There’s no sign so far that BA.3.2, nicknamed Cicada, is any more dangerous or causes more severe disease than the variants that were circulating in the winter of 2025-26. But because it’s significantly different from them, the current COVID-19 vaccine may not be as effective against it.
Wastewater monitoring is one of the best early methods of detecting strain shift, though the number of states submitting wastewater data to the CDC has declined since around 2022, after the height of the pandemic.
The Cicada variant was first detected in November 2024.
What makes BA.3.2 variant different?
All viruses change over time – and the type of virus that causes COVID-19 does so especially quickly. Every time the virus copies itself inside a cell, its DNA mutates. Most of these changes disappear, but occasionally one gives the virus an advantage over other variants, allowing that version to spread.
These changes make it harder for the immune system to recognize the virus.
Think of it like showing up to your 25th high school reunion and seeing people who have put on weight, dyed their hair and started wearing tinted contacts. You will recognize them, but it might take longer. Had you seen them every month or so for those 25 years, you would recognize them right away.
Similarly, changes to a virus’ DNA also affect how well vaccines work. Vaccines prime people’s immune systems by reminding them of what the virus looks like. Scientists design vaccines based on the most common versions of a virus circulating at a given time.
Current COVID-19 vaccines are made to protect against strains from the JN.1 lineage of the virus, which have been the most common strains in the U.S. since January 2024. However, BA.3.2 is the new kid in the block − it’s almost a complete stranger to residents of the U.S. It is different enough from the JN.1 strains that the vaccine may not do as good a job of priming the immune system against it, allowing it to evade detection.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a vaccine – a large body of evidence shows that they reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. But a poorly matched vaccine simply won’t recognize the new variant as quickly, which means it takes longer for the immune system to mount its defense.
What dangers does the BA.3.2 variant pose?
Because people’s immune systems aren’t as good at detecting BA.3.2, this variant may infect people more widely, potentially leading to a spike in COVID-19 cases.
But even though BA.3.2 is spreading quickly, there’s no indication that it’s any more dangerous or that it causes more severe disease than the COVID-19 variants that have circulated widely over the past few years.
However, especially given that current vaccines may not be as effective against it, protection remains important. That’s particularly true for people with chronic health conditions, who can experience severe illness from a COVID-19 infection.
And while the number of people who develop long COVID has declined as the virus has changed since early in the pandemic, it still occurs in about 3 in 100 cases.
Protecting yourself and your community
People can take these commonsense steps to avoid getting or spreading COVID-19:
Second, if you feel unwell, stay home – not just to take care of yourself, but to prevent spreading disease. You may be hesitant to miss work or school, but the person sitting next to you might have a condition, such as cancer or chronic lung disease, that puts them at risk for severe infection, or they might live with someone who does.
Third, get outside. Reducing your time in crowded environments reduces your chance of exposure.
Finally, if you have concerns about your risk of developing a severe infection due to your own health conditions, talk to a trusted clinician who can offer advice that’s specific to your circumstances.
Kyle B. Enfield 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.
Donald Trump pourrait-il être le président des États-Unis utilitariste cherchant le plus grand bonheur pour le plus grand nombre ?AntonWatman/Shutterstock
Kenneth Arrow est un économiste récompensé en 1972 par le prix de la Banque de Suède en sciences économiques en mémoire d’Alfred Nobel. À travers le théorème d’impossibilité, ou « théorème du dictateur », il souligne l’impossibilité de concevoir un système de vote (ou de décision collective) parfait respectant les préférences de chacun et la justice… à moins qu’une seule personne n’impose ses choix à tous. Une illustration de la démocratie des États-Unis à l’ère de Donald Trump ?
Dans ce qu’il reste de démocraties libérales dans le monde, les opinions publiques sont sidérées par le spectacle de la politique que mène Donald Trump depuis la Maison-Blanche et Mar-a-Lago. Le président de la plus ancienne démocratie au monde semble n’avoir d’autre boussole que ses préférences du moment, que seule l’opposition d’un rapport de force défavorable semble pouvoir arrêter.
La surprise et la crainte que suscite cette politique erratique tiennent en grande part au fait que le processus d’élection démocratique a été respecté. Le président exerce son second mandat en toute légitimité ; il n’est pas parvenu à la fonction suprême par un coup de force.
Comment comprendre que les électeurs d’une des nations les plus riches et prospères, mais aussi parmi les plus éduqués au monde, aient pu confier leur souveraineté à un homme qui aujourd’hui piétine les principes sur lesquels cette souveraineté du peuple américain repose ? Comment nommer et expliquer le phénomène que représente Donald Trump, et qui menace bien d’autres démocraties, y compris en Europe ?
Détour par l’économie avec le théorème du dictateur de Kenneth Arrow, chercheur récompensé en 1972 par le Prix de la Banque de Suède en sciences économiques en mémoire d’Alfred Nobel.
Démocratie illibérale
Pour qualifier ce phénomène, il est courant d’invoquer l’illibéralisme, ou de parler de « démocratie illibérale », expression que l’on doit au politologue états-unien Fareed Zakaria – dont se réclament Viktor Orban et ses émules, au nombre desquels il faut compter Donald Trump.
Alors que la démocratie a pendant plus d’un siècle été associée au libéralisme politique – élections libres, séparation des pouvoirs, liberté d’expression, etc. –, dessinant les contours de ce que l’on pourrait appeler un constitutionnalisme libéral, décrit par le philosophe Bernard Manin, ce qui nous frappe aujourd’hui c’est que démocratie et constitutionnalisme libéral peuvent diverger.
La démocratie ne garantit pas les vertus du libéralisme politique, elle peut s’exercer à son encontre en contestant l’indépendance de la justice, en affaiblissant les contre-pouvoirs, en réduisant les libertés universitaires et de la presse.
Ce qui manque dans ce tableau, c’est le rôle joué par l’économie. Pour comprendre le phénomène Donald Trump et ses avatars, il faut combiner l’éthique utilitariste qui guide nos gouvernants, l’économie capitaliste qui court après l’enrichissement, et la démocratie qui au sens le plus restreint est une procédure de sélection des dirigeants politiques.
