Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ahmed Helal, Research Scientist, The University of Texas at Austin

If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you’ll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped building. What you won’t see is what’s underneath you. Two floors below ground, behind heavy double doors stamped with a logo that most students have never noticed, sits one of the most powerful lasers in the United States.

I was the lead laser scientist on the Texas Petawatt, or TPW as we called it, from 2020 to 2024. Texas Petawatt, which is currently closed due to funding cuts, was a government-funded research center where scientists from across the country applied for time to use specialized equipment. It was part of LaserNetUS, a Department of Energy network of high-power laser labs.

This type of laser takes a tiny pulse of light, stretches it out so it doesn’t blast optics to pieces, and amplifies it until, for a brief instant, it carries more power than the entire U.S. electrical grid. Then it compresses the pulse back to a trillionth of a second to create a star in a vacuum chamber.

On a typical shot day, the target might be a piece of metal foil thinner than a human hair, a jet of gas or a tiny plastic pellet – each designed to answer a different scientific question.

Scientists from across the country applied for time on TPW to study everything from the physics of stellar interiors and fusion energy to new approaches for cancer treatment.

Most people hear about petawatt lasers and picture something out of a movie. A “shot day” is actually hours of quiet, repetitive work followed by about 10 seconds where nobody breathes.

I now work as a research scientist at the University of Texas-Austin, studying the interaction of lasers with different materials, but a typical shot day during my time running TPW would look like this:

7 a.m.

I arrive two hours before the first scheduled shot. I put on my gown, boots and hairnet and step into the cold clean room. The laser doesn’t just turn on. You coax it awake.

I start with the oscillator, a small box that generates the first seed of light. I write down the parameters that define how the laser will behave during the shot: energy, center frequency, vacuum pressure in the tubes, cooling water level and flow. At this stage, they are fixed regardless of the experiment. The laser must perform the same way every time before the science can begin. Then I fire up the pump laser that will amplify this tiny pulse from nanojoules to about half a joule.

The system needs at least 30 minutes to stabilize. During that time, I check alignment through every pinhole and every camera along the beam path. A slight misalignment at this stage isn’t just a problem; it can be catastrophic – a mispointed beam at full power can burn through optics that take months to source and replace, setting the entire laser back.

Building the beam

Once the system is warmed up, I send the beam into the first amplifier: a glass rod surrounded by bright flash lamps that pump light into the glass – like charging a battery. With each pass, the beam absorbs energy from the glass and grows stronger. Then the beam travels into a larger rod, where it makes four passes, picking up more energy each time until it reaches about 12 joules, roughly the energy of a ball thrown hard across a room.

This process alone takes the better part of an hour, most of it spent checking and confirming alignment and energy at each stage.

I expand the beam and send it through the final stage: the disk amplifiers. Two amplifiers, each consisting of two massive 30-centimeter glass disks, are pumped by a huge bank of flash lamps powered by capacitor banks – essentially giant batteries that store electrical energy and release it in a sudden burst. They are so large that they have their own room on a separate floor. Fast optical shutters between each stage act as gates, controlling exactly when and where the beam travels.

The shot

When the experimental team confirms that the target is in position, it asks me to prepare for a system shot. I run through the long checklist. We test the shutters and switch to system shot mode. Every monitor in the facility changes to display the same message – “System Shot Mode” – and flashes red.

I lean into the microphone at the control desk, a vintage piece that looks like it belongs in a World War II radio room, and announce that we’re going into a system shot. Then I open the compressor beam dump: a heavy glass plate that normally blocks the beam from reaching the target. It takes about two minutes to move.

“Sweeping, sweeping for a system shot.”

The announcement goes out over speakers across the facility. I grab a small interlock key, put on my laser safety goggles and head downstairs. I walk a specific pattern through every room, checking that nobody is still inside. As I go, I lock each door with the key. If anyone opens one of those doors after I’ve locked them, the entire shot sequence aborts.

Back in the control room, I sit down and start charging the capacitor banks. At this point, there’s no going back except for an emergency shutdown, and that means losing the shot and waiting for everything to cool down.

“Charging.”

The room goes silent. Everyone’s eyes are on the monitors. Nobody talks.

I typically will share a glance with the researcher whose project the shot is for – today it’s Joe, a visiting scientist from Los Alamos National Lab, who designed the target we’re about to vaporize. He’s gripping his coffee cup like it owes him money. I turn back to the console.

“Charge complete. Firing system shot in three, two, one. Fire.”

I press the button. A loud thud rolls through the building as all that stored energy dumps into the beam. The monitors freeze, capturing everything at the moment of the shot: beam profiles, spectra, diagnostics – these metrics provide a full picture of exactly how the laser performed and whether the shot was clean. Downstairs, in the vacuum chamber, a spot smaller than a human hair just reached temperatures measured in millions of degrees.

I lean back in my chair and start recording laser parameters as everyone exhales. A radiation safety officer heads down first to check readings around the target chamber before anyone else can enter. The experimental team follows to collect data.

Sometimes it all works perfectly. Sometimes a shutter fails to open and you lose the shot.

For example, one afternoon in 2023, we’d spent three hours preparing for a high-priority shot. Target aligned. Capacitors charged. I pressed the button and heard nothing. A shutter had failed somewhere in the chain. The monitors stayed frozen, showing black. Nobody said anything. I wrote SHOT FAILED in the logbook and started the hourlong cooldown sequence. That’s the part they don’t show in movies: sitting in silence, waiting to try again. We got the shot four hours later.

This anticipation is all part of the job: hours of patience for 10 seconds you never quite get used to. Everything happens underneath a campus where thousands of people walk above, unaware that for a fraction of a second, a tiny point of matter hotter than the surface of the Sun just existed below their feet.

Ahmed Helal is currently the Founder and CEO of Photonics Dynamics LLC, a consulting company.

– ref. I’ve fired one of America’s most powerful lasers – here’s what a shot day looks like – https://theconversation.com/ive-fired-one-of-americas-most-powerful-lasers-heres-what-a-shot-day-looks-like-279520

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Zelalem Bedaso, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

Teeth are like tiny biological time capsules. They tell stories about ancient diets and environments long after their owners have died and landscapes have changed.

After bones break down, tooth enamel stays hard and unchanged, even in fossilized teeth that have been buried under sediment and rock for millions of years and are now being uncovered by erosion or excavation.

Tooth enamel forms when an animal is young, and it remains chemically stable for the rest of that animal’s life. The food an animal eats and the water it drinks during its youth leave chemical signals within the enamel.

Because of that, hidden within the enamel of fossilized teeth, scientists can find traces of extinct forests, expanding savanna grasslands, shifting climates and evolving animal communities.

Over the past 30 years, my colleagues and I have been analyzing chemical traces in fossil teeth from Ethiopia’s Afar region in the East African Rift Valley – often referred to as the cradle of humanity – to uncover what animals ate there millions of years ago, around the time early human ancestors were evolving, and what the world looked like around them.

These clues from ancient meals are enabling scientists to reconstruct pictures of entire ecosystems, including forests, wetlands and grasslands that existed at the time. It’s a reminder that in a very real sense, organisms are what they eat.

