay-to-play in the locations included in its guides, so Philly’s lack of Michelin stars before last month should not indicate that the city’s restaurant scene was not already Michelin-worthy. We just hadn’t paid for the privilege of being inspected.

Additionally, Michelin awards are just one of many awards and accolades that Philly restaurants can get.

The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau has not stated how much they paid to have an outside for-profit company come and confirm that Philly indeed has good restaurants. But in 2024, Houston reportedly agreed to pay the Michelin Guide $270,000 for the privilege. Assuming Philadelphia paid a similar amount, if not more, that averages to about 100K per star.

In Philadelphia, that money could have been used for scholarships for culinary students, workforce development training ahead of the city’s celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday or strengthening high school and community college culinary and hospitality programs. It could have gone to tax incentives or lowering hurdles for underrepresented or emerging restaurateurs – uses I believe would make Philly’s food scene even stronger.

Instead it was used to give restaurants that had already received prestigious James Beard awards and other recognition even more kudos – making them even more difficult to get into for Philadelphians and tourists alike.

In a city known for its grit, doing its thing whether you like it or not, and thumbing its nose at New York and Washington, D.C., this whole thing strikes me as very un-Philly.

I’m going to make it a point to visit all the restaurants I love that haven’t gotten the credit they deserve. With over 6,000 restaurants in Philadelphia, I’ll be busy. The tourists can have the Michelin places until the hype dies down.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

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

– ref. A culinary educator and local dining expert breaks down Michelin’s debut Philly list − and gives zero stars to the inspectors – https://theconversation.com/a-culinary-educator-and-local-dining-expert-breaks-down-michelins-debut-philly-list-and-gives-zero-stars-to-the-inspectors-271049

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ellen T. Meiser, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Hawaii at Hilo

The season of gifting is in full swing – a time when people scour the internet and shops of all kinds for items that appropriately symbolize their relationships with their loved ones.

Gift givers hope that their gift will appropriately communicate their feelings and bring the recipient joy. But that’s not always the reality. Gifts can be tricky and rife with hidden hazards. Relationships can even be ruined when the mismatch between the giver’s intention and the recipient’s perceptions of it is too vast.

The circumstances of the people involved also shape a gift’s meaning and the way it might be interpreted.

My research partner, Nathalie Rita, and I have been seeking to better understand gifting in one of life’s most dicey, distressing circumstances: cancer.

As sociologists, we use techniques such as in-depth interviews to study the experiences, feelings and motivations of specific groups of people. I focus on restaurant workers and my colleague on migrants and minorities. But in 2021, we were both diagnosed with cancer in our early 30s – breast cancer for me and endometrial cancer for her. This encouraged us to explore the experiences of other young women dealing with cancer.

By 2023, we had interviewed 50 millennial women diagnosed with cancer about a plethora of social and emotional topics related to their illness. Our own bouts with cancer revealed curious patterns in the gifts we very gratefully received from family and friends. So, we included a few questions about gifts in our research.

We expected some eccentric anecdotes similar to our own experiences. But our research, which isn’t yet published, revealed just how much of a mismatch there is between what people wanted and what they received – often driven by the marketing of specific gifts or care packages for cancer patients.

What loved ones give

One of our first questions was, what exactly do women diagnosed with cancer receive from their loved ones? Their answers ran the gamut. Our interviewees reported hundreds of gifts, from stuffed possums to child care help to Vitamix blenders. Friends and family were very eager to shower them in goods.

But from these hundreds of items and acts, 10 popped up over and over again. In order of frequency, they were:

1. Fuzzy socks.
2. Food and drinks, particularly herbal teas, groceries, gourmet goodies and Meal Trains.
3. Money, GoFundMe donations and gift cards.
4. Blankets.
5. Fancy, spa-style self-care items.
6. Written thoughts and prayers.
7. Flowers and plants.
8. Mugs, tumblers and bottles.
9. Adult coloring books.
10. Books.

The women we spoke with largely understood and appreciated the intentions behind these items in the context of their illness: books to distract, flowers to beautify. They viewed the gifts as material proof that their loved ones wanted to deliver comfort and support in a time of discomfort and helplessness.

But the frequency of certain items perplexed us. Why socks and coloring books instead of, say, Rollerblades and bongs?

The long shadow of online commerce and gift guides

We traced these gifting trends to two sources: premade cancer care packages and online gift guides.

Numerous women reported receiving some of the items from our top 10 list in premade care packages sourced from Etsy, Amazon or cancer-specific companies such as Rock the Treatment and The Balm Box. They noted that the contents of these packages felt predictable: spa-style self-care goods such as aromatherapy oils, lip balms and soy candles; herbal teas; a mug with a slogan or ribbon; and hard candies or throat lozenges.

Some received more opulent care packages, similar to Rock the Treatment’s large chemo care package for women, which adds adult coloring books, protein-rich snacks, a beanie and fuzzy socks. These additions mirror our interviewees’ top 10 received gifts even more closely.