Capitalisme, utilitarisme et démocratie, voilà la devise de cet ordre qui a été promu après la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
Le capitalisme, avec son économie de marché, promettait la prospérité de masse rappelée par Edmund Phelps, lauréat 2006 du prix de la Banque de Suède en sciences économiques en mémoire d’Alfred Nobel. L’utilitarisme mettait en avant le plus grand bonheur pour le plus grand nombre. « Les actions sont bonnes ou sont mauvaises dans la mesure où elles tendent à accroître le bonheur, ou à produire le contraire du bonheur », souligne John Stuart Mill en 1863. La démocratie proposait des règles équitables et rationnelles de sélection des dirigeants pour conduire cette politique utilitariste dans le respect du pluralisme des préférences.
Les sciences économiques et politiques, qui se sont scindées en deux au cours du vingtième siècle (on parlait d’économie politique depuis le XVIIe siècle), ont produit des discours et des fictions théoriques pour promouvoir cette architecture sociétale ayant vu le jour dans les années 1950.
Théorème du dictateur
Avec la domination du modèle américain sur le « monde libre », socle à l’idéal européen, l’économiste Kenneth Arrow formule son théorème d’impossibilité en 1951. L’éthique utilitariste, promouvant le bien-être maximal, ne peut servir de fondement moral du capitalisme et d’horizon d’une politique démocratique. Il met en garde la communauté des économistes et des politistes sur les illusions d’un tel pari.
Le paradoxe de Kenneth Arrow : il est impossible d’avoir une procédure collective de classement de la répartition (ou de production) des richesses au niveau politique respectant les préférences individuelles.
L’envers de ce théorème d’impossibilité est un théorème d’existence, connu également comme le « théorème du dictateur ». Une telle procédure n’est possible que si les préférences d’un dictateur s’imposent dans le choix collectif, quelles que soient les préférences individuelles. Une alternative est que ce choix soit imposé par l’appel à la tradition ou à l’unanimité autour d’un dogme (la domination, dans la démonstration de Kenneth Arrow).
Bien-être imposé ou dictatorial
Ce théorème est dévastateur pour l’ambition politico-économique dont les États-Unis s’étaient fait le porte-étendard dans le monde libre. Pour citer Kenneth Arrow, « le mécanisme de marché ne peut donner un choix rationnel » et « l’idéologie de la souveraineté de l’électeur est incompatible avec celle de la rationalité collective ». Il résume sa découverte à la fin de l’ouvrage par ces mots :
« La seule fonction de bien-être collectif possible est soit imposée, soit dictatoriale. »
À partir de 1963, Kenneth Arrow, plutôt que de parler de fonction de bien-être collectif, parlera de constitution pour désigner « le processus de détermination d’un ordre collectif ou d’une fonction de choix à partir des ordres individuels ».
Ce à quoi nous assistons aujourd’hui avec le trumpisme, c’est l’illustration et la vérification du paradoxe de Kenneth Arrow. Les règles démocratiques d’une élection libre ont été respectées et ont porté au pouvoir Donald Trump. Celui-ci, une fois aux commandes, fait passer ses préférences individuelles pour les préférences collectives. Il impose ses vues sur l’immigration, le commerce international ou l’environnement, dans le mépris des préférences des électeurs états-uniens et de nombreux citoyens du monde.
Se protéger du despotisme
Certes, des électeurs de Trump lui restent encore fidèles et peuvent avoir l’illusion que leurs préférences personnelles sont entendues. La campagne électorale et les réseaux sociaux ont permis au président des États-Unis d’imposer ses propres préférences comme étant celles de son électorat, qui pour une part d’entre eux se rendent compte qu’ils ont été trompés. Les citoyens états-uniens sont sommés de se replier sur leurs intérêts privés, sur l’amélioration de leur sort matériel, en dehors de la politique, et le despote peut quant à lui imposer ses choix auxquels tous doivent se plier.
À la suite des travaux de Kenneth Arrow, les économistes et les philosophes politiques ont délaissé la question fondamentale qu’il pose : capitalisme et démocratie libérale ne peuvent être associés sur la base de l’éthique utilitariste, qui fait de la maximisation du bonheur le but de toute politique. Cette idée de bonheur, une idée nouvelle selon le révolutionnaire français Saint-Just, ne peut à elle seule intégrer les choix rationnels des individus dans une fonction de bien-être collectif.
Sur cette base, l’horizon politique du maximum de bien-être pour le plus grand nombre ne peut être le ciment par lequel capitalisme et démocratie peuvent devenir compatibles. Il n’y a pas d’éthique propre à l’enrichissement qui puisse nous protéger du despotisme.
Patrick Mardellat ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By John Shattuck, Professor of Practice in Diplomacy, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University
The United States, alongside other countries, has a growing pro-democracy and nonviolent civil movement.Oliver Helbig/Getty Images
On Feb. 24, The Conversation hosted a webinar titled, “What Americans can learn from other nonviolent civil activism movements.”
Executive editor and general manager Beth Daley interviewed John Shattuck, professor of practice at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Oliver Kaplan, associate professor at Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver and a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
Shattuck is the former president of Central European University in Hungary, where he defended academic freedom against a rising authoritarian government. Kaplan is the author of “Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves.” This interview has been condensed and edited for print.
Beth Daley: What is an authoritarian regime, and what are their characteristics?
John Shattuck: The authoritarian, often referred to as a “king,” is the ideal role from the point of view of the king, but certainly not from the point of view of the people. Authoritarian characteristics include centralized unlimited power, the opposite of democracy; no accountability and no rule of law; no independent courts; no checks and balances on how the king operates; rule by fear and coercion, and when necessary, in order to carry out the king’s orders, rule by by force. There are no individual rights or civil liberties except those the king decides to allow those who are loyal to him to have, at least until he decides to take them away.
John Shattuck defines authoritarian regimes in a sound bite from The Conversation’s webinar on nonviolent civil movements.
That’s a nutshell informal description of an authoritarian regime. A special threat today is that an authoritarian can emerge from a democratic election, and, indeed, a democratic election can be used to turn a weak democracy into an authoritarian regime. But when this happens, it opens the door to challenge the authoritarian in a subsequent election if civic activism can defend the electoral process by which the authoritarian was elected.
BD: What are we seeing and not seeing in the U.S. that other countries have gone through in terms of authoritarian government?