Traces of ancient diets in fossil teeth

To determine which plants ancient animals ate, my colleagues and I collect a small amount of enamel powder from fossilized teeth. We then analyze this powder in the laboratory using specialized instruments that detect chemical signals preserved in the enamel.

Trees and grasses have different ways of using photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy. These methods leave distinct chemical patterns in plant tissues, which then become incorporated into the teeth of animals that eat those plants.

By examining these chemical patterns in tooth enamel, we can determine whether animals primarily fed on trees and shrubs or on grass, providing insight into the vegetation that once covered the ancient landscape.

We can then figure out how an environment changed over time by collecting fossil teeth from different rock layers. Each layer formed at a different time in the past, so teeth found in deeper layers are typically older than those closer to the surface.

By analyzing tooth enamel from fossils across these layers, we can compare the chemical signals preserved in the teeth and see how animal diets and the plants growing in the landscape changed through time.

Adding that knowledge to data from different types of fossils, we can track long-term shifts in vegetation, climate and ecosystems.

A changing landscape in the last 4 million years

Four million years ago, the Afar region looked very different from the dry landscape you will see there today.

Fossils, including tooth enamel, reveal that the area supported a diverse range of environments. Rivers flowed through wooded areas, lakes were scattered across the landscape, and grassy plains stretched across the basin.

Fossilized teeth from animals like antelopes, giraffes, pigs, horses, hippos and elephants show a wide range of diets. Some animals browsed on leaves and shrubs, while others grazed on grass in open habitats.

The chemical signals in the teeth indicate that grasslands were expanding at the time, but forests still played an important role. They show that animals moved through this environment and adapted to the food sources around them.

Around 2 million to 3 million years ago, the environment shifted more drastically toward open grasslands.

The East African Rift Valley gets its shape from three tectonic plates that have been slowly pulling apart. This tectonic activity has changed the landscape over time, altering the regional climate and drainage. Two to three million years ago, it helped shift environments from more wooded habitats to a mix of grasslands and open savannas.

Animals that relied on grass flourished, and the populations of those that didn’t adapt declined. Horses and certain antelopes, for example, developed teeth that could grind tough, gritty plants. This adaptation is recorded on their enamel.

Early humans in a mosaic world

Early human ancestors, like the famous “Lucy,” whose skeleton was discovered in the Afar region, lived in this dynamic landscape.

Fossil teeth from Australopithecus afraensis, an early human that lived in eastern Africa between about 2.9 million and 3.8 million years ago, indicate that early human relatives did not rely heavily on grass. Instead, the chemical signal in their enamel indicates mixed diets and dietary flexibility, which included fruits, leaves and roots, depending on what was available.

In a landscape that combined woodland patches and open savanna, that adaptability may have been key to survival.

This period of environmental change coincided with several important evolutionary developments and morphological changes in pre-humans. Early human ancestors were walking upright. Brain size also gradually increased, allowing for more complex behavior and problem-solving.

During this time, early humans began making and using stone tools, marking a major step in technological innovation and helping them adapt to changing environments.

Diet shapes destiny

The dietary changes in the East African Rift Valley over the past 4 million years, documented through tooth enamel, are providing important clues for reconstructing the environment in which humans’ ancestors lived and how those environments changed.

They also show that species that adjusted their diets as landscapes changed were the ones most likely to survive.

This ongoing research helps explore profound questions of how environmental shifts shaped life on Earth, including human trajectories. And that is helping humanity unlock its collective past.

Zelalem Bedaso 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. Ancient teeth reveal clues to the environment humans’ early ancestors evolved in millions of years ago – https://theconversation.com/ancient-teeth-reveal-clues-to-the-environment-humans-early-ancestors-evolved-in-millions-of-years-ago-279544

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joshua Vadeboncoeur, Assistant Professor of Sport Management, Gardner-Webb University

Across the United States, the local auto racing tracks that have anchored rural and working-class communities for generations are disappearing.

Some have lost out to real estate developers when suburban sprawl makes the land beneath them too valuable to ignore. Others are strangled, slowly, by noise complaints and nuisance lawsuits filed by residents who moved to the area long after the track had been built.

Now, state legislatures are pushing back. From Georgia to Wisconsin, lawmakers have been introducing so-called “right to race” bills.

Over the past year, at least 13 state legislatures have put forward bills shielding racetracks from nuisance lawsuits filed by property owners who moved into the area after the track was built. These follow the passage of similar legislation in Iowa and North Carolina in 2025.

As a historian and analyst of American stock car racing, I’ve been watching this legislation closely.

The argument being made inside these statehouses is a legal one. But what’s really being contested is something older and harder to legislate: whose idea of a place is preserved, and whose vision is pushed to its margins.

What these laws do

For nearby residents, the impacts of a racetrack can be difficult to ignore. Events are often loud and sometimes unpredictable, and they can run for hours. And the surrounding roads can be clogged with traffic before and after events.

That said, there is a long-standing legal principle known as “coming to the nuisance.” This holds that someone who moves next to existing businesses or infrastructure – whether they’re factories, racetracks, train tracks or airports – cannot then sue over disturbances from their regular operation.

In practice, however, that principle has frequently failed to protect tracks.

Old Dominion Speedway in northern Virginia, opened in the 1950s, was ultimately relocated south to Thornburg, where a new facility opened in 2016, after noise complaints from a nearby townhouse development proved impossible to satisfy.

In Asheville, North Carolina, an environmental nonprofit channeled the opposition of newer residents into a campaign against the New Asheville Speedway. The city ultimately purchased the track’s land in 1998 and converted it into a public park.

Onondaga Dragway in Ingham County, Michigan, which had reopened in 2013 after an earlier closure, spent the next 12 years locked in legal proceedings with neighboring residents before a judge finally ordered it shuttered in 2025. Onondaga’s closure directly prompted Michigan’s right to race legislation.

At their core, right to race bills establish that if a racetrack was lawfully built and operating before a neighboring property owner purchased or developed their land, that owner cannot bring nuisance claims against the facility.

Iowa’s law, signed in May 2025, passed unanimously in both chambers – 45-0 in the Senate and 92-0 in the House. North Carolina’s followed in September 2025, and Kansas enacted similar legislation in April 2026.

The Specialty Equipment Market Association has lobbied for the bills, arguing that they address the same problem that spurred a spate of “right to farm” legislation in the 1970s and ’80s. These laws shielded farmers from nuisance complaints due to odors, noise, dust and slow-moving farm vehicles on local roads.

Right to race legislation hasn’t been politically controversial, in part because it is often framed as a matter of common sense.

As Michigan state Sen. Roger Hauck put it, “I don’t think it’s fair to a business that’s been zoned to be there legally by the township to have someone start complaining about the noise of the racetrack when it’s been there since before the person has been there.”

Still, the bills are not identical, and the differences matter.

Michigan’s bills and Kentucky’s bill extend immunity regardless of any future changes to a facility, meaning a track that dramatically expands its operations would still be shielded.

A more limited approach was proposed in Georgia – though the bill ultimately failed to advance before the April 2026 deadline – which would have preserved the right to sue if an existing track expanded its footprint.

More expansive versions of these bills have drawn concern in some cases. In Wisconsin, for example, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a similar bill after it passed the Legislature, arguing it would create “unfair and unnecessary hurdles for people pursuing legal avenues to vindicate the use and enjoyment of their land.”

