Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Hemingway, Teaching Fellow in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick

An air of scepticism greeted the announcement last year that the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) would get a UK counterpart.

Critics of the news brought up the incompatibility of British and American humour as a major issue, as well as the lack of big-name British comedians who could potentially work on the show. The latter concern seems to misunderstand the fact that the likes of Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner were plucked out of relative obscurity in 1975 to star in the first season of the original US version.

As a scholar in television comedy, I believe the only way SNL UK could work on its own terms is to allow a new crop of British talent to create their own group dynamic and to rely on the original version of the show in format only. Based on the first episode alone, it seems like they have achieved this with ease.

The most interesting thing about the first episode of SNL UK is how it sought to teach UK audiences how SNL typically works and what they can expect. Former US SNL comedian Tina Fey was selected to host the debut episode, effectively acting as a representative for the institution and fuelling further speculation about her potential takeover of the US show when SNL creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, eventually decides to retire.

In her successful opening monologue, Fey explained the show’s format, mentioning its sketch comedy, musical performances and the fact it was a live broadcast where things can go wrong. Fey’s monologue also included three celebrity cameos – another common feature of the show – from British TV stalwart Graham Norton and actors Michael Cera and Nicola Coughlan. Norton’s inclusion was smartly executed, providing UK viewers with a familiar face right at the start of the show.

The back-and-forth between Norton and Fey involved him quizzing her on various aspects of British comedy and culture more broadly. Along the way, Fey performed impressions from Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Eastenders. Once again, British comedy culture, plus all of the weird stuff which seeps into the collective consciousness (“Nothing beats a Jet 2 holiday”, “What a sad little life, Jane”), was leaned on in the opener.

The sketches also helped teach the viewer how the show works on a moment-to-moment basis. For instance, the camera frequently tracked backwards once a sketch was complete to show the makeshift set, behind-the-scenes crew members and the live studio audience watching.

Wet Leg were the first British band to take the SNL UK stage, performing two songs from their recent album Moisturizer. Like the US version, the sound quality for these performances was somewhat muddled and poorly mixed, but the band’s energy carried them through.

As is often the case with SNL, not everything worked. David Attenborough’s Last Supper sketch ran too long, involving nearly every cast member playing a famous historical figure – ranging from Al Nash’s Winston Churchill to Emma Sidi’s Cilla Black. George Fouracres delivered a rather weak Attenborough impression. However, his version of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, during the political “cold open” (a topical live sketch that begins each episode) was well-received and will no doubt become a permanent fixture on the programme over the next few years.

Fouracres’ weirdest moment came during the 45 Seconds with Fouracres sketch. The sketch began with Fouracres frantically singing “what kind of Irish is your grandad?” direct to camera, followed by him speaking in various, sometimes unintelligible, Irish accents. This was reminiscent of early SNL sketches and was a clear direct descendent of the surreal humour found in Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s Shooting Stars, an often surreal and absurd British panel show from the 1990s. As the show continues and grows in confidence, pushing further in this direction would be welcome.

Along with Fouracres, Jack Shep (with his lip-biting Princess Di) and Hammed Animashaun made the biggest impressions, appearing in nearly every sketch.

Other highlights included the very first Weekend Update segment with Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. Update is the longest-running recurring sketch in SNL history and comments on current news events with cast members playing the role of news anchors. The first UK version featured a prop joke about helium shortages due to the conflict around the strait of Hormuz which was so well executed, I won’t ruin it here.

It also can’t be overstated how much difference a few swear words can make. It’s common knowledge in comedy that a carefully timed “fuck” can double your laughs. In the case of this week’s episode, the same could be said for a carefully timed “cunt”. Due to a more relaxed approach to late-night programming, this is one of the major ways in which the UK version can differentiate itself from its occasionally tame US forebear. It will be interesting to see just how far this can be pushed in future episodes.

The first episode reached 226,000 viewers in its 10pm slot on Sky One, a number which is likely to increase as people watch on catch-up services later in the week. Sky One received a bigger audience share than Channel 4 in the same timeslot, which is a resounding success for a programme broadcast on a subscription-based television service. Time will tell whether this initial curiosity will sustain into longer-term engagement and enthusiasm. But for now, the stars and writers can rest easy knowing that the first episode exceeded all expectations and has the potential to begin a new era in British comedy. See you on Saturday night.

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

– ref. Saturday Night Live UK’s first episode was a ratings success and had some shining moments that prove it can work – https://theconversation.com/saturday-night-live-uks-first-episode-was-a-ratings-success-and-had-some-shining-moments-that-prove-it-can-work-279021

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ed Macaulay, Lecturer in Physics and Data Science, Queen Mary University of London

The science fiction film Project Hail Mary brilliantly uses authentic science to underscore the human drama and narrative tension of the story.

Based on the novel by Andy Weir, the story revolves around an effort to save the Earth – threatened by an alien organism that is consuming the Sun. By combining real science, compelling characters and a gripping narrative, the filmmakers have crafted a science fiction odyssey that might just inspire a whole new generation of scientists.