Oliver Kaplan: I think we are heading toward an autocracy, if not there already. In their 2026 report, the Varieties of Democracy Project writes that the U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy and is moving into “competitive authoritarianism,” marked by executive overreach and erosion of judicial and legislative checks. The report notes that U.S. democracy is being dismantled at a speed that is “unprecedented in modern history.”
One of the things we’re not seeing at full force yet is a complete shutdown of civic space. We’re able to hold this kind of conversation, and people are still able to dialogue and go out on the street. There are some efforts at curtailing free speech, and I think there’s some self-censorship possibly happening. But there’s still this open space and a powerful mass movement growing in this country.
BD: John, you were on the front lines, particularly in Hungary as the head of Central European University. What did you see there that has parallels today to the U.S.?
JS: There’s certainly a parallel between Hungary and the U.S., even though the countries are very different in size, history and background. What I saw in Hungary when I became president of Central European University in 2009 was a weak, new democracy that was only established in 1990 after 70 years of fascism and communism.
I was in Hungary from 2009 to 2016 and, despite the differences, I could begin to see some parallels. Many people had grievances in Hungary about how their economy was operating, particularly after the global financial crisis that affected Hungary more than any other Eastern European country. Then there was an urban-rural divide, the urban elite versus the rural majority in the country.
Along came a cynical populist-nationalist politician, Viktor Orbán. Orban started manipulating these grievances, and did so to significantly divide Hungarian society. He attacked many of the institutions of democracy, which were increasingly unpopular because of people’s grievances. He went after elites, and foreigners, and migrants, and the media. And he blamed all of them for the country’s problems. He then was able to ride these grievances into office.
Once in office, Orban amended the constitution and laws relating to the parliament. He undermined the independence of the media and the judiciary so as to centralize power. All of this happened while I was running an international university in Budapest, which remained independent because it received no funding from the Hungarian government. We were able to resist the increasingly authoritarian regime over issues of academic freedom. The government tried to shut down our programs of migration studies and gender studies, and tried to censor aspects of our history department.
BD: How do communities respond in different ways to authoritarian regimes?
OK: Pro-democracy movements and protection types of movements at the local level often co-occur. For example, in Colombia there have been various leftist movements and political parties that have pushed for greater democratic opening while communities mobilize to keep people safe and help them cope with repressive conditions. In places like Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala, communities built trust and support networks to provide aid, such as for people who needed food assistance. This provides space to independently operate and preserve the community.
Fact-finding and countering stigma are important, and in the U.S. we’re seeing that in the form of the video recording and publicizing of harmful actions. This has played out similarly in Syria with fact-finding to protect nongovernment organizations.
There’s also accompaniment where outside actors come in to provide support to communities. Around the world, church organizations play important accompaniment roles. We’re seeing clergy in the U.S. step up and visit places that are at risk.
Anti-ICE protestors in Minneapolis built a barricade to monitor federal law enforcement vehicles traveling through the neighborhood. Star Tribune via Getty Images
And then, there are protests, the most visible kind of action. In Minnesota, we’ve seen communities actually setting up community barricades, which has also happened in Mexico, Colombia and Northern Ireland. Communicating the nonviolent nature of these movements is important to avoid any pretext for additional crackdowns.
I think Americans have been taking similar actions to places around the world in part because there are some similar background conditions: repression and strong social capital networks. Those two things come together to produce these strategies.
BD: Could you speak more about the need to build a clear narrative and a positive one?
JS: There are two basic rules for how to resist authoritarianism that I’ve learned from experience: Build a diverse coalition and develop a unifying theme. You need a diverse coalition in order to appeal to a broad range of the public, and in order to do that, you need agreement on the goal and values of what you’re trying to accomplish. You need a clear and unifying narrative. The narrative often involves economic issues and issues of corruption, since there’s often a great deal of corruption in authoritarian regimes.
Hungary will have its next parliamentary election in April in which Orban will seek his fifth term as prime minister. The opposition has developed a broad coalition and a unifying theme, while Orban is using the centralized instruments of government and media that he controls to try to manipulate public opinion. The opposition coalition is headed by Peter Magyar, who was once a major supporter of Orban’s government. Magyar’s name can be magical in Hungary – sort of like a “Joe America” in the U.S.
With Magyar as its head, the opposition is aiming to peel off supporters of the regime. It’s campaigning on economic grounds, with a positive message and on moderate terms. And most importantly, it includes parties from the left, right and center.
Feb. 26, 2026, webinar led by The Conversation U.S. executive editor Beth Daley, examining what we can learn from other nonviolent civil resistance movements.
Poland has succeeded in doing what the Hungarian opposition is attempting. It managed to vote out an authoritarian government by putting together a broad coalition to defend the independence of the Polish judiciary. That became a coalition to elect parliamentarians in 2023, and that succeeded in changing the government.
BD: How important is the preexisting social fabric of a community to the success of a protest movement?
JS: It’s important, but complicated. Hungary had a very weak civil society after 70 years of totalitarian fascism and communism. When I was there, the very word to “volunteer,” which we think of as the essence of community action and service, was seen to be a bad word in Hungarian because it was closely associated with collaborating with the regime.
In the U.S., we’re the opposite in a sense, although the U.S. is now slipping on this. We have a long history of volunteerism, we have all these civil society organizations, we have a tradition of barn raising, people getting together with their neighbors and doing things in their communities. This is very much a part of the American spirit and a core value.
But today, I would say a combination of consumerism and economic individualism coming out of decades of economic deregulation has caused our civil society to fray. But the authoritarian challenge that we face now, and the way in which we are beginning to respond to it, is in fact bringing communities back together again. I think what happened in Minneapolis is an example of that. And this may reflect a growing capacity to resist an authoritarian regime.
Former President, Central European University (2009-2016)
Oliver Kaplan 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nitin Sanket, Assistant Professor of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
This small drone is using sonar, similar to bats’ echolocation, to navigate through a grove of trees.Nitin Sanket
To help small aerial robots navigate in the dark and other low-visibility environments, my colleagues and I developed an ultrasound-based perception system inspired by bat echolocation.
Current robots rely heavily on camerasor light detection and ranging, known as lidar, or both. But these sensors fail in visually challenging conditions, such as smoke, fog, dust, snow or complete darkness.