Land value, not noise, is the real threat

While noise complaints and nuisance suits are the immediate trigger of many track closures, they are often symptoms of a deeper economic pressure: land value.

The land that racetracks sit on – large, often flat, typically in areas that were once rural but no longer are – has become extraordinarily attractive to developers. And while housing has been the traditional threat, new ones have emerged.

Warehouses and logistics facilities have taken up land on the outskirts of American cities over the past decade. More recently, the explosion of aritificial intelligence infrastructure investment has compelled developers of data centers to seek out vast tracts of land.

Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina, the site of NASCAR’s first live televised race in 1971, has been dormant since 2022 as its future became entangled in a potential sale. It’s facing conversion into an industrial park, led by a prospective buyer rather than pressure from nuisance lawsuits. Local supporters have rallied to preserve the site, and county officials have taken steps toward recognizing it as a historic property, but those efforts don’t prevent a private sale or redevelopment. South Carolina’s HB 4706 targets nuisance lawsuits, not private sales or redevelopment, meaning it offers no protection in cases like this.

Nashville’s Fairgrounds Speedway, which has hosted racing since 1904 on city-owned property, isn’t being threatened by a private nuisance suit. Instead, its future is in doubt due to a charter amendment campaign – a ballot-driven effort that would eliminate the site’s designation for auto racing, potentially opening the door to redevelopment.

What communities stand to lose

In my view, most of the bills – even if they don’t say it explicitly – are about whether communities that have grown up around local racetracks have any legitimate claim on the continued existence of those tracks.

As one supporter in the ongoing Greenville-Pickens debate put it, the track is “more than just a racetrack to us. It’s a place where we can actually go and actually talk to others that have the same interests and passion about racing.”

Another supporter plainly said that Greenville-Pickens “is far more than a racetrack. It is the center of our world.”

Research shows that when shared social spaces disappear, the community life built around them does not simply find a new home. And in my ongoing research on grassroots racing, I’ve explored how local tracks function as some of the last spaces in American working-class life where people gather not as passive consumers but as active participants – as drivers, crew members, track workers and fans.

Owosso Speedway Operations Lead Dennis Wheeler, speaking in support of Michigan’s right to race legislation, described his track as not just a racetrack but a “small business … an employer, a tourism driver and a gathering place for families across mid-Michigan.”

These bills address the nuisance lawsuit problem, which is real. But rarely do they address land value, which is often the bigger driver of track closures. Nor do they create any funding mechanism to help tracks modernize or survive economically. And finally, they do not require that developers notify homebuyers of nearby racing facilities.

For now, it’s clear that pressure from real estate developers is threatening something that took generations to build. The bills moving through statehouses this year represent an attempt to fight back.

Some of them are well crafted and appropriately limited. Others are blunt instruments that could create their own problems. But all of them are arriving late, after many tracks have already closed and after many communities have already lost something they cannot get back.

Joshua Vadeboncoeur 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. ‘Right to race’ laws and the battle over America’s local racetracks – https://theconversation.com/right-to-race-laws-and-the-battle-over-americas-local-racetracks-278034

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Omayma Alshaarawy, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Michigan State University

Have you been to a licensed cannabis dispensary lately?

My team and I often visit them in the Greater Lansing area to invite cannabis users to participate in our studies. As soon as we walk in, we are met with a dazzling array of products: high-potency vape cartridges, gourmet gummies, premium marijuana flowers and more.

This broad array of choice is common in Michigan, a state where per capita sales now rank among the nation’s highest. I confess I look at those shelves with some professional frustration. As a Michigan State University researcher who has spent nearly two decades studying cannabis use and human health, I face severe restrictions under federal law that mean I cannot study the products that so many of my neighbors are buying.

Under federal law, cannabis is a Schedule I drug. According to this designation, cannabis has “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use,” even though millions of Americans consume it every day. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin and LSD.

In my view, a proposal to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III represents a significant, though incomplete, step forward. The change was introduced during the Biden administration and supported by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in late 2025, but it seems stalled in a regulatory morass.

For researchers like me, whose work is rooted in understanding how this widely available substance affects the health of Michiganders, the change opens some doors while leaving other critical barriers intact.

1 in 6 pregnant Michiganders use cannabis

Michigan’s robust legal market has recently seen a wave of dispensary closures due to oversaturation and falling prices. However, access is still widespread.

Cannabis is widely consumed in Michigan’s diverse communities, from Detroit to the Upper Peninsula. Data that my colleagues and I have collected confirm that use is not only high overall but notably prevalent among specific populations, including older adults and pregnant women.

As more women of reproductive age use cannabis, it becomes more important to research how prenatal exposure affects the health of mothers and babies. This will allow researchers to provide clear information to families across Michigan who are making decisions in a landscape where cannabis is legally accessible and socially normalized.

However, federal law limits researchers to cannabis samples provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which often bears little resemblance to the products Michiganders are actually using. The institute supplies low-potency, standardized products, while the commercial market is flooded with high-potency concentrates, edibles and vapes. This limits the real-world applicability of our findings.

Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, nausea

Much of my research focuses on cannabis use by people with chronic disease. Michigan legalized the recreational use of cannabis in 2018 by popular referendum, and use is highly prevalent among middle-aged and older adults.

At the same time, Michigan grapples with a high burden of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The risk of these conditions increases with age. In southeast Michigan, this burden is even more acute. A Forbes analysis ranked Detroit as the least healthy city in the nation, with the highest rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. These conditions disproportionately affect Black residents, who make up nearly 80% of the city’s population.

A significant portion of my research seeks to clarify the effects of cannabis use on heart health. This work is particularly urgent in Michigan, where the rates of heart disease are persistently high. Moving cannabis to Schedule III would facilitate larger, more rigorous longitudinal studies, like my team’s Cannabis Legalization in Michigan, or CALM, cohort. For instance, if a Michigander has high blood pressure and uses high-THC vape products, we want to know how that affects their heart health compared to using other forms of the drug. We cannot design a rigorous study answering this question because we are barred from using the specific products consumers purchase in dispensaries.

My research team and others are also investigating cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition characterized by cycles of severe nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain that can result from chronic cannabis use. As regular cannabis use grows among Michiganders, understanding who is at risk and how to treat this debilitating syndrome has become a critical clinical priority.

Hurdles will remain

Even when rescheduling happens, significant barriers to cannabis research will remain.

Schedule III was designed for prescription pharmaceuticals, such as steroids and testosterone, not for a substance available at a store down the street. Moving cannabis to Schedule III does not resolve the fundamental conflict between federal drug policy and real-world consumption in Michigan and around the U.S.

The mismatch between federal law and the patchwork of state cannabis policies will also mean that federally funded, multisite studies remain limited to states where cannabis is fully legal, narrowing the geographical scope and diversity of our research. It also does not eliminate the unique administrative burdens that apply only to cannabis research. Those burdens add years and drive up the cost of studies that are urgently needed. For example, researchers often face lengthy federal review delays before a study can begin.

Researchers could do more useful studies using the products that consumers buy in their own neighborhoods. This would be made possible by removing lengthy federal review requirements, a change that would require congressional action.

The Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act of 2022 was a step in this direction. It aimed to streamline the application process for researchers and expand the supply of research-grade cannabis. However, it did not eliminate the fundamental Schedule I classification or the redundant federal reviews that continue to delay research.

For the people of Michigan, where cannabis is easy to buy and chronic disease is common, these policy restrictions leave families without the science they need to make informed decisions.

Omayma Alshaarawy receives funding from the US National Institute of Health and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

– ref. Cannabis sales and use are high in Michigan – but federal law means research lags behind – https://theconversation.com/cannabis-sales-and-use-are-high-in-michigan-but-federal-law-means-research-lags-behind-276731

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Febe Armanios, Professor of History, Middlebury College

When the United States and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, images of smoke billowing over Iranian cities began to dominate the news. But another feature of those skylines has remained constant: the thousands of satellite dishes that dot Tehran’s rooftops, picking up signals that originate far beyond Iran’s borders – despite attempts to confiscate them.

For two decades, Christian television channels produced in the United States and Europe have made their way into Iranian homes. Some of this programming echoes apocalyptic ideas from American figures promoting the war, drawing on scriptural interpretations long present in evangelical teachings. Writer Hal Lindsey popularized such ideas in the 1970s with “The Late Great Planet Earth,” a best-selling book that cast Persia as the foretold antagonist in an imminent end-times conflict that would usher in Jesus’ second coming.

In my 2025 book, “Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East,” I show how these broadcasts became tools for spreading such messages to Christians and potential converts – positioning the region at the center of a long-running “faith war.”

Satellite missions

Of course, Christianity itself was born in the Middle East, and the region’s deep, diverse traditions long predate any Western missionary activity. Ancient communities such as the Assyrians, Copts, Maronites and Armenians have preserved their liturgical and theological heritage across generations, and form some of the oldest continuous Christian traditions in the world.

But evangelical churches have proselytized in the region for two centuries. Over the past 50 years, evangelical media outlets have flourished during moments of conflict and where weak government control has created openings for proselytism.

During the Lebanese Civil War, which took place from 1975-1991, U.S. evangelicals such as former business executive George Otis and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson established the channel now known as Middle East Television. The Christian network transmitted its signal from Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon from 1981 to 2000, operating in a legal gray area that bypassed Israeli and Lebanese media regulations.

The station’s primary goal was to convert Israeli Jews to Christianity and, in doing so, to help trigger a series of end‑times events. This ambition was consistent with prophetic frameworks popular in American evangelical churches at the time.

A similar pattern emerged after 9/11 and during the Iraq War that began in 2003. Like many other evangelicals, Paul Crouch, founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, believed the U.S. invasion was an opportunity to launch “spiritual warfare” – a battle between good and evil in the Middle East. He visited Iraq and distributed satellite television equipment so locals could receive evangelical programming in Arabic.

Many evangelicals interpreted the Iraq conflict through an apocalyptic lens, viewing the turmoil as evidence of biblical prophecy. Some, like Oklahoma pastor Mark Hitchcock, even claimed that the fall of Baghdad and the toppling of Saddam Hussein echoed scriptural descriptions of destroying “Babylon” before Christ’s return.

This proved to be a powerful fundraising tool among North American donors eager to accelerate what they saw as a divine timetable.

Persian broadcasts

In Iran, Western evangelicalism’s history dates to the 19th century. But arguably its most striking form emerged about two decades ago, when Christian networks began using new technologies to get around decades of restrictions in media and religion.

After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic allowed Armenian and Assyrian Christians to practice their ancient faiths in their own languages. The government officially recognizes them as religious minorities. However, it effectively criminalized Protestant activities in Persian, which it associated with Western missions.

Because evangelicals – a small fraction of Iran’s Christian believers – relied on Persian for worship, the prohibition led to church closures, the persecution of their leaders and a strict ban on missionary activities. Converting from Islam to another religion is illegal in Iran, and converts risk punishment.

By 2006, Christian organizations abroad turned to satellite broadcasts as an easier way of reaching Iranian audiences. Satellite dishes, though officially prohibited, were widespread and difficult for authorities to control. Tracking who actually watches these channels is extremely difficult, but producers claim that Christian broadcasts helped foster secretive house churches across Iran.

Huddled in living rooms, often guided by television programs and companion WhatsApp groups, believers held Bible studies and group prayers. Many converts kept their beliefs hidden to avoid persecution.

While precise numbers are difficult to confirm, Western governments and human rights groups have reported a rise in arrests of converts over the years. Some of those organizations say the Islamic Republic has accused converts of collaborating with foreign agents.

3 channels

As I discuss in my book, three major Persian Christian channels illustrate different approaches to this digital mission work.

SAT-7 PARS, founded by British missionary Terence Ascott and a coalition of Western evangelical organizations, adopted a cautious strategy that, according to the channel’s slogan, aimed to “make God’s love visible.” It emphasized children’s programming and shows highlighting Western ideas about women’s rights and family life. Even this softer approach faced resistance: In its early years, SAT-7’s translation offices in Tehran were repeatedly raided, staff members were detained, and translation operations were relocated to England and Cyprus.

Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Nejat, which means “salvation,” and the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Mohabat TV, which means “love,” embraced a more confrontational stance. Reza Safa, an Iranian convert who became a Pentecostal preacher in Sweden and the United States, partnered with Crouch to launch Nejat. Safa portrayed Christianity as locked in a struggle with what he called the “demonic” forces of extremist Islam.

Mohabat TV also emphasized elements of this spiritual warfare, as well as miraculous “signs and wonders.” The channel documented secret baptisms of Iranian converts.

Perhaps the most provocative development has been the introduction of Christian Zionist teachings into Iranian satellite feeds. Christian Zionism teaches that the modern state of Israel plays a central role in biblical prophecy. In recent years, Mohabat TV has aired high-production documentaries such as “In the Footsteps of Jesus,” a Persian-language film about the “Holy Land” that portrays Israel not as a political adversary, but as a nation all Christians must cherish.

Language of war

At the start of the 2026 war, the Yahsat satellite service – an Emirati carrier that hosts Persian-language Christian channels, among other feeds – experienced disruptions. The Iranian government has often been accused of jamming satellite signals.

Meanwhile, religious language about the conflict continues to escalate in American politics, with some evangelical commentators referencing apocalyptic prophecies.

Since the early 1980s, evangelical TV ministries in the region have advanced a similar message about politics, religion and the end times – under the banner of conversion.

Febe Armanios 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. Christian satellite TV has broadcast evangelical faith – and end-times prophecies – into Iran for decades – https://theconversation.com/christian-satellite-tv-has-broadcast-evangelical-faith-and-end-times-prophecies-into-iran-for-decades-280349

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Heather Hensman Kettrey, Associate Professor of Sociology, Clemson University

Sexual misconduct – including sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and sexual assault – is a common problem on U.S. college campuses.

According to the 2024 Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness Survey, about 1 in 5 women and transgender or nonbinary undergraduates experienced sexual assault during college. The survey included 180,323 undergraduate, graduate and professional students across 10 schools. One in 17 undergraduate men also reported experiencing sexual assault.