Online gift guides published by magazines, news sites and stores may be influencing gifters’ behaviors, too. A Google search for “gift guide” yields countless lists for niche demographics – chicken lovers, mathematicians, even people who are always cold. Online viewership of these lists is prolific. For example, New York Magazine’s product recommendation site, The Strategist, received 10.7 million monthly views in 2021.

The top seven Google-ranked gift guides for cancer patients also contain suggestions that align almost perfectly with what our interviewees reported, with the addition of clothing and jewelry emblazoned with inspirational declarations such as “I’m stronger than cancer!”

These overlaps reflect the broader phenomena of the commodification and commercialization of cancer. As businesses seek to extract economic value out of all aspects of daily life, cancer has become a lucrative business opportunity and patients a source of profit.

Our research suggests that these market forces warp how gift givers perceive people with cancer and their desires. In turning cancer into something profitable, the ugly parts of illness are also glossed over to make cancer palatable to the market. Businesses then sell would-be gifters the idea that cancer can be assuaged by purchasing and giving a bejeweled, teal-ribboned Stanley tumbler.

Additionally, while premade care packages ease the labor of decision-making for gifters, they run a greater risk of disappointing recipients. These generic boxes, we found, can communicate a degree of thoughtlessness at a time when our study participants were aching for thoughtfulness.

What to actually gift

So, what do women going through cancer treatment actually want to receive? Our interviewees recommended:

1. Money in the form of cash or useful gift cards, such as for Door Dash, grocery stores and Petco.
2. Meals and groceries, particularly if the recipient is a parent with mouths to feed.
3. Help with errands and tasks such as babysitting, transportation, cleaning and lawn care.
4. Cards and personal messages of love, which serve as check-ins and gestures of care and support.
5. Practical self-care items such as thick lotions, face masks and soft soaps that don’t irritate skin.

Pragmatic. Simple. Even a little mundane.

There is some overlap between these recommendations and the frequently received gifts mentioned earlier. But notably, almost none of the women we interviewed expressed a desire for the nonessential items usually stocked in commercial care packages or those associated with profiting from cancer.

Instead, the gifts they felt touched them more deeply were ones that addressed ways in which they felt the disease incapacitated their abilities as a worker, woman, mother or caregiver.

Our interviewees spoke of financial strain from medical bills, fatigue preventing them from mothering in ways they used to, and mounting burdens that made it almost impossible to be present for partners or spouses. A monstera plant in a whimsical vase offered little reprieve from these pressures. However, a chat while folding laundry or a Pyrex of enchiladas did.

Perhaps most importantly, such offerings made them feel cared for and seen – their unvarnished circumstances recognized.

So, if a friend with cancer – or any other serious illness, for that matter – is on your list this holiday season, consider hanging those fuzzy socks back on the rack.

Instead, mull over their daily stresses, and choose an item – or a task – that provides a bit of relief.

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

– ref. Buying a gift for a loved one with cancer? Here’s why you should skip the fuzzy socks and give them meals or help with laundry instead – https://theconversation.com/buying-a-gift-for-a-loved-one-with-cancer-heres-why-you-should-skip-the-fuzzy-socks-and-give-them-meals-or-help-with-laundry-instead-268642

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Matthew Blanton, PhD Candidate, Sociology and Demography, The University of Texas at Austin

In a region known for its tumultuous change, one idea remained remarkably consistent for centuries: Latin America is Catholic.

The region’s 500-year transformation into a Catholic stronghold seemed capped in 2013, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected as the first Latin American pope. Once a missionary outpost, Latin America is now the heart of the Catholic Church. It is home to over 575 million adherents – over 40% of all Catholics worldwide. The next-largest regions are Europe and Africa, each home to 20% of the world’s Catholics.

Yet beneath this Catholic dominance, the region’s religious landscape is changing.

First, Protestant and Pentecostal groups have experienced dramatic growth. In 1970, only 4% of Latin Americans identified as Protestant; by 2014, the share had climbed to almost 20%.

But even as Protestant ranks swelled, another trend was quietly gaining ground: a growing share of Latin Americans abandoning institutional faith altogether. And, as my research shows, the region’s religious decline shows a surprising difference from patterns elsewhere. While fewer Latin Americans are identifying with a religion or attending services, personal faith remains strong.

Religious decline

In 2014, 8% of Latin Americans claimed no religion at all. This number is twice as high as the percentage of people who were raised without a religion, indicating that the growth is recent, coming from people who left the church as adults.

However, there had been no comprehensive study of religious change in Latin America since then. My new research, published in September 2025, draws on two decades of survey data from over 220,000 respondents in 17 Latin American countries. This data comes from the AmericasBarometer, a large, region-wide survey conducted every two years by Vanderbilt University that focuses on democracy, governance and other social issues. Because it asks the same religion questions across countries and over time, it offers an unusually clear view of changing patterns.

Overall, the number of Latin Americans reporting no religious affiliation surged from 7% in 2004 to over 18% in 2023. The share of people who say they are religiously unaffiliated grew in 15 of the 17 countries, and more than doubled in seven.

On average, 21% of people in South America say they do not have a religious affiliation, compared with 13% in Mexico and Central America. Uruguay, Chile and Argentina are the three least religious countries in the region. Guatemala, Peru and Paraguay are the most traditionally religious, with fewer than 9% who identify as unaffiliated.