I’m a scientific engineer who develops bio-inspired microrobots. To solve this challenge, my research team looked at nature’s experts at navigating in poor visibility: bats. They thrive in dark, damp and dusty caves and can detect obstacles as thin as a human hair using echolocation while weighing as little as two paper clips. They emit sound waves and listen to weak echoes reflected from objects.
However, enabling this sensing on aerial robots is extremely challenging because propellers generate a lot of noise. It is a bit like trying to listen to your friend while a jet engine is taking off next to you.
To overcome this issue, we present two key ideas. First, a physical acoustic shield inspired by bat’s ear cartilage reduces propeller noise around the acoustic sensors, which act like the robot’s ears. Second, a neural network called Saranga recovers weak echo signals from very noisy measurements by learning patterns over time, inspired by how bats process sound.
Together, these enable the robot to estimate obstacle locations in 3D and navigate safely using milliwatt-level sensing power.
The drone navigates around an obstacle in a test with simulated snowfall. Nitin Sanket
Why it matters
These types of drones are very useful for search and rescue, especially in confined, dynamic and dangerous environments, because they are small and inexpensive. Search-and-rescue operations often happen in environments where visibility is very poor, such as forest fires, collapsed buildings, caves or dusty outdoor conditions. In these scenarios, traditional sensors like cameras and lidar often become unreliable.
Bats do not rely only on vision and instead use echolocation to perceive the world. Ultrasound sensing doesn’t depend on lighting conditions and works in smoke, dust and darkness.
Our work shows that it is possible to bring this capability to aerial robots despite strong onboard propeller noise. Sonar boosted by noise shielding and machine learning promises to enable a new class of small, low-cost robots that can operate in environments where current systems fail.
This research can enable highly functional, autonomous, tiny aerial robots for critical humanitarian applications, such as search and rescue, combating poaching and cave exploration. AI-enabled sonar navigation could lead to safer, faster and more cost-effective robots for time-sensitive operations where human or larger helicopter access is limited. This is a step toward being able to deploy swarms of aerial robots, much like groups of bats, to explore hazardous environments and search for survivors.
Breakthroughs in mathematical modeling, neural network design and sensor characterization will enable other low-power applications for these drones, such as environmental monitoring. Our work can reduce power by 1,000 times, weight by 10 times and cost by 100 times compared to current solutions.
What other research is being done
Most aerial navigation systems rely on cameras, depth sensors or lidar, which degrade in low visibility. Radar works in these conditions but is power-intensive for small drones. Prior work has explored ultrasound sensing mainly on ground robots, but applying it to aerial robots has been difficult due to propeller noise and weak signals.
What’s next
We are working on improving flying speed, sensing range and system size. We are also exploring new bio-inspired designs and combining ultrasound with other types of sensing.
Ultimately, our goal is to build reliable, low-power aerial robots that can operate reliably in dynamic environments and enable real-world deployment in search and rescue.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
When it was announced that Saturday Night Live would launch a UK version there were a lot of naysayers, including me. I’m not a total hater, there have been sketches I’ve found genuinely funny in recent years – like this one poking fun at the incomprehenisbility of the metric system. However, on the whole, SNL is not my kind of comedy, there’s something too obvious about its type of humour.
Most people would probably agree that American humour and British humour are different. We love comedy sketch shows, but ours are darker, more sarcastic and absurdist. Would SNL UK try to imitate the original or would it boldly forge its own path? Based on the first episode, the showrunners have gone with a bit of both, using the tried-and-tested format, but applying a British sensibility as much as possible.
Now I wouldn’t say I loved every minute of it and neither did our reviewer, TV comedy expert Tom Hemingway. There were bloated sketches, dud jokes, cringey performances – but also moments that shone. For instance, Ania Magliano and Paddy Young’s Weekend Update had some solid and daring political jokes, including one particularly brilliant one about helium and the Strait of Hormuz. Then there was the mad comedy attack, “45 Seconds with Fouracres”, where he dashed through Irish accents in a skit about “what kind of Irish is your grandad?”
It was imperfect, but I don’t think we’ve had something like it that dares to try and fail on British TV in a while. It was like being at a live comedy show where things are a bit unpolished and some jokes soar while others crash spectacularly. I think its bravery should be commended, and it will be interesting to see how it grows as all involved become more confident with the format, and learn what works best and how to finesse it.
We would love hear what you think makes American and British humour different, let us know in the comments.
Saturday Night Live is on Saturday on Sky1 and streaming on Now TV
Want something a bit more familiar? Then why not watch the podcast, The Harry Hill Show. Yes, you read that right: watch a podcast. The absurdist comedy show has been dubbed a “vodscarf” by its host, the comedian Harry Hill. It draws on his televisual background of abusurdist comedy, and repackages it in the podcast format, featuring interviews with special guests and unique experts, a range of weird games and many an intentionally incomprehensible segment.
In this piece, media expert James McLean writes about how the show is tapping into the trend for people to watch podcasts on YouTube rather than to just listen to them. Traditionally, the experience of watching a podcast is not markedly different from listening as the video just tends to be of the hosts and their guests speaking behind mics.
However, in this wacky hour-long show, the visuals add a lot to the audio. Camera work, set design, visual gags and more all play a part in Hill’s show, which is downright bizarre and surreal. Enjoy Hill jigging the hot new dance “the Andy Burnham” with comedian Nish Kumar; marvel as poet John Cooper Clark manages to “Name that Seed” from a variety pack of more than 8,000; and watch as singer Self Esteem learns about Mary, Queen of Scots and more.
Looking for something a bit more serious? Irish writer Colm Tóibín has a new collection of short stories out called The News from Dublin. Across nine tales, Tóibín explores displacement and the many emotions that come with it.
These stories take readers from Argentina to Ireland, offering intimate portraits of people shaped by history, disappointment, tragedy, grief and the long shadows of secrecy. Our reviewer noted that each story is “rendered with quiet precision and emotional intelligence”.
Wolf Worm, the new book from T Kingfisher (the pen name of US author Ursula Vernon) crawls with mystery and a lot of bugs. Set in 1899, the southern gothic novel follows Sonia Wilson, an anxious young scientific illustrator, who has been hired to draw the vast collection of insects of the reclusive entomologist (insect expert) Dr Halder at his North Carolina manor house.