Despite how common these experiences are, only 16% of sexual misconduct victims reported the incident to a school resource, like campus police or a student counseling office. Among those who did seek formal support, fewer than half found the advice or support given to be helpful.

As a sociologist, psychologist and Ph.D. student who study sexual harm, we wanted to understand how members of a campus community expected their university would support students who experience sexual misconduct.

We found that many students, whether or not they had experienced sexual misconduct themselves or knew someone who had, did not trust their university to handle these situations appropriately.

Understanding people’s perceptions

In 2022, we surveyed about 2,500 students at a large U.S. university to examine their experiences and perceptions of sexual misconduct.

Before our 2022 survey, we also conducted interviews and focus groups with a separate group of 67 students, faculty and staff at the same university. These conversations provided detailed insights that helped us better understand our survey findings.

Because we were interested in general perceptions of university support, participants did not need to have personal experience with sexual misconduct.

We asked participants how they believed their university would support students who experienced sexual assault or other forms of sexual harm.

Although our questions focused on sexual misconduct, many participants brought up how their university handled other types of harm, such as racism and anti-LGBTQ+ incidents. They used these observations to surmise how they believed university officials might respond to sexual misconduct.

Lacking trust in their schools

Research shows that anywhere between 50% to 90% of college students who experience sexual assault also feel institutional betrayal.

Institutional betrayal refers to situations in which people feel their school or another institution failed to protect them from harm or to respond adequately after harm occurred.

Both sexual misconduct and institutional betrayal are linked to anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms and other negative mental health outcomes.

While some participants shared their own experiences of sexual misconduct, many displayed what scholars call secondary institutional betrayal. This occurs when people feel betrayed based on how they see their institution respond to others who have been harmed.

Anticipating a negative response

Many of those we talked to said they believed their university often responded inadequately to sexual misconduct.

Participants in our interviews and focus groups also pointed to what they saw as inadequate responses to other types of harm.

For example, multiple participants described their university failing to reprimand a student group for using words like “degeneracy” and “deviant” to publicly shame LGBTQ+ students.

Participants felt that their university’s failure to address harmful behavior signaled a lack of support for victims of sexual misconduct.

“If the university isn’t going to socially advocate for these students in terms of injustice and discrimination, what makes us think that they would trust us and validate us in situations of sexual violence?” one student said.

A common theme from our interviews and focus groups was that participants believed their university avoided addressing harmful behavior because administrators prioritized the institution’s reputation over student well-being. They described the university as risk-averse, seeking to stay out of the news and avoid lawsuits.

In the words of one participant, the university does more to exercise “damage control” than to “try and help the victim.”

Different kinds of harm are connected

Our study was conducted with a small sample on a single campus.

However, we suspect that our findings may be valuable to other college campuses.

Research shows that different forms of harm are connected: Sexual misconduct is more common on campuses where more students report discrimination based on marginalized identities.

For this reason, some scholars have recommended addressing sexual misconduct and discrimination simultaneously.

This approach may become more difficult in light of a 2025 Trump administration executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Since the order was issued, universities have largely eliminated programs that support marginalized students. For example, some campuses have closed women’s centers and multicultural centers, leaving fewer avenues to report discrimination.

Universities could explore other ways to promote inclusion and protect students from harm.

For instance, universities could hold community meetings to better understand students’ experiences of harm on campus. They could also reach out to students and other community members to gather ideas for improvement.

These suggestions are starting points and have not yet been formally tested. It is important for campus administrators and researchers to evaluate strategies that prevent harm – both physical and otherwise – and to strengthen trust across the campus community.

Heather Hensman Kettrey has received funding from the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. The perspectives expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the perspectives of their employer.

Heidi Zinzow receives funding from the South Carolina Opioid Recovery Funds, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The perspectives expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the perspectives of their employer.

The perspectives expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the perspectives of their employee.

– ref. Students expect their university will mishandle sexual misconduct, if they ever report it – https://theconversation.com/students-expect-their-university-will-mishandle-sexual-misconduct-if-they-ever-report-it-279739

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Marccus D. Hendricks, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Environmental Planning, University of Maryland

When 240 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., starting in mid-January 2026 and running though mid-March, it was estimated to be the largest sewage spill in U.S. history. But it wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last.

In fact, around the nation, sewage spills are contaminating waterways and communities with unsettling frequency. Sewer systems are designed to be invisible. If toilets flush, most people forget they exist. This invisibility has contributed to chronic underinvestment. Pipes, pump stations and treatment facilities around the country were built in the mid-20th century and are now at or beyond their designed lifespan.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, a series of sewer main breaks in the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, led to the release of approximately 219 million gallons of raw sewage into environmentally sensitive waterways. In 2021, the Los Angeles Hyperion Water Reclamation Facility spilled 12.5 million gallons of untreated wastewater into Santa Monica Bay. These events were the results of various aspects of underinvestment, including deferred maintenance and upkeep, delayed replacement and capacities too low for current needs.

The D.C. spill dumped the equivalent of three days’ worth of sewage from 800,000 average U.S. homes, enough to fill 360 Olympic-size swimming pools with raw waste.

As an environmental planning scholar and former senior adviser for the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, I have seen how serious these events can be. But any tallying of sewage spills must also include floods, disasters and heavy rainfalls that have caused backups and overflows of various sizes in cities across the country.

What causes sewer overflows?

Sewer pipes overflow when pipes crack or collapse, or when the flow is blocked and waste backs up into the streets, local waterways or even homes, spreading bacteria and other contamination wherever the water reaches.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are between 23,000 and 75,000 sewer overflows into the environment each year in the U.S., which does not count backups into homes and other buildings.

There are often local reports from government or nonprofit agencies, which indicate that, for instance, in Houston in 2022 and 2023 more than 1,200 sewage overflows spilled over 800,000 gallons of sewage each year. And in San Francisco, the Public Utilities Commission discharges about 1.2 billion gallons of combined stormwater runoff and sewage into San Francisco Bay each year.

But there is no nationwide reporting system, so some number of overflows are unreported. And some leaks may even go unnoticed: Many sewer systems don’t have automated leak detection systems, and many waterways don’t have continuous water quality monitoring.

There are two main categories of sewage spills.

In dry weather, the problem is usually structural. Sewage pipes can collapse or crack open because of tree roots breaking into sewer lines. Mechanical failures at pumping stations meant to keep the sewage moving also can cause backups. And spills also happen when pipes are blocked by a buildup of material – such as fats, oils, grease or so-called flushable wipes, which are not safe to flush.

In wet weather, the problem typically has to do with the amount of water flowing into the system. When rainwater enters the sewage system, or groundwater enters a cracked pipe, it can overload the line and either burst a pipe or cause a backup.

Some of the larger sewage spills in recent years have come in wet weather, especially as more extreme rainstorms become more common.

A systemic challenge

Wastewater spills rarely result from a single failure, though. There are many factors. Some involve deferred maintenance on aging systems and overlapping government jurisdictions. Environmental conditions also play a role, including more frequent and intense storms and sea-level rise. On top of that come population growth and development that often outpaces capacity of the existing systems.

I have seen how treating sewage releases as isolated incidents in need of a short-term fix misses an opportunity to strengthen the system for the long term. Response, containment, emergency repair, and remediation of spill sites and the larger system are essential. Fixing a pipe just addresses a symptom, however; I believe preventing future failures requires a strategic approach to systemwide rehabilitation.