Another question scholars typically use to measure religious decline is how often people go to church. From 2008 to 2023, the share of Latin Americans attending church at least once a month decreased from 67% to 60%. The percentage who never attend, meanwhile, grew from 18% to 25%.

The generational pattern is stark. Among people born in the 1940s, just over half say they attend church regularly. Each subsequent generation shows a steeper decline, dropping to just 35% for those born in the 1990s. Religious affiliation shows a similar trajectory – each generation is less affiliated than the one before.

Personal religiosity

However, in my study, I also examined a lesser-used measure of religiosity – one that tells a different story.

That measure is “religious importance”: how important people say that religion is in their daily lives. We might think of this as “personal” religiosity, as opposed to the “institutional” religiosity tied to formal congregations and denominations.

Like church attendance, overall religious importance is high in Latin America. In 2010, roughly 85% of Latin Americans in the 17 countries whose data I analyzed said religion was important in their daily lives. Sixty percent said “very,” and 25% said “somewhat.”

By 2023, the “somewhat important” group declined to 19%, while the “very important” group grew to 64%. Personal religious importance was growing, even as affiliation and church attendance were falling.

Religious importance shows the same generational pattern as affiliation and attendance: Older people tend to report higher levels than younger ones. In 2023, 68% of people born in the 1970s said religion was “very important,” compared with 60% of those born in the 1990s.

Yet when you compare people at the same age, the pattern reverses. At age 30, 55% of those born in the 1970s rated religion as very important. Compare that with 59% among Latin Americans born in the 1980s, and 62% among those born in the 1990s. If this trend continues, younger generations could eventually show greater personal religious commitment than their elders.

Affiliation vs. belief

What we are seeing in Latin America, I’d argue, is a fragmented pattern of religious decline. The authority of religious institutions is waning – fewer people claim a faith; fewer attend services. But personal belief isn’t eroding. Religious importance is holding steady, even growing.

This pattern is quite different from Europe and the United States, where institutional decline and personal belief tend to move together.

Eighty-six percent of unaffiliated people in Latin America say they believe in God or a higher power. That compares with only 30% in Europe and 69% in the United States.

Sizable proportions of unaffiliated Latin Americans also believe in angels, miracles and even that Jesus will return to Earth in their lifetime.

In other words, for many Latin Americans, leaving behind a religious label or skipping church does not mean leaving faith behind.

This distinctive pattern reflects Latin America’s unique history and culture. Since the colonial period, the region has been shaped by a mix of religious traditions. People often combine elements of Indigenous beliefs, Catholic practices and newer Protestant movements, creating personal forms of faith that don’t always fit neatly into any one church or institution.

Because priests were often scarce in rural areas, Catholicism developed in many communities with little direct oversight from the church. Home rituals, local saints’ festivals and lay leaders helped shape religious life in more independent ways.

This reality challenges how scholars typically measure religious change. Traditional frameworks for measuring religious decline, developed from Western European data, rely heavily on religious affiliation and church attendance. But this approach overlooks vibrant religiosity outside formal structures – and can lead scholars to mistaken conclusions.

In short, Latin America reminds us that faith can thrive even as institutions fade.

This research was supported by grants P2CHD042849 and T32HD007081, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

– ref. ‘Yes’ to God, but ‘no’ to church – what religious change looks like for many Latin Americans – https://theconversation.com/yes-to-god-but-no-to-church-what-religious-change-looks-like-for-many-latin-americans-266880

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michelle Lynn Kahn, Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond

How can society police the global spread of online far-right extremism while still protecting free speech? That’s a question policymakers and watchdog organizations confronted as early as the 1980s and ’90s – and it hasn’t gone away.

Decades before artificial intelligence, Telegram and white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ livestreams, far-right extremists embraced the early days of home computing and the internet. These new technologies offered them a bastion of free speech and a global platform. They could share propaganda, spew hatred, incite violence and gain international followers like never before.

Before the digital era, far-right extremists radicalized each other primarily using print propaganda. They wrote their own newsletters and reprinted far-right tracts such as Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and American neo-Nazi William Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries,” a dystopian work of fiction describing a race war. Then, they mailed this propaganda to supporters at home and abroad.

I’m a historian who studies neo-Nazis and far-right extremism. As my research shows, most of the neo-Nazi propaganda confiscated in Germany from the 1970s through the 1990s came from the United States. American neo-Nazis exploited their free speech under the First Amendment to bypass German censorship laws. German neo-Nazis then picked up this print propaganda and distributed it throughout the country.

This strategy wasn’t foolproof, however. Print propaganda could get lost in the mail or be confiscated, especially when crossing into Germany. Producing and shipping it was also expensive and time-consuming, and far-right organizations were chronically understaffed and strapped for cash.

Going digital

Computers, which entered the mass market in 1977, promised to help resolve these problems. In 1981, Matt Koehl, head of the National Socialist White People’s Party in the United States, solicited donations to “Help the Party Enter The Computer Age.” The American neo-Nazi Harold Covington begged for a printer, scanner and “serious PC” that could run WordPerfect word processing software. “Our multifarious enemies already possess this technology,” he noted, referring to Jews and government officials.