Bugs are everywhere, but it’s not just that which is making Sonia’s skin crawl; darker things are clearly at work in the Carolina woods. Animals are acting strangely, sounds in the house are disconcerting, and her employer, so deep in his peculiar scientific work, remains an elusive puzzle. A harrowing tale of obsession and scientific ambition, our gothic literature expert Daniel Cook dubbed it “the best kind of neo-Victorian gothic literature”.
Obsession takes a different form in Hooked, the new book from Asako Yuzuki, author of the bestselling crime novel Butter. Hooked follows two women in their thirties who have struggled to form connections and are mired in loneliness until they strike up an unlikely friendship.
Eriko is a career-driven woman with a stable income, working for a trading company. Shōko is a housewife and blogger who writes about her daily life with her husband. What starts off as a positive, if somewhat intense, connection soon turns sour when Eriko becomes worryingly possessive. In this review, Japanese fiction expert Nozomi Uematsu explains the real loneliness epidemic behind the trend for books about single lonely women in Tokyo.
Do you think makes American and British humour different? Let us know how in the comments below
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harriet Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin University
The Mayhem Ball – the concert tour for Lady Gaga’s 2025 album Mayhem – is set to conclude in April after a global run. The tour delivered everything fans have come to expect from the artist: spectacle, innovation and, above all, immersion in a gothic world.
The production is bursting with macabre theatricality, including concepts and images associated with the gothic tradition. Skeletons, doppelgängers, zombies, candelabra, cloaks, veils, dreams and nightmares are incorporated into intricate set designs and showstopping costumes. Themes of pain, death and rebirth frame the whole narrative of the show.
Gaga has often made interesting use of gothic motifs, so much so that she was a key source of inspiration for my new book Gothic Celebrity: Fame and Immortality from Lord Byron to Lady Gaga. In it, I examine the intersection of celebrity culture and the gothic across literature, visual media and popular culture.
I started writing the book in 2016, inspired by a significant wave of celebrity deaths and the public’s reactions to these losses – including David Bowie, Prince and George Michael. These deaths unsettled many people because modern celebrity culture has established an expectation of the celebrity’s immortality.
Fame, immortality and the gothic
Described by some as the first celebrity, the Romantic poet Lord Byron’s posthumous fame was maintained in the years following his death by various cultural artefacts. These included a statue in Cambridge University’s Trinity College and two illustrated books published by William and Edward Finden in the 1830s.
In the 21st century, digital technology now serves this purpose. Three years after her death, actor Carrie Fisher was digitally resurrected for her role as Princess Leia in the 2019 Star Wars film The Rise of Skywalker with the help of CGI. Holograms of deceased celebrities have also been used for music performances, such as in 2020 for An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour.
Abracadabra by Lady Gaga, one of the songs from the album Mayhem.
In western culture, our relationship with celebrities revolves around a tension between renewal and decay. We want celebrities to be immortalised; we do not want them to age or die. Technological preservation or the reinvention of a celebrity’s image in a new context reinforces immortality, ageing or dying disrupts it. Gothic can be found in these moments of disruption.
My research has found that celebrities have continually been represented in gothic ways. Mortality and immortality are central themes in these gothic representations, whereby the celebrity is often portrayed as decaying, dead or undead.
The notoriously hideous portrait in Oscar Wilde’s 1890 Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray establishes a useful motif for exploring the deterioration of a celebrity’s flawless image. In the novel’s context of Victorian fashionable society, Dorian Gray is celebrated for his remarkable beauty. However, his decaying portrait embodies the horror of this beauty not being preserved, reflecting both the inevitability of ageing and the precarity of visual media.
This motif is later reimagined in the celebrity portraits of the pop artist Andy Warhol. Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, created in the months following Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962, mimics the appearance of a decaying portrait to symbolise Monroe’s death and question the perceived immortality of celebrities in the late 20th century.
In gothic novels, a celebrity’s immortality is often symbolised by the eternally youthful vampire. John Polidori’s 1819 short story The Vampyre established this archetype. In the story, the enchanting Regency gentleman Lord Ruthven – modelled after Lord Byron, who was friends with Polidori – returns from the dead in vampiric form.
Polidori’s tale inaugurates a tradition of eternally youthful vampires modelling celebrity that extends all the way to the post-millennium. In fact, Lady Gaga has played one such character in the anthology television series American Horror Story (2011-). In an episode titled Hotel, she plays a vampire called The Countess who adapts to the modern world by reinventing her image.
Lady Gaga’s gothic celebrity
What makes this phenomenon particularly compelling is the degree to which celebrities can choose to manage or even initiate their affiliation with the gothic. My research has found that there are many celebrities who form dialogues with gothic texts. This is done by producing, starring in or inspiring them. These celebrities also self-consciously construct images that can be described as gothic. Lady Gaga is the perfect example.
A recurring theme in her music performances is her interest in the undead. In the music video for her song Bad Romance (2009), she emerges from a coffin-like container inscribed with the word “Monster”. Later in the same video, she is seen lounging on a bed and smoking a cigarette next to a charred carcass.
The music video for Bad Romance.
Uncanny echoes of this gothic iconography appear in Gaga’s recent Mayhem Ball performances. During her song Perfect Celebrity (2025), she is laying in a sandpit caressing a skeleton, surrounded by skeleton backing dancers. The show’s climax sees Gaga dramatically resurrected after the set is engulfed in flames. She is wheeled back on stage by dancers in plague doctor costumes, who operate on her lifeless body before she is spectacularly reanimated for a show-stopping rendition of Bad Romance.
These performances, in which Gaga is frequently depicted as undead or resurrected, represent more than just an aesthetic interest in the macabre. They are reflections of our enduring fixation with death. In this way, celebrities can play a crucial role in interrogating such profound concerns. Both gothic and celebrity culture are vehicles for exploring how modern western society processes its deepest anxieties.
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Harriet Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Leaf through a textbook, watch a wellness influencer or listen in at the gym, and it can feel as though the human body has already been mapped to exhaustion. Every muscle named, every nerve traced. Everything understood and readily available.
Most people recognise at least a few anatomical terms – “traps”, “glutes”, “biceps”. After centuries of dissection, microscopy and medical imaging, it seems reasonable to assume the work is done. Surely anatomy, as a discipline, must be complete?
It isn’t. Not even close.