Many sewage systems in the U.S. are not regularly surveyed or have not been surveyed completely since their construction decades ago. Without knowing the condition and actual capacity of the pipes and pump stations, it is impossible to identify areas where spills are most likely to occur, or to determine how to prevent those problems.

Assessments conducted solely by utility agencies rarely inspire public confidence. Research I have been part of has found that third-party audits or collaborations with universities and nongovernment organizations, with findings published in full, can build public trust and identify where attention is most needed.

A complicating factor is that there are often overlapping political jurisdictions with different levels of responsibility for sewer systems.

The District of Columbia’s Potomac Interceptor, the pipe that spilled so much sewage over 55 days in early 2026, is primarily operated by DC Water, a public agency independent of the district’s municipal government. But it also carries about 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from areas near Dulles Airport in Virginia and portions of Montgomery County, Maryland, to its D.C. treatment plant, which discharges treated water into the Potomac River. Local and state authorities in those areas all play roles in response, monitoring and maintenance of the system in their regions.

Each entity has its own planning, budget and priorities. The complexity can create inconsistent standards, unequal investment and gaps in emergency planning.

More storms and collapses are coming

Changing environmental conditions are a present reality. Across the Eastern Seaboard, Southeast and Midwest, heavy downpours are more intense and unpredictable. Past designs for sewage systems are not big enough to handle the amount of water involved in the most extreme storms.

Preventive investment in repairs and upgrades may lack glamour, but I believe it is far less costly and disruptive than emergency repairs.

Moreover, infrastructure failures disproportionately affect those least able to absorb the impacts. My work has found that people who live in neighborhoods whose public services are neglected in other ways are also more likely to have neglected sewer systems, including basement backups and service disruptions, often with little official attention.

The spill into the Potomac has contaminated the region of the nation’s capital; its health reflects public priorities. Fixing a sewer line and containing contamination is necessary, but I believe it can be the beginning, not the end, of a broader conversation about planning, funding and governing 21st-century infrastructure in the district and across the nation.

Marccus D. Hendricks receives funding from the JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health of Harvard University; Award ID 03055-00001, the State of Maryland through the University of Maryland Grand Challenges Program, and the National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number DP2MD019355.

– ref. Washington DC’s 240 million-gallon sewage spill is a symptom of nationwide trouble – https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-240-million-gallon-sewage-spill-is-a-symptom-of-nationwide-trouble-277720

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael C. Horowitz, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have propelled drones into the headlines. The word “drone” now stretches to cover everything from hobbyist camera rigs available on Amazon to the Predator and Reaper systems the United States has relied on to fight terrorist organizations over the past 20 years.

A common ancestor in the animal kingdom can give rise, under sufficient environmental pressure, to distinct species that demand their own classification. Drones have undergone their own rapid speciation: the one-way attack drone, the medium-altitude, long-endurance and high-altitude, long-endurance drones, the collaborative combat aircraft drone – these share a lineage and a label, but in terms of cost, range and use, increasingly little else.

Nowhere is this variation more consequential than in the category of one-way attack drones: systems designed not to return home like an airplane, but to fly directly into a target and destroy it, like a bullet or a missile. Russia and Ukraine have fired millions of these at each other since 2022, and Iran has launched thousands at United States military bases and embassies, Israel and other countries in the Middle East in 2026.

The world is now in an era we call “precise mass.” In the past, military power was often determined by size – the number of knights, soldiers, guns or tanks, depending on the era, that an army had. Since the Cold War, advanced militaries have emphasized precise munitions, such as cruise missiles, gaining advantage with fewer but more accurately targeted weapons. Inexpensive but technologically sophisticated drones bring mass and precision together.

Commercial manufacturing, precision guidance and advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy have democratized the ability of militaries and militant groups to accurately strike their adversaries. This includes first-person-view, or FPV, drones – a type of one-way attack drone with interfaces like video games – that groups aligned with Iran are already using to target American forces in the Middle East.

One-way attack drones

One-way attack drones have featured most prominently in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and in the Middle East today. The first category of one-way attack drones is longer range and can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to strike targets deep in an adversary’s territory. They are like extremely cheap cruise missiles – Iran’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drone, for instance, has a reported range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 km) and costs between US$20,000 and $50,000 each. In comparison, America’s Tomahawk cruise missile costs $2 million each.

Russia acquired the Shahed technology almost immediately after Iran debuted it in 2022, creating its own version, the Geran-2, and has since used these drones to pummel Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. Most recently, the U.S. military has followed Russia’s lead and reverse-engineered its own version, the LUCAS, which debuted in the earliest days of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military operation against Iran that started on Feb. 28, 2026.

Since late February 2026, Tehran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones at targets across the Middle East. Iran’s one-way attack drones have hit buildings in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and damaged the United States Embassy in Saudi Arabia. The UAE alone was targeted by nearly 700 Iranian drones in the war’s early days. Iran’s one-way attack drones have killed U.S. service members and destroyed critical American radar systems.

Because long-range, one-way attack drones are so slow, they are easier to shoot down than, say, a Tomahawk missile, but attackers can fire so many of them that they can overwhelm air defense systems.

The second category of one-way attack drones operates more like traditional artillery – typically from short distances, up to about 100 miles (160 km). Ukraine’s battlefield has showcased these systems extensively, where they generate 60%-70% of the casualties on the front lines.

FPV drones

One of the most common types of short-range, one-way attack drones is the FPV drone, sometimes built for a few hundred dollars each from commercial parts purchased online. In Ukraine, operators wearing video goggles fly FPV drones directly into Russian vehicles, fortifications and troops, and they feature guidance interfaces for remote operators that are not dissimilar to those of first-person video games.

FPV drones are not magic. Operating them requires a continuous data link between the operator and the drone, making them vulnerable to electronic jamming that can disrupt radio signals. To address this vulnerability, many Ukrainian FPV drones now use physical communication lines in the form of fiber-optic cables to avoid jamming, but the cables can be cut, and that limits the range of these systems. FPV drones with fiber-optic cables have ranges of about 12 miles (20 km). Effectively using FPV drones also requires skilled operators.

America and Israel’s war with Iran hit the pause button on April 7, but if it starts again and the U.S. deploys ground forces, they would likely face the kind of short-range, one-way attack drone barrages that have come to terrorize both Russian and Ukrainian forces alike.

The threat has proved so hard to stop that Ukraine has resorted to low-tech solutions: Hundreds of kilometers of roads are now covered with nets, donated by European fishermen and farmers. The nets stop FPV drones by tangling their propellers. Nets cover tanks and hospital courtyards and line supply routes and city streets. Ukraine’s government plans to install about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of them on key roads by the end of 2026.

Iranian forces could similarly deploy one-way attack drones against American convoys, personnel or parked aircraft in ways that are difficult to defend against. Additionally, just as American adversaries such as ISIS and al-Qaida used video footage of attacks to try to scare the American public, Iran is likely to use FPV strike footage – the operator’s-eye view of the attack, easily edited and uploaded – to try to shape American attitudes.