Soon, far-right extremists figured out how to connect their computers to one another. They did so by using online bulletin board systems, or BBSes, a precursor to the internet. A BBS was hosted on a personal computer, and other computers could dial in to the BBS using a modem and a terminal software program, allowing users to exchange messages, documents and software.

With BBSes, anyone interested in accessing far-right propaganda could simply turn on their computer and dial in to an organization’s advertised phone number. Once connected, they could read the organization’s public posts, exchange messages and upload and download files.

The first far-right bulletin board system, the Aryan Nations Liberty Net, was established in 1984 by Louis Beam, a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations. Beam explained: “Imagine, if you can, a single computer to which all leaders and strategists of the patriotic movement are connected. Imagine further that any patriot in the country is able to tap into this computer at will in order to reap the benefit of all accumulative knowledge and wisdom of the leaders. ‘Someday,’ you may say? How about today?”

Then came violent neo-Nazi computer games. Neo-Nazis in the United States and elsewhere could upload and download these games via bulletin board systems, copy them onto disks and distribute them widely, especially to schoolchildren.

In the German computer game KZ Manager, players role-played as a commandant in a Nazi concentration camp that murdered Jews, Sinti and Roma, and Turkish immigrants. An early 1990s poll revealed that 39% of Austrian high schoolers knew of such games and 22% had seen them.

Arrival of the web

By the mid-1990s, with the introduction of the more user-friendly World Wide Web, bulletin boards fell out of favor. The first major racial hate website on the internet, Stormfront, was founded in 1995 by the American white supremacist Don Black. The civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center found that almost 100 murders were linked to Stormfront.

By 2000, the German government had discovered, and banned, over 300 German websites with right-wing content – a tenfold increase within just four years.

In response, American white supremacists again exploited their free speech rights to bypass German censorship bans. They gave international far-right extremists the opportunity to host their websites safely and anonymously on unregulated American servers – a strategy that continues today.

Up next: AI

The next frontier for far-right extremists is AI. They are using AI tools to create targeted propaganda, manipulate images, audio and videos, and evade detection. The far-right social network Gab created a Hitler chatbot that users can talk to.

AI chatbots are also adopting the far-right views of social media users. Grok, the chatbot on Elon Musk’s X, recently called itself “MechaHitler,” spewed antisemitic hate speech and denied the Holocaust.

Countering extremism

Combating online hate is a global imperative. It requires comprehensive international cooperation among governments, nongovernmental organizations, watchdog organizations, communities and tech corporations.

Far-right extremists have long pioneered innovative ways to exploit technological progress and free speech. Efforts to counter this radicalization are challenged to stay one step ahead of the far right’s technological advances.

Michelle Lynn Kahn has received funding from the National Humanities Center, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Historical Association, and American Jewish Archives.

– ref. Far-right extremists have been organizing online since before the internet – and AI is their next frontier – https://theconversation.com/far-right-extremists-have-been-organizing-online-since-before-the-internet-and-ai-is-their-next-frontier-269271

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Kastenberg, Professor of Law, University of New Mexico

News reports about a U.S. military attack on a boat in the Caribbean allegedly carrying drugs have raised critical questions about the military campaign against drug smugglers being carried out by the Trump administration in that region.

Among them: whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or others face criminal liability for any of the attacks. Those attacks killed people alleged to have been involved in illegal narcotics trafficking.

Congressional investigations have begun into allegations that a Sept. 2, 2025, follow-up attack on two survivors of an earlier attack was illegal and ordered by Hegseth. Some legal scholars have cited violations of international and United States criminal law that could come into play.

But as a military law scholar who spent 20 years as a lawyer and judge in the U.S. Air Force, I know that there aren’t enough facts known yet to determine who is responsible for what. There are five investigative mechanisms that could be used to determine the facts and whether there is criminal liability on the part of both senior civilian officials and military members involved in the now extensively reported second strike on the suspected drug boat that resulted in the deaths of civilians.

There are two caveats to this analysis. The first is that the Constitution says a person is to be presumed innocent before being proved guilty. The second is that the story from the White House and the Pentagon has changed over time.

Congressional committees investigate

The first investigative mechanism is the Congress itself.

The House of Representatives and the Senate each have an armed services committee and a foreign relations or foreign affairs committee. In theory, any of these committees can place people under oath and have them testify, as well as issue subpoenas to obtain information.

This concept isn’t new.

Multiple committees examined the country’s lack of preparedness preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations in 1941.

Almost every month during the Vietnam War, one or more of these committees investigated military matters, including one of the most notorious war crimes in U.S. history. In 1968, Army Lt. William Laws Calley commanded a platoon of soldiers who murdered close to 500 villagers in My Lai, including children and the elderly, none of whom posed a threat and none of whom were lawful targets.

But congressional investigations can be highly political. Even during the My Lai investigation, at least one member of the House, Mendel Rivers, a South Carolina Democrat who was at that time chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, attempted to shield officers in the chain of command. There is little reason to believe that a current investigation, conducted by a dramatically polarized Congress, will be free of partisan politics.