Since the publication of De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius in 1543 – the first comprehensive anatomy book based on direct observation of human dissection – anatomy has carried an air of authority. Vesalius famously corrected centuries of inherited error, challenging the ancient physician Galen through direct observation of the human body. His work helped establish anatomy as an evidence-based science.
Three hundred years later, Gray’s Anatomy by Henry Gray reinforced the impression that the body had finally been catalogued, indexed and neatly organised – a system mapped and fully explained.
But textbooks create a misleading sense of certainty. They present the body as stable, universal and fully agreed upon. Real anatomy is messier than that.
The illusion of completeness
Much of early topographical anatomy – the careful mapping of structures in relation to one another – depended on cadavers obtained through grave robbery.
“Resurrectionists” – body snatchers – exhumed the recently buried, disproportionately targeting the poor, the institutionalised and those without family protection or the financial means to guard graves. These bodies were then sold to anatomists, who relied on them for dissection and teaching.
Working conditions for early anatomists were difficult, and the limitations considerable.
Lighting was poor. Bodies were often malnourished or diseased. Post-mortem change had already altered tissue planes. Sample sizes were small and opportunistic. Demographic information was largely absent, beyond what could be inferred from appearance. The bodies of women were sometimes dissected but rarely reported.
Yet it was under precisely these conditions that anatomists produced the observations that became the foundation of classical anatomical topography.
The anatomical “norm” that emerged from these studies was therefore constructed from a narrow and socially stratified sample.
None of this diminishes the extraordinary technical skill of early anatomists. Their observational ability was remarkable. But the conditions under which they worked inevitably shaped what they saw – and what they missed.
So when we ask whether anatomy is finished, we might also ask a more uncomfortable question: was it ever truly complete in the first place? This question matters scientifically as well as ethically.
For much of the 20th century, anatomical investigation slowed dramatically. By the 1960s, relatively few cadaveric studies were being published worldwide. The assumption was simple: the human body had already been mapped.
Medical education continued, of course, but much of it focused on teaching established knowledge rather than generating new anatomical observations. That apparent stability masked a deeper problem: much of the knowledge had been inherited rather than tested.
Improved imaging techniques, renewed cadaveric research and a growing awareness of anatomical variation have triggered something of a renaissance in anatomical study. Structures once overlooked or poorly described are being re-examined.
Far from being finished, anatomy is rediscovering just how incomplete its map of the human body may be.
Beyond the ‘standard’ human body
One of the most important shifts in modern anatomy has been recognising that variation is the rule rather than the exception. Textbooks present a “typical” body for teaching, but real human anatomy sits along a spectrum.
Human anatomy varies across several dimensions at once. Differences exist between males and females, across the lifespan as the body develops and ages, and between populations shaped by genetics and environment.
Beyond these broad patterns lies enormous individual variation: blood vessels may follow different routes, muscles may be absent or duplicated, and even the folding patterns of the brain differ from person to person. The “standard” anatomy shown in textbooks is therefore best understood not as a universal blueprint, but as a simplified reference point within a wide biological range.
This variation matters far beyond the operating theatre. Differences in nerves, vessels and joints can alter how diseases reveal themselves, influence how scans are interpreted and shape patterns of movement and injury.
Subtle differences in joint alignment may affect the risk of conditions, such as osteoarthritis, while variations in vascular anatomy can influence susceptibility to stroke or aneurysm. Understanding anatomical diversity is therefore central not only to surgery, but also to diagnosis, medical imaging, biomechanics and the study of disease itself.
Even after centuries of study, the human body continues to yield new anatomical insights. Structures once overlooked – from previously unrecognised lymphatic vessels around the brain to overlooked ligaments in the knee – are being re-examined. Familiar tissues are being understood in new ways, and the map of the body is still being revised.
People should know more about their bodies. Greater understanding helps people advocate for their own health and engage more confidently with care. But it is worth remembering that the canonical anatomy presented in textbooks is best understood as a teaching model, not a perfect representation of biological reality. The more closely we study the human body, the more we realise there is still much to learn.
Michelle Spear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
‘Create an image of what rewilding in England looks like’, according to ChatGPT.Image generated by The Conversation using ChatGPT., CC BY-SA
Humans have always imagined the natural world. From Ice Age cave paintings to the modern day, we depict the animals and landscapes we value – and ignore those we don’t.
Now artificial intelligence is doing the imagining for us. And when asked to picture “rewilded” Britain, it produces landscapes that are strikingly similar – and tame.
Two geographers at the University of Aberdeen recently did exactly this. In their research they present examples of how widely used AI chatbots (Gemini, ChatGPT and others) generated images of rewilded landscapes in the UK. The bots were prompted with commands such as “Can you produce an image of what rewilding in Scotland looks like?” or “Create an image of what rewilding in England looks like”, tailored to each bot’s style.
The authors recognise that the commands are very general, but that gives the bots free rein. The images generated were then compared using both the composition (for example point of view, scale, lighting) and content (what is in the picture and what is not, primarily the habitat types, species or humans).
A landscape without risk
The AI rewilded landscapes were all very similar, all but one featuring distant hills, grading politely to a valley foreground of open meadow or heath with a stream or pool. A golden light plays across the scenes, illuminating foreground flowers. Ponies and deer feature routinely, plus the occasional Highland cow. Perhaps unsurprisingly there were no humans, nor any human presence shown by buildings or other artefacts.
Images generated by the Aberdeen researchers using ChatGPT of rewilding in Scotland (left) and England (right). Note the similarity to the image generated by The Conversation using the same prompt (at the top of this article). Wartmann & Cary / ChatGPT, CC BY-SA
There was also no mess, no decay, no death, no animals likely to provoke a sharp intake of breath. No wolves, lynx, bears or bison, the creatures that routinely haunt the real arguments about rewilding.
Copilot’s take on rewilding in Scotland (left) and England (right). Wartmann & Cary / ChatGPT, CC BY-SA
The pictures were achingly dull, polite, as the authors point out “ordered and harmonious bucolic”.