In March 2026, an Iran-backed militia used FPV drones to strike a parked U.S. Army medevac Black Hawk helicopter and destroy an air defense radar at the Victory Base Complex near Baghdad. The attackers then released footage from the drone’s perspective as propaganda, blurring out the red crosses identifying the Black Hawk as a medevac aircraft.

The new reality

Short-range, one-way attack drones have redefined the front lines; long-range ones have changed what it means to wage war at strategic distances. Iran’s battlefield record – thousands of drones launched, air defenses nearing exhaustion across multiple targeted countries, American troops killed – demonstrates what a mid-tier military can achieve with precise mass.

Any military that fails to invest in these capabilities – and in the ability to defend against them – places itself at risk, including the U.S. military.

Michael C. Horowitz is a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2022 to 2024 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Director of the Emerging Capabilities Policy Office at the United States Department of Defense.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in an article are solely those of the author and do not represent the official policy, position, or endorsement of any U.S. government department, agency, or branch of service

Lauren Kahn 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. One-way attack drones: Low-cost, high-tech weapons ‘democratize’ precision warfare – https://theconversation.com/one-way-attack-drones-low-cost-high-tech-weapons-democratize-precision-warfare-280364

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Katrina Stack, Ph.D. Candidate in Human Geography, University of Tennessee

Within moments of entering the Newport Renaissance Faire, you are ushered to a group of fairies. They pass you a scroll and say, “You must seek out the Bone Man for the first hurdle in your quest.” As you navigate the fair, you find many men dressed in bones, both vendors and fellow attendees. When you find the correct Bone Man – an actor wearing what appears to be a mask made of human skull along with a crown constructed from deer antlers – he stamps your scroll. He then sends you to your next target: the Drunk Viking.

Following the directions of actors in the fair, you meet a variety of performers from many historical eras and fantastic realms, and stumble upon both merchants and merrymakers in your journey. It’s all part of the immersive experience that connects you with the other guests and staff, though many of the costumed staff members, speaking in faux Middle English, are also trying to sell you something.

Renaissance fairs were originally conceived as a creative refuge for artists sidelined by political repression during the Red Scare. Now, they sit at an uneasy crossroads between countercultural expression and commercial spectacle. Having grown into a nationwide industry with tiered tickets, branded merchandise and multimillion dollar valuations, the fairs can easily be seen as an offshoot of a corporate theme park.

As cultural geographers, we wanted to learn more about whether the spirit of the fairs has been changing. So for our recent study, we visited the Tennessee Renaissance Festival, Newport Renaissance Faire, Tennessee Medieval Faire and Tennessee Pirate Fest.

Once upon a time … not so long ago

Although renaissance fairs and festivals recreate the atmosphere of centuries past, the first formally recognized fair took place in May 1963 in Irwindale, California. A public school English and history teacher named Phyllis Patterson was the brains behind the event, which she dubbed the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

For Patterson, the fair was a chance to celebrate the era’s countercultural values like free expression, experimentation with identity and creative play. It also served as a source of employment for those who had been pushed out of their careers in the film and entertainment industries after being blacklisted or graylisted as suspected communists.

Patterson herself had refused to sign a Cold War–era loyalty oath required to work in California public schools. At the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, actors, educators and set designers could continue their craft, whether that meant designing costumes, creating characters, performing or writing.

From creative refuge to thriving business

Since those first events in Southern California, renaissance fairs have spread across the U.S., with some constructing permanent structures even though they’re only open seasonally, in the spring or fall. Built to resemble small villages, fair operators create towns-within-towns, fantasy lands where visitors can briefly step away from their routines and obligations.

Their popularity continues to grow, and what began partly as a creative refuge has grown into a thriving entertainment business.

The East Tennessee Renaissance Faire recently announced that it would be relocating after deciding that its original venue in Newport could no longer accommodate the swelling crowds: Within three years, the fair had grown from 600 to 6,000 attendees, spurring a move to a larger site in neighboring Sevierville. New fairs are sprouting up as well: The Chattanooga Renaissance Faire will host its inaugural season in spring 2026.

There are almost always entry fees – US$38 at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival and $53 at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, for example – and many offer season passes.

Attendees often arrive in costume, but strict rules about adhering to a specific time period or setting rarely apply.

Some visitors dress as Tolkien-style elves, while others show up as Tudor nobles. Viking-clad participants walk alongside fairies and swashbuckling pirates. Some fairs have also developed their own themed weekends – with names like “Viking Victory,” “Fantasy and Folklore,” “Pirate Plunder” and “Celtic Celebration” – that weave history and fiction with few constraints. And those committed to their role will often address each other in playful faux-medieval speech, with greetings like “my lady” or “my lord.”

Vendors, often dressed in costume themselves, sell everything from cloaks, swords and crowns to contemporary jewelry and shampoos. Booths sell era-adjacent fare like Scotch eggs, ciders, mead and turkey legs, while modern cocktails like “The Shipwreck” and “The Blueberry Faerie” can also be had, with visitors paying the equivalent of stadium and arena concession prices.

Renaissance fairs have even spread to countries like Germany and France, reconnecting with their roots. The expansion into new venues – along with the development of offshoots such as pirate- and steampunk-themed festivals – point to profit margins that would have been unthinkable in the early days of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

But as with many ventures, the prospect of cashing in comes with complications.

The 2024 HBO Max series “Ren Faire” introduced viewers to the eccentrics and costume-clad vendors involved in the nation’s largest fair, the Texas Renaissance Festival in Todd Mission. The fight over its future involved lawsuits and, eventually, the court-ordered $60 million sale of the event’s property and assets.

King Richard’s Faire, which takes place in Carver, Massachusetts, and is the largest fair in New England, reportedly generates massive daily revenue while allegedly relying on widespread worker misclassification, leaving many performers earning below minimum wage without benefits. Even volunteer “villagers” work only for free admission, and both workers and attendees receive no compensation or refunds when the fair closes due to rain.

Seeking out a space of whimsy

Despite the creeping influence of profit motives, we concluded that renaissance fairs have always been – and continue to be – mostly about community.

Dressing as a fantastical version of yourself or your favorite character bonds you to others dressed up at the festival. Unlike popular Civil War or World War II reenactments where historical accuracy is paramount, renaissance fairs instead invite people to take part in shared, often mythologized ideas about history through performance, costume and play.

For example, each weekend, the Tennessee Renaissance Festival organizes jousts. Competitors and their horses meet at a permanent jousting pitch located at the back of the property. Each knight represents a noble house, and each section of the bleachers is assigned a knight to root for. Announcers explain the rules of each event, while also leading the crowds in chants and cheers. While the knights might fight under titles tied to historical lineages, they represent a jumble of eras and place. They also reject antiquated social norms by including women and ethnic groups who never would have been seen together on a jousting pitch.

Here, fidelity to the facts is an afterthought; it actually might ruin the fun.

Beyond the jousting pitch, you can find the queen dictating a game of human chess. A rotating cast of performers play music, tell jokes, juggle and blow fire. Elsewhere, you might stumble across pixies teaching children how to make fairy homes or relax in a mermaid’s magical grotto.

There’s also a comforting simplicity in the narratives of this make-believe world. Ladies are almost always gentle and beautiful, while the men are brave and noble. All the villains are easy to spot – they’re always defeated.