Attorney general investigates

A second means of investigating is for the U.S. attorney general to preliminarily conclude that crimes have been committed and to convene a grand jury to investigate. A federal grand jury is a constitutional body consisting of ordinary adult citizens. Its operations are governed by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and its role is to investigate whether there is probable cause to determine that a person has violated the criminal laws.

A federal statute prohibits murder. As far back as 1820, if not before, federal grand juries have investigated the crime of “murder on the high seas.”

No member of the president’s administration is immune from the criminal laws of the country, with the exception of the president himself when he has acted in the capacity of president or commander in chief. The Supreme Court in 2024 determined that the president is mostly immune from prosecution under criminal law.

But I believe this type of investigation is unlikely. That’s because members of the administration have argued that their actions were legal and that the men killed in the second strike were continuing in their mission and posed a threat.

Moreover, the attorney general is supposed to act in an independent capacity from the White House. But Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has demonstrated her loyalty to the president and his agenda in many instances.

Another consideration is that federal agency heads who rely on their attorneys in good faith are presumed to be immune from the law. This may be why Hegseth has stated that lawyers had advised the mission’s commanders.

Congress and the AG work a case

It is possible that during a congressional investigation one or more witnesses will be accused of lying under oath or accused of contempt.

Congress has the authority to hold individuals in contempt and fine and sentence them, but this is rare. Usually, Congress forwards the claim to the attorney general. Contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor offense, meaning a person cannot be sentenced to more than a year. Again, I believe it is unlikely that the attorney general would pursue a contempt charge in a federal court from these events.

Inspector general investigates

The Department of Defense’s inspector general can investigate allegations of wrongdoing in the department, and this includes the secretary. In the past, inspectors general have discovered criminal activity, written a publicly releasable report, and then a senior official was prosecuted.

In 2003, the Department of Defense investigated Darleen Druyun, a senior contracting official, for wrongly steering multimillion-dollar contracts to Boeing. The investigative report resulted in criminal charges from the Justice Department, and Druyun was found guilty in a criminal trial. Boeing officials also left the company, and the company was fined.

The military can investigate its civilian members but cannot prosecute them. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to civilians. That includes the president and secretary of defense, even though they are at the pinnacle of the chain of command.

International courts investigate

Finally, an investigation could be mounted through international law as enforced by courts outside of the United States.

Superpowers such as the United States and Russia often get a free pass from international law enforcement. In 1986, the International Court of Justice – a body partly created by the United States – ruled that the United States under the Reagan administration violated Nicaragua’s sovereignty during its civil war.

The Reagan administration’s response was that because other nations had disregarded the court, so too would the United States. No American official was ever held to account for the mining of Nicaragua’s main port or for the arming of rebels that led to the deaths of Nicaraguans.

It’s not clear which, if any, of these mechanisms will be used to hold accountable those who ordered and carried out the September 2025 operation in the Caribbean that killed two survivors of an earlier attack. What is clear is that the methods exist to find the facts – and make judgments based on them.

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

– ref. Pete Hegseth could be investigated for illegal orders by 5 different bodies – but none are likely to lead to charges – https://theconversation.com/pete-hegseth-could-be-investigated-for-illegal-orders-by-5-different-bodies-but-none-are-likely-to-lead-to-charges-271284

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University

Picture this: You’re looking to buy a place to live, and you have two options.

Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars – the median California home sells for US$906,500 – and you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020.

Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.

As a professor of urban planning, I know this isn’t just a hypothetical scenario. It’s the impossible choice millions of Americans face every day as the U.S. housing crisis collides with climate change. And we’re not handling it well.

The numbers tell the story

The migration patterns are stark. Take California, which lost 239,575 residents in 2024 – the largest out-migration of any state. High housing costs are a primary driver: The median home price in California is more than double the national median.

Where are these displaced residents going? Many are heading to southern and western states like Florida and Texas. Texas, which is the top destination for former California residents, saw a net gain of 85,267 people in 2024, much of it from domestic migration. These newcomers are drawn primarily by more affordable housing markets.

This isn’t simply people chasing lower taxes. It’s a housing affordability crisis in motion. The annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home was about $237,000 in June 2025, a recent analysis found – over twice the state’s median household income.

Over 21 million renter households nationwide spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For them and others struggling to get by, the financial math is simple, even if the risk calculation isn’t.

I find this troubling. In essence, the U.S. is creating a system where your income determines your exposure to climate disasters. When housing becomes unaffordable in safer areas, the only available and affordable property is often in riskier locations – low-lying areas at flood risk in Houston and coastal Texas, or higher-wildfire-risk areas as California cities expand into fire-prone foothills and canyons.

Climate risk becomes part of the equation

The destinations drawing newcomers aren’t exactly safe havens. Research shows that America’s high-fire-risk counties saw 63,365 more people move in than out in 2023, much of that flowing to Texas. Meanwhile, my own research and other studies of post-disaster recovery have shown how the most vulnerable communities – low-income residents, people of color, renters – face the greatest barriers to rebuilding after disasters strike.