Only experts get the messy version
AI really can generate images of ecologically accurate rewilding. This one made with Gemini, for instance, captures the messiness and chaos of a genuinely rewilded British landscape:
Gemini prompt: ‘A hyper-realistic, wide-angle landscape photograph of the British countryside 50 years after a large-scale rewilding project. The scene is defined by ‘ecological messiness’ and structural diversity: thickets of thorny scrub like blackthorn and hawthorn transitioning into expanding groves of self-seeded oak and birch. No straight lines or mown grass. The ground is a mosaic of tall tussocky grasses, rotting fallen logs (deadwood), and muddy wallows created by free-roaming herbivores. In the mid-ground, a small herd of Exmoor ponies or Iron Age pigs are rooting through the undergrowth. The vegetation is dense and layered, featuring wild dog rose, brambles, and stands of willow in damp hollows. The lighting is the soft, dampened silver of a British overcast afternoon, highlighting the textures of lichen, moss, and wet leaves. No fences, no roads, no manicured edges—just a complex, tangled, and thriving wild ecosystem.‘ Gemini / The Conversation, CC BY-SA
However, it only does this when given highly specific instructions about species, landscapes, habitat types, and so on. In other words, you need to know what a rewilded landscape should look like in order to get a convincing image of one.
For most users, the result is something else entirely: a lowest common denominator vision of nature.
AI is copying our sanitised vision of the future
The sanitised AI landscapes produced in the recent study are not surprising. The Aberdeen researchers note the models draw inspiration from available sources, including the social media and websites of environmental initiatives and NGOs promoting rewilding such as Cairngorm Connect and Knepp Estate Rewilding. Their visuals often used aerial perspectives, from inaccessible vantage points using drones. Animals tended to be both iconic but also lovable such as beavers or wildcats.
People and our structures such as homes or farm buildings were largely missing. Reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates were notably absent too.
Rewilding images are more accurate when they display natural processes like scavenging or storm damage. (Image generated by The Conversation using Gemini and a detailed prompt). The Conversation / Gemini, CC BY-SA
A particular concern of the authors’ is that the imagery used by the NGOs excludes processes, species and people who might challenge a narrow, conventional view of prettified nature. No wonder the AI was conjuring the sanitised landscapes, although actual rewilding routinely creates landscapes that are an aesthetic challenge, in particular messy, scrubby terrain.
We’ve always argued about what nature should look like
Visual imagery has long had a powerful influence on our view of nature. Wild landscapes in the UK were regarded with disdain by the more genteel classes. The writer Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 travelogue touring throughout Britain, characterised the Lake District as “All Barren and wild, of no use or advantage to man or beast…Unpassable hills…. All the pleasant part of England is at an end”. He wasn’t a fan.
The Romantic movement turned this bias on its head and venerated the sublime or sometimes terrible beauty of the landscape. For example Caspar David Friedrich’s famed painting of 1818, Wanderer above a sea of fog, with a lone adventurer gazing into the distant view of summits and clouds from a crag.
There is a touch of the sublime to the AI landscapes, certainly the viewpoint from on high. However a challenge for rewilding projects is that the resulting landscapes can be distinctly ugly and messy, certainly, neither wistfully pretty nor the dramatic sublime.
The messy reality of a rewilded Britain. (Image generated by The Conversation using Gemini and a detailed 376 word prompt). The Conversation / Gemini, CC BY-SA
Rewilded sites are often scrubby and untidy. This can be on a large scale as natural processes kick in and open habitat scrubs over. Scrub habitat can be superb for wildlife, for example the Knepp Estate credits the regeneration of willow scrub for the return of iconic butterfly the purple emperor. The trouble is that scrub looks untidy and uncared for.
This has become a particularly common criticism of nature recovery projects, especially in urban settings: road verges unmown, weeds in pavements, parks less manicured. Some researchers call it an aesthetic backlash. The AI wildscapes are largely free of scrub which is no surprise because this does not feature much on the image sources the AI drew upon. This is a risk for projects in the real world. If the public comes to expect nature recovery to look neat and picturesque, then the messy reality may be harder to accept.
No scrub, no wolves, no people. AI has created a very tame rewilding.
Mike Jeffries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Joseph Freer, Academic Clinical Fellow, Population Health, Queen Mary University of London
For a health service long defined by waiting lists, staff shortages and steady erosion of public confidence, the latest figures offer something unfamiliar: a sense that the mood is shifting. A new survey by The King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust records a six-point increase in satisfaction, and the sharpest fall in dissatisfaction with the NHS since 1998.
Puzzlingly, while overall satisfaction rose, there was no corresponding rise in satisfaction with each individual NHS service: GPs, A&E, dentistry and hospital care. There are two possible explanations for this.
The first explanation is that services did genuinely improve, but the survey simply did not poll enough people about each individual service to reliably detect small improvements.
There are some tentative signs that the NHS may be improving. Hospital waiting lists fell by around 200,000 in the year following the 2024 general election – down from a record high of 7.8 million in 2023. GP appointments have risen by 8.3 million in the past year.
But the picture is uneven. In October 2025, waits of over four weeks for GP appointments were at a record 4.1 million, and 12-hour waits in A&E hit an all-time high in January 2026.
A report from the Health Foundation suggested that the drop in waiting lists isn’t only because hospitals are treating more patients. Instead, some of the decrease may be because patients are being taken off the list for administrative reasons, such as missing appointments, rather than actually receiving treatment.
The second explanation is that the NHS has not shifted, but the political context has. A study of 21 European countries found that patients’ actual experiences of care only explain about 10% of how satisfied they are with the health system. Most of how people feel about the health system is influenced by things outside it, like what they expect, the political climate and what they see in the media.
In a study published in the BMJ, researchers tracked how the NHS was reported in the media between August and November 1991. During that time, overall public dissatisfaction dropped by almost eight percentage points, even though the services hadn’t really changed.
Dissatisfaction with individual services did not change over that period. The researchers’ explanation was that people answer questions about specific services, such as A&E, on the basis of their personal experience. But a general question about the NHS as an institution additionally draws on political views, social attitudes and media coverage. In this case, a new policy called the Patient’s Charter changed how the media talked about the NHS. Waiting lists, which used to be reported as a sign of crisis, were now presented as targets the government was trying to improve.
A similar shift in the wider context happened between 2024 and 2025. In 2024, the survey was conducted just after the election, when health secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS was “broken”. Experts at the Nuffield Trust and the King’s Fund suggested this negative message may have stopped the usual boost in public satisfaction that often follows a new government.
By contrast, the 2025 survey took place just after the government published its new ten-year NHS plan, when the tone had shifted from talking about a “broken” system to focusing on fixing and improving it.