The story begins with the main protagonist, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking from a coma in a sealed lab with no windows. Affected by amnesia, the novel describes how he nevertheless applies his knowledge of high-school physics to deduce that gravity in the lab is 50% greater than on the surface of the Earth. He concludes that he must either be in a constantly accelerating spaceship, or on the surface of another planet.

This opening scene perfectly illustrates a concept that Einstein described in 1907 as his “happiest thought”. Einstein realised that while a person is in perfect free-fall, they don’t directly experience the effects of gravity themselves. This is the state of weightlessness experienced by astronauts in orbit – in a perpetual state of free-fall about the Earth.

By the same token, Einstein realised that this inertial experience of acceleration is also perfectly equivalent to the force of gravity. As Grace discovers, there’s no way to distinguish the two. This principle of equivalence was the essential insight that Einstein needed to describe gravity as the effects of warped space-time in his general theory of relativity.

Grace soon discovers that, not only is his increased sensation of gravity due to the constant acceleration of the spacecraft Hail Mary, he’s rapidly approaching the vicinity of the star Tau Ceti, some 11.9 light-years from Earth. To date, the fastest that humans have ever travelled was on the Apollo 10 mission, which reached nearly 25,000 miles per hour – or about seven miles per second.

That may sound fast, but at that speed, it would take about 320,000 years to reach Tau Ceti. But Grace nevertheless finds himself there well within the course of a human lifetime. To understand how, we have to turn to some of the most fascinating results from Einstein’s theory of relativity.

A famous equation

A capable sports car might accelerate from 0 to 60mph in a time of 2.7 seconds. This is the same rate at which an object falls to the ground due to the effects of Earth’s gravity: 1g of acceleration. The 1.5g of the Hail Mary spacecraft corresponds to a 0-60mph time of 1.8 seconds; clearly rapid, but a comparable rate to a modern hypercar.

The difference is that even the highest performance cars can maintain that acceleration for only a few seconds. The Hail Mary accelerates at that rate for eight and a half months, reaching a maximum speed of 92% of the speed of light, or about 165,000 miles per second; about 25,000 times faster than Apollo 10. So how could the Hail Mary sustain this acceleration for so long?

The answer lies in Einstein’s most famous equation: E=mc². The Hail Mary is fuelled with huge tanks of astrophage – the fictional microorganisms in the story that feed off the Sun and can convert matter to pure energy. The astrophage provides the continuous thrust required to reach almost the speed of light. But it takes light itself 11.9 years to reach Tau Ceti, so even at 92% of the speed of light, how could Grace experience the journey in less than half that time?

The ultimate speed limit

Relativity is clear that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. At a constant speed of 92% of the speed of light, it would take the Hail Mary 12.9 years to reach Tau Ceti. However, one of the essential principles of relativity is that the speed of light is an absolute constant for all observers.

To keep the speed of light constant for all observers, Einstein realised that our intuitive expectations about time and space would have to be modified at relativistic speeds. To put it another way, some very weird stuff happens when travelling close to the speed of light.

If we assume that the Hail Mary is 40 metres long, an observer watching the ship fly by at 92% of the speed of light would observe the ship to be less than 16 metres in length. If we assume that Ryland Grace is the same height as his onscreen counterpart Ryan Gosling, he would appear to an external observer to be only 72 cm tall.

However, one of Einstein’s key insights from relativity is that anyone moving at a perfectly constant speed can consider themselves at rest, and everything else in the universe as moving towards them. If Grace is flying towards the distant star with a constant speed of 92% the speed of light, we can equally say that the Hail Mary is at rest, and that Tau Ceti is approaching the ship at close to light speed.

This can play with our perceptions. From the perspective of an external observer, at 92% the speed of light, the Hail Mary would appear to be length contracted by a factor of 2.55, but from the perspective of the Hail Mary, the ship is still its original length, and all other distances in the same direction appear to be contracted by this same amount.

Whereas the “rest-frame” distance to Tau Ceti remains 11.9 light-years, from the perspective of the Hail Mary, the distance is less than 4.7 light-years. At a constant speed of 92% the speed of light, the Hail Mary would arrive in about five years. This doesn’t mean that Tau Ceti is physically closer – only that from Grace’s point of view the distance is contracted. An observer tracking the mission back on Earth would still find that the journey took 12.9 years. While everyone would agree on the speed of the Hail Mary, the time and distance involved depend on the point of view of the observer.

By embracing the genuine principles of relativity, the filmmakers have crafted a science fiction masterpiece with a foundation in authentic physics. Far from detracting from the story, Weir’s masterful skill of weaving real science together with a riveting plot helps to underscore the emotional stakes of the narrative.

Science fiction is one of the few avenues through which concepts from relativity and astrophysics enter the mainstream public discourse. By brilliantly engaging with these concepts as part of such a compelling story, Project Hail Mary may just inspire a whole new generation to study these subjects, and perhaps even make new discoveries of their own.