Consider the insurance crisis brewing in these destination states. Dozens of insurers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and beyond have collapsed in recent years, unable to sustain the mounting claims from increasingly frequent and severe disasters like wildfires and hurricanes. Economists Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder, who study climate change impacts on real estate, describe the insurance markets in some high-risk areas as “broken”. Between 2018 and 2023, insurers canceled nearly 2 million homeowner policies nationwide – four times the historically typical rate.

Yet people keep moving into risky areas. For example, recent research shows that people have been moving toward areas most at risk of wildfires, even holding wealth and other factors constant. The wild beauty of fire-prone areas may be part of the attraction, but so is housing availability and cost.

The policy failures behind the false choice

In my view, this isn’t really about individual choice – it’s about policy failure. The state of California aims to build 2.5 million new homes by 2030, which would require adding more than 350,000 units annually. Yet in 2024, the state only added about 100,000 – falling dramatically short of what’s needed. When local governments restrict housing development through exclusionary zoning, they’re effectively pricing out working families and pushing them toward risk.

My research on disaster recovery has consistently shown how housing policies intersect with climate vulnerability. Communities with limited housing options before disasters become even more constrained afterward. People can’t “choose” resilience if resilient places won’t let them build affordable housing.

The federal government started recognizing this connection – to an extent. For example, in 2023, the Federal Emergency Management Agency encouraged communities to consider “social vulnerability” in disaster planning, in addition to things like geographic risk. Social vulnerability refers to socioeconomic factors like poverty, lack of transportation or language barriers that make it harder for communities to deal with disasters.

However, the agency more recently stepped back from that move – just as the 2025 hurricane season began.

In my view, when a society forces people to choose between paying for housing and staying safe, that society has failed. Housing should be a right, not a risk calculation.

But until decision-makers address the underlying policies that create housing scarcity in safe areas and fail to protect people in vulnerable ones, climate change will continue to reshape who gets to live where – and who gets left behind when the next disaster strikes.

Dr. Ivis García has received funding from the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Institute for Transportation and Communities; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; JPB Foundation; Ford Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation; Chicago Community Trust, SBAN, Texas Appleseed, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, Urban Institute & UNIDOS, and Natural Hazards Center.

– ref. The housing crisis is forcing Americans to choose between affordability and safety – https://theconversation.com/the-housing-crisis-is-forcing-americans-to-choose-between-affordability-and-safety-266136

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Florian Walch, Assistant Professor of Music Theory, West Virginia University

With Mariah Carey and Wham! saturating airwaves with their holiday tunes, it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas.

But if all you want for Christmas is a reprieve from stereotypical Christmas music, you’re not alone.

Despite the fact that they often rebel against conformity and commercialism, many countercultural musicians have been inspired to produce holiday tracks of their own. Because the symbols of Christmas are so widely recognizable, juxtaposing them with the sounds and values of more niche musical styles can have striking effects.

Here’s how genres like roots reggae, thrash metal and pop punk have added new layers to familiar holiday tropes:

A roots reggae Christmas revival

Certain sounds elicit certain expectations.

If you hear sleigh bells and a children’s choir, lyrics about wintry fun can’t be far. If you hear off-beat reggae guitars and Jamaican accents, you’ll probably picture pot and palm trees, not Christmas.

And yet the roots reggae sound of Jacob Miller’s “We Wish You A Irie Christmas” infuses the classic “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with Rastafarian liberation theology.

Singers of the classic carol – which some historians trace to 16th-century England – clamor for figgy pudding, a traditional British Christmas dessert. They refuse to leave until they get their sweets: “We won’t go until we get some / So bring it out here!”

By contrast, Miller’s Christmas is “irie,” which, in Jamaican Patois, roughly translates to contentment and inner peace.

In his version, Miller points out that poverty and joy are not mutually exclusive: “We rub it and dub it to the Christmas ‘pon a broke pocket this year.” He also stresses freedom from material desire: “Don’t kill nuf oneself to buy it all.”

After all, the biblical Christmas in Bethlehem had no toys – and no snow either, just like the Caribbean.

For Rastafarians like Miller, the renewal promised by Christmas was deeply personal. In the track, a word that sounds like “Ice-mas” is actually “I’s-mas.” In Rastafarianism, the “I” is the deity contained in each person. Miller’s Christmas revelers dance to their own divinity, anticipating a return to the promised land.

In doing so, Miller turns a simple, well-worn carol into an anthem of self-worth and liberation.

Thrash metal Christmas horror

Other genres can recast an innocent carol’s lyrics into a horror story.

The 19th-century German carol “Kling, Glöckchen, Klingelingeling” was written from the perspective of the “Christkind,” a Christmas gift-bringer in parts of Europe and South America. This “little Jesus” brings gifts in countries where Santa Claus isn’t part of holiday traditions.

Each stanza is framed by a melody and words that evoke the sounds of a ringing bell, which are reflected in the title. In the carol, the Christkind implores children to let it inside so it doesn’t freeze to death. Next, the Christkind promises gifts in return for being let into the living room. Finally, the Christkind asks the children to open their hearts to it.

Who could corrupt this child-friendly pitch for piety?