A change in context, not in care
Sharp rises and falls in satisfaction in the wake of political announcements have multiple precedents. When the coalition government’s health and social care bill attracted intense critical media coverage in 2011, satisfaction fell 12 points in a single year, which was widely attributed to public anxiety about the reforms.
Conversely, in 2019, satisfaction jumped from 53% to 60%, despite worsening waiting times and staff shortages. The Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund concluded the rise was probably due to the announcement of a funding settlement worth an extra £20.5 billion per year, which had received substantial media coverage throughout 2019.
The increase in satisfaction in the 2025 survey was statistically significant (in other words, unlikely to be due to chance) among Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, but not among supporters of the Conservatives or Reform. This pattern is also not new.
Following the 1997 election, the first survey afterwards recorded an eight percentage point rise in satisfaction, driven disproportionately by Labour voters’ views. It was hard to attribute such a rapid rise in satisfaction to anything the NHS had actually done in the time since Labour took office. Indeed, that bounce faded within two years.
Satisfaction only began its sustained rise when substantial investment reached frontline services in the early 2000s, eventually peaking at 70% in 2010 – the highest in the survey’s history, and 44 percentage points above this year’s figure.
These two explanations may have operated together. But the weight of the evidence – a Labour voter-concentrated improvement, individual service satisfaction that has remained at historic lows, and a fall in dissatisfaction of precisely the scale the 1991 research attributes to media framing – points more towards a change in context than a change in care.
That distinction matters. A shift in public mood, however welcome, does nothing for the person waiting 18 months for a hip replacement, or unable to get through to their GP. The survey measures how people feel about the NHS. It says less about what the NHS is doing for their health.
Joseph Freer receives funding in the form of salary from the NHS and Queen Mary University of London. He was previously funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The war in the Middle East swiftly led to the cancellation of thousands of flights across the Persian Gulf. The crisis in the industry is severe, but aviation is no stranger to existential shocks. Over the last four decades it has faced the COVID pandemic, the 2008 recession, the September 11 attacks, the Gulf war and Sars.
This time around, the conflict wiped US$53 billion from the market value of the world’s 20 largest airlines in just its first three weeks.
Despite facing recurrent shocks, the industry provides a necessary service and often has state-level support – and so has survived. But it has not thrived. Aviation has been plagued by thin margins, frequent losses and a heavy and inflexible asset base in its fleets of aircraft (including long-term leasing arrangements). It also faces a long list of risks.
This war will be remembered as one of aviation’s greatest tests, delivering a pincer attack on the industry. On one side, fuel prices have doubled, with jet fuel surging from around US$87 to between US$150 and US$200 per barrel. On the other, revenue is in freefall due to closed hubs and suspended flights.
Fuel is typically the largest single component of airline operating costs, at around a quarter to a third of expenditure. It is also the most volatile. This is then followed by labour at around 25% and aircraft ownership costs at around 10–15%.
When fuel prices swing upwards they can wipe out an entire year’s profits, depending on the percentage that is unhedged (not acquired at a fixed price in advance). If at the same time revenue is collapsing, it is a perfect storm. At the end of 2025, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecast a profit of US$41 billion for the industry in 2026. But this now seems unattainable.
The race to survive
Only about one in seven airlines that have ever existed are still operating today. And while around 5,000 airlines have held international aviation codes over the years, only around 700 are now active. Bankruptcy is endemic in the industry, and the markets are already pricing in a higher risk of failure from the war.
The airlines most likely to fail are those with weak balance sheets, low operational efficiency, no state backing, and little or no fuel hedging (which leaves them fully exposed to sharp rises in costs).
Yet within this brutal landscape, a handful of airlines have not merely survived successive crises but have consistently outperformed. This includes budget carriers, such as Ryanair, and flag carriers, such as Singapore Airlines.
What these airlines have in common, regardless of market segment, is cost discipline, high levels of agility and close alignment between their operations and their strategy (that is, ensuring that what they offer is in line with what flyers expect from them). This drives higher customer satisfaction. These are the capabilities that produce resilience in a crisis – and a faster bounce-back when it ends.
Ryanair is not directly exposed to Gulf routes. In fact, the crisis is boosting its demand, with a surge in European short-haul bookings reported as travellers avoid the Middle East.
But beyond this boost, Ryanair is one of the most efficient and profitable airlines in the world, with around 80% of its fuel hedged at around US$67 per barrel for the next year. Ryanair systematically locks in fuel prices 12 to 18 months ahead through forward contracts – a strategy that sacrifices potential savings if prices fall in exchange for certainty.
But this hedged figure is now a fraction of current spot prices. The airline is on track to become debt-free by May this year, with net cash exceeding €1.5 billion, a position that can only be dreamt about by most airlines.
And Ryanair is a textbook example of cost leadership – its efficiency delivers low fares for adequate quality, with 90% of its seats consistently occupied. Its cost base is so low that it can attract customers with fares that competitors cannot match.
Singapore Airlines, on the other hand, does have routes that transit the Gulf corridor. Yet on other measures, it has similar strengths. A majority of its fuel is hedged, it has a strong balance sheet and its operations are highly efficient.
Singapore Airlines is what strategists call an “ambidextrous” organisation; one that pursues seemingly contradictory objectives that most companies find impossible to reconcile, such as exceptional quality at low operational cost.
It positions itself on being consistently ranked among the world’s best airlines. On the one hand it accomplishes this through continuous innovation – things like its ultra-exclusive “suites” class or Starlink connectivity in-flight.
But this level of service is coupled with intense cost discipline. Singapore Airlines has for decades had one of the lowest cost figures in its segment. The focus on efficiency is constant. In 2025 the airline initiated a partnership with OpenAI to find more ways to streamline operations.
It’s also a dual-brand model, pairing the premium Singapore Airlines with the low-cost carrier Scoot. This allows the company to compete across segments without diluting either brand.
The lessons here are strategic and timeless, and they remain true to what aviation experts and strategists know about competitive advantage. Strive for operational efficiency. Build a strong balance sheet. Align your business model to your competitive positioning so that your customers keep returning (and will rush to return after a crisis).
But these principles are simple to state and difficult to execute. This is precisely why so few airlines manage it.
Loizos Heracleous does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