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

– ref. Einstein’s theories fuel the drama in Project Hail Mary – https://theconversation.com/einsteins-theories-fuel-the-drama-in-project-hail-mary-278470

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lyndsay Murray, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy, University of Edinburgh

Scotland has become the first UK nation to screen all newborn babies for spinal muscular atrophy. Here is what you need to know.

What is spinal muscular atrophy and how does it affect babies?

Spinal muscular atrophy is a motor neurone disease that starts during infancy. There are different types of SMA, which vary in how severely they affect the child. The most severe type of SMA is, sadly, the most common. Untreated, babies with the most severe types of SMA would not be expected to live to their second birthday.

The disease happens because the body can’t make enough of a protein needed to keep the nerves that control muscles alive. As these nerve cells are lost, muscles become weak, making it hard for babies or children to move, swallow or breathe.

How common is SMA in the UK, and why is it considered a serious condition?

SMA is classed as a “rare” condition. However, for a rare condition, it is quite common. It affects around one in 14,000 births in the UK each year. Each month, around four babies with SMA are born in the UK. It is considered serious as, untreated, babies and children would die or experience serious lifelong disability.

What is the heel prick test?

The heel prick test (also called a “blood spot test”) is already routinely performed on babies born in the UK. During this test, a small sample of blood is taken and it is used to screen for a variety of genetic diseases.

If SMA is caught at birth, can it be cured?

There is no cure for SMA, but there are treatments that aim to fix the underlying genetic problem. The treatments for SMA are much more effective when given as early as possible. When treatment is delayed, it can still be beneficial. However, children may still have difficulty standing or walking, and experience lifelong difficulties with basic functions such as breathing and eating. However, with early treatment, any remaining difficulties are likely to be milder.

How could adding SMA to routine newborn screening change children’s lives?

The ability to detect SMA in newborns means diagnosis can happen before symptoms appear. Without screening, it may take months to reach a diagnosis.

With screening, SMA can be identified within the first week of life, allowing treatment to begin soon after. If therapy is started early enough, some children may never develop obvious symptoms and can reach milestones such as sitting, crawling and walking at the same pace as their peers.

The early window matters because motor neurons – the nerve cells that control muscle movement – are rapidly lost in SMA and cannot be replaced. Starting treatment as soon as possible helps preserve these cells, slowing or even halting disease progression. The more motor neurons that remain, the better the outcome for the child.

Have other countries implemented SMA screening?

Yes. For instance, the first state in the US started screening for SMA in 2017. All 50 states in the US were screening for SMA by 2024, as were most European countries. There is a huge body of evidence that earlier treatment leads to better outcomes.

How has medical progress changed life expectancy and quality of life for children with SMA?

Medical progress has revolutionised life for people with SMA and their families. In the past, a diagnosis of SMA usually meant a very short life expectancy, or lifelong profound disability, with a high reliance on caregivers for even the most basic bodily functions.

Treatments for SMA have given huge hope to the SMA community. The treatments have the capacity to stop the progression of the disease, allowing many children who would previously not have survived to live longer, and preventing further decline in muscle strength for those living with the disease.

Could this lead to screening for more rare genetic conditions in newborns?

SMA has been added to newborn screening because effective treatments are now available. The technology behind these treatments could also be adapted to tackle other genetic conditions in the future. There is a great deal to learn from progress in SMA, from how these therapies were developed to how screening programmes were successfully introduced.

Lyndsay Murray receives funding from Cure SMA, the SMA Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy UK, Motor Neuron Disease Scotland and the Anatomical Society.

– ref. Testing newborns for spinal muscular atrophy – screening programme begins in Scotland – https://theconversation.com/testing-newborns-for-spinal-muscular-atrophy-screening-programme-begins-in-scotland-279005

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mohammad Hossein Amirhosseini, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Digital Technologies, University of East London

A workplace wellbeing app might seem like a simple and helpful tool – a mood check-in, some stress management advice, or a chatbot asking how your week has gone. But behind that supportive language, some systems are also quietly analysing your voice, writing style and digital behaviour for signs of psychological distress.

These tools are already on the market – aimed at workplaces, universities and healthcare. They are framed as early-intervention systems that promise to cut costs and identify problems before they become serious. Unfortunately, companies are under no obligation to report using them, so data about how widespread they are is lacking.

The basic idea behind these tools is that behaviour leaves patterns. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on large datasets learn to recognise signals associated with particular mental health conditions, and when similar signals appear in new data, the system produces a probability estimate.

For many people, the surprising part is how much ordinary behaviour can reveal. Voice recordings can pick up changes in rhythm, pitch and hesitation. Language models can analyse word choice and emotional tone. Smartphone data has also been explored as a way of tracking changes in sleep, movement and social interaction – all without the person doing anything out of the ordinary.

But detecting a statistical signal is very different from identifying a genuine problem. Human behaviour is deeply contextual. Someone may speak slowly because they are tired, nervous or communicating in a second language. Reduced online activity might simply reflect a busy week.

Even well-designed systems will make mistakes. A person who is genuinely struggling may not show the behavioural patterns the system was trained to recognise, while someone else may be incorrectly flagged as being in distress.

The pressure to develop these tools is real. The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy US$1 trillion (