Enter Thomas “Angelripper” Such, a former coal miner and the front man of the German thrash metal band Sodom.

Where earlier heavy metal could be gloomy and occult, Sodom raised the temperature even more with gory, blasphemous lyrics, buzzsaw guitars and snarled screams. Sodom’s side project, Onkel Tom Angelripper, has recorded metal versions of popular German songs, including “Kling, Glöckchen, Klingelingeling.”

Without changing the lyrics, the thrash metal sound transforms the carol’s wholesomeness into horror. A twee wind arrangement is cut off by heavy, distorted guitars and a growled “Kling.” Metal musicians often use these sounds to evoke feelings of danger.

Angelripper’s caroler sounds more like a large predator who manipulates and bribes his way into a home. In this framing, the final stanza’s line – “open your hearts to me!” – sounds less like a call for communion and more like an ominous threat of mutilation. It’s a home invasion akin to that in the classic Christmas movie “Home Alone,” but it’s all terror, no humor.

This musical corruption of ambiguous lyrics lays bare the fragility of festive innocence.

Christmas grief gets the punk treatment

There’s a whole catalog of melancholic Christmas songs, from Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” to Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

But few touch on painful themes of substance abuse, suicide and guilt like the raw-yet-catchy “Christmas Vacation” by pop-punk pioneers the Descendents.

For better or worse, many of the Descendents’ songs are unabashedly immature, petulant and sometimes offensive. Yet their boyish bravado puts moments of vulnerability into relief.

“Christmas Vacation” is no different.

Over jangly guitars and sparse bass, front man Milo Aukerman recalls an alcoholic friend or partner who “took a vacation into oblivion.” And while this turn of events wasn’t a surprise to the narrator, that didn’t change anything: “I knew about your plans / I really did understand / But you didn’t let me know / I wasn’t invited to go.”

The lyrics portray a process of ongoing grief. What makes “Christmas Vacation” poignant is its lyrical vacillation. The narrator wonders: Did she leave forever? Will she be back? Is she to blame? Am I?

The vocal harmony in the chorus – a pop punk staple – mirrors this ambivalence. In the track, the joining of voices starts to sound like a wail. An expected feature of pop punk is transformed into a moving expression of grief and loneliness: a common, less celebrated, holiday experience.

Rather than sneer at or mock Christmas, these three tracks give voice to the complicated emotions that can accompany the holidays. Miller evokes gratitude and hope; Angelripper provokes fear and vulnerability; the Descendents dwell on grief and longing. And all three perspectives end up complementing the focus of mainstream music on food, fancy gifts, snow and family.

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

– ref. Tired of the same old Christmas songs? So were these countercultural carolers – https://theconversation.com/tired-of-the-same-old-christmas-songs-so-were-these-countercultural-carolers-270751

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jeremy David Engels, Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication, Penn State

The late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the interconnectedness of everything in this world. He explained how meditation can change our perceptions about the things we encounter in our daily lives by revealing this interdependence.

Take the example of an apple: Before meditation, an apple is just a piece of fruit. During meditation, the meditator sees how deeply the apple is interconnected with the world – the apple would not exist without the rain, the sunshine, the soil and the farmer who planted the seed. These are just a few of the causes and conditions that allow the apple to exist.

The apple is because of all these other things. An apple is not just a piece of fruit. The apple is also part rain, part sunlight, part soil, part farmer.

After meditation, an apple goes back to being an apple again. The meditator continues to call it an “apple,” but they understand its true nature. Hanh calls this sense of connection “interbeing.”

The apple insight applies to any object: a mountain, a river, a tree, a person.

In my research, I explore how the insights gained by practicing meditation can change how we live our daily lives. Inspired by Hanh, in my forthcoming book “On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World,” I explore what happens when we make “interbeing” – or interdependence – the foundation of democracy.

The essence of interbeing

In his book “The Other Shore,” Hanh recounts how he coined the term “interbeing” during a retreat in California in the 1980s, while guiding a mindfulness meditation on the nature of a chair.

He asked his students to look at the chair and notice the trees, sunshine, rain and clouds in it. He then wondered aloud if there was a word in English or French that could capture the reality that a chair is made up of things other than a chair: “I asked if the word ‘togetherness’ would do. Somebody said that it sounded strange, so I suggested the word ‘interbeing.’”

Hanh explains that interbeing means “this is because that is.” No rain means no tree, and no tree means no apple and no chair.

According to Hanh, this knowledge can help us to live a happier life because it reveals the miracle of existence.

Consider all the causes and conditions that had to happen exactly as they did for an apple to exist. Had there been a drought that killed the tree when it was young, or a late spring freeze that stunted the apple flower, or had a person chopped the tree down to make space for a housing development, this particular apple would not exist. The apple is a small miracle composed of many other small miracles.

From what I noticed staying at the Plum Village monastery Hanh established in southern France, people who practice mindfulness meditation in Hanh’s tradition are able to see miracles everywhere, because they recognize interbeing in daily life. Even commonplace activities can become special.

When drinking tea at Plum Village, for example, meditators are encouraged to “drink your cloud,” because the water in the tea was once a cloud that was once a river that will one day again fall from the sky as raindrops nourishing the apple trees.