In a real world characterized by political upheaval, information overload, invisible surveillance and shadowy villains, perhaps the fair, with its simple prism of good and evil, becomes a space of comfort – a curated cultural experiment that’s also an improvised escape.

In other words, renaissance fairs wield a quiet power: They forge communities that deliberately blur fantasy, history and everyday life with a wink. Vendors, performers and attendees alike can be Tudors, Vikings, hobbits, elves or mermaids for a day. Few actually believe in elves, or imagine their mock-Elizabethan speech is anything more than cheerful, mangled guesswork.

And that’s the point. There’s joy in pretending – just as there’s a universal pleasure in the weird, the whimsical and the absurd.

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

– ref. As renaissance fairs become big business, can they retain their counterculture roots? – https://theconversation.com/as-renaissance-fairs-become-big-business-can-they-retain-their-counterculture-roots-273757

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Elena Bertozzi, Professor of Game Design & Development, Quinnipiac University

Imagine you and your partner are sitting in the waiting room of your doctor’s office, waiting for your appointment to get birth control – and instead of calculating how many other people will be called before you, or perusing old magazines, a nurse hands you a digital tablet and encourages you to play a game.

You power it on, and you find yourselves drawn into a story: Can you help Laila and Caleb figure out which contraceptive method will work best for them, given their lifestyles and Laila’s physiology? Their situation, you realize, is a bit similar to your own. Would helping them choose a form of contraception help you and your partner make an informed decision for yourselves?

As a designer and developer of games that promote positive health behavior change, I work with physicians, public health experts, artists and programmers to create games just like these. I focus on topics like vaccine hesitancy, sexuality and reproductive health – sensitive issues that people may have a hard time discussing openly.

Laila and Caleb are characters in a game that my team and I are developing called What’s My Method? We are testing whether playing it helps people choose a birth control method and makes it easier to have a fruitful discussion with their health care provider. And we are finding that this and other games for health-related education are a powerful but underused way of not just conveying information, but also providing people with an arena to learn from the outcomes of their choices.

The power of play

When I tell people I make health-related video games for a living, they’re often surprised that this is a viable career choice. Many adults still see video games as trivial at best – and destructive at worst. For example, games that involve guns and shootings are widely blamed for gun violence in real life, even though there’s no causal evidence supporting the connection.

Play is how intelligent and curious beings make sense of the constantly changing world and ensure they keep learning. It is an early factor in children’s cognitive development. Peek-a-boo, for example, helps babies learn about object permanence – meaning that even if a person disappears for a short time, they aren’t gone forever. Digital play can support many types of learning. Games like Minecraft teach resource management, planning and spatial reasoning, among other skills.

The game industry is also an increasingly large part of the world economy. Given the size and reach of the international video game market – US$300 billion in 2025 – games are often the way technological innovations are introduced to a mass audience.

Take motion capture technology, which enables a device to track a person’s movement. Microsoft introduced it to the general public in 2010 through its Kinect console, in which two players can box or play tennis virtually by actually performing the movements with their bodies.

Augmented reality – the ability to use a smartphone to see a virtual world overlaid on the “real” world – entered the mainstream in 2016 when people began playing and watching others play Pokemon Go. Games are also how many people first experience virtual reality – a full immersion in an entirely virtual world – by wearing headsets like Oculus (now called Meta Quest) and Apple Vision Pro.

Gaming also has a powerful social dimension. Massively multiplayer online games like Animal Crossing, Fortnite and World of Warcraft provide a means for socialization and togetherness for billions of people worldwide. This became especially powerful during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were social-distancing – people’s use of such games soared during lockdowns, and they helped players maintain social connections.

In my own experience as the director of a university program in game design and development, I find that students who grew up playing complex digital games are better prepared to engage with technology and navigate an increasingly digital world.

Gaming for health

Early in my game design career, I realized that games don’t just provide compelling entertainment, but they can also equip players with the knowledge and the agency to solve hard problems in real life.

That’s especially valuable in health. Information for patients is usually conveyed through pamphlets or links to websites that often provide too much information in formats patients find difficult to decipher. These formats don’t effectively address gaps in health literacy. Games, on the other hand, provide targeted information in a specific context that players don’t just understand, but also, in some ways, inhabit. Such games allow players to try out different behaviors through avatars to see how they turn out. Conveying information through relatable avatars also triggers empathy, which further cements learning.

Since 2010, my team has been testing how to deploy digital games in the U.S., India, Barbados and Ghana to communicate complex health-related information through animated graphics, audio and interactive experiences.

In 2012, we worked with doctors at a hospital on Long Island, New York, to encourage families of critically ill children to get a flu vaccination. We found that family members who played a game we jointly developed called Flu Busters! were 40% more likely to get a flu vaccination than those who didn’t.

In the game, players help an avatar navigate a school filled with children sneezing and blowing their noses in order to enjoy social interactions such as sharing a cookie without getting sick. Rather than telling people how they should behave, the game allows players to experience how difficult it is to avoid being exposed to the flu virus in everyday life and how the vaccine can help children stay healthy, equipping players to make informed decisions about their own health.

In our first international project, we collaborated with public health physicians in India on a game we developed to gather data about how teenagers there make decisions about family planning. In addition to determining that a game was a very effective tool for anonymized data collection, we found that giving young people access to information about reproductive anatomy gave them the vocabulary and tools to understand and discuss their future reproductive choices..

Responding to rising vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 epidemic, my team developed Activate My Shield! The game demonstrates how vaccines protect against different diseases using the metaphor of armor that only works against specific types of attacks. To address misinformation that was widespread at the time – that COVID-19 vaccines contained injectable microchips – the game asks players to try putting a microchip in a vaccine needle and administering it to a person. Experiencing how impossible it is to do this helps players understand that it’s not a legitimate concern.

Reaching digital natives

Our games are available to all for free, but in order to be able to widely distribute them on the app stores, my team and I founded SolitonZ Games.

Several other research groups are developing similar games. They address an enormous range of health issues – for example, encouraging people with HIV to adhere to their treatment, helping teens avoid vaping and teaching children with asthma to manage their disease. A video game called EndeavorRx was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 as a prescription-based therapy to improve attention in children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Overall, our research and that of other groups show that digital games can be easily integrated into health care, and that play is an effective way of delivering health information. Simply put, people find the games fun and engaging.

Even as these efforts gain ground, however, health campaigns and patient education efforts have been slow to embrace game-based patient education. That’s perhaps partly because decision-makers such as hospital and clinic administrators are often unfamiliar with gaming and may be slow to buy into the idea of delivering health education through play-based technology. Plus, it’s difficult to make changes in busy environments with a lot of moving parts, like health care.

But I’m optimistic that by working together with public health experts and health care providers, game designers like me can help fit gaming into the industry and culture of health care. After all, it makes sense to try to reach digital natives on the technologies they are already holding in their hands.

Elena Bertozzi is co-Founder of SolitonZ Games which produced two of the games mentioned. She has been funded by the Gates Foundation and Connecticut Innovations.

– ref. Health information delivered as a video game can bridge the communication gap between patients and providers – https://theconversation.com/health-information-delivered-as-a-video-game-can-bridge-the-communication-gap-between-patients-and-providers-280222