A person is not (just) a person

The knowledge gained in meditation applies to people, too.

We as human beings are also interbeing. We are not separate from the world or each other. We are mutually interdependent. None of us would exist without rain, sunshine, food, a planet Earth – and the efforts of other people, including parents, neighbors, teachers, scientists, farmers and doctors.

A person is more than a single, solitary individual. We contain multitudes.

Seen from this perspective, being a human is miraculous. Think of how the stars had to align so that each of us could be here today. Had the Earth been a little farther from the Sun, or one of our ancestors slipped and fallen down a cliff before their children were conceived, we wouldn’t be here at all.

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is to walk on earth,” Hanh wrote in his book “The Miracle of Mindfulness.” Each breath, each step, becomes a miracle in this practice of meditation.

Mindful democracy

Many of Hanh’s writings and talks were focused on drawing out the civic and ethical implications of interbeing. He believed that a better, more just world is possible if people are committed to cultivating an awareness of “the interconnectedness of all things.”

Everything is interdependent, so it’s not enough to focus on individual well-being while ignoring the well-being of others or the world.

“With the insight of interbeing – that we are inherently interconnected with all other beings – we know that when other people suffer less, we suffer less. And when we suffer less, other people suffer less,” Hanh observed.

As I explain in my new book, “On Mindful Democracy,” to foreground interbeing changes democracy.

It’s common today to talk about democracy as a partisan conflict and to interpret events through the lens of which party will win.

From the perspective of interbeing, we are interdependent, so we all win, or we all lose, together. To practice meditation is to see that underneath our partisan disagreements, we are interconnected. I therefore define mindful democracy as the practice of caring for each other and for the miraculous life we share.

Concretely, this means building welcoming, vibrant communities where people can meditate on interbeing together. It means learning to disagree – and still work together to reduce suffering – without turning each other into enemies.

Life is a shared project, and all of us benefit when we cooperate to ensure that there is less suffering, and more joy, in the world.

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

– ref. Meditating on the connectedness of life could help reunite a divided country – here’s how ‘interbeing’ works – https://theconversation.com/meditating-on-the-connectedness-of-life-could-help-reunite-a-divided-country-heres-how-interbeing-works-269919

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Southern California

When people use hand gestures that visually represent what they’re saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent and persuasive. That’s the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication.

Talking with your hands

Whether you’re giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what you’ll say. But what about the ways you’ll move your hands?

I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United States, I’ve become acutely aware of how cultures differ in how, and how much, people move their hands when they talk. Still, across contexts and cultures, one thing is constant: People do talk with their hands.

As someone who studies communication, I’d noticed how some speakers seemed instantly clearer when they gestured. This made me wonder: Do gestures actually make communicators more effective?

The short answer is yes, but only when the gestures visually represent the idea you’re talking about. Researchers call these movements “illustrators.” For example:

• When talking about distance, you might spread your hands apart while saying something is “farther away.”
• When explaining how two concepts relate, you might bring your hands together while saying “these ideas fit together.”
• When describing how the market demand “is going up and down,” you could visually depict a wave shape with your hands.

To study gestures at scale, my team and I analyzed 200,000 video segments from more than 2,000 TED Talks using AI tools that can detect and classify hand gestures frame by frame. We paired this with controlled experiments in which our study participants evaluated entrepreneurs pitching a product.

The same pattern of results appeared in both settings. In the AI-analyzed TED Talk data, illustrative gestures predicted higher audience evaluations, reflected in more than 33 million online “likes” of the videos. And in our experiments, 1,600 participants rated speakers who used illustrative gestures as more clear, competent and persuasive.

How hands can help get your point across

What I found is that these gestures give listeners a visual shortcut to your meaning. They make abstract ideas feel more concrete, helping listeners build a mental picture of what you’re saying. This makes the message feel easier to process – a phenomenon psychologists call “processing fluency.” And we found that when ideas feel easier to grasp, people tend to see the speaker as more competent and persuasive.

But not all gestures help. Movements that don’t match the message – like random waving, fidgeting or pointing to things in the space – offer no such benefit. In some cases, they can even distract.

A practical takeaway: Focus on clarity over choreography. Think about where your hands naturally illustrate what you’re saying – emphasizing size, direction or emotion – and let them move with purpose.

What’s next

Your hands aren’t just accessories to your words. They can be a powerful tool to make your ideas resonate.

I’m now investigating whether people can learn to gesture better – almost like developing a nonverbal vocabulary. Early pilot tests are promising: Even a 5-minute training session helps people become clearer and more effective through the use of appropriate hand gestures.

While my research examined how individual gestures work together with spoken language, the next step is to understand what makes a communicator effective with their voice and, ultimately, across all the channels they use to communicate – how gestures combine with voice, facial expressions and body movement. I’m now exploring AI tools that track all these channels at once so I can identify the patterns, not just the isolated gestures, that make speakers more effective communicators.

Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. People who talk with their hands seem more clear and persuasive – new research – https://theconversation.com/people-who-talk-with-their-hands-seem-more-clear-and-persuasive-new-research-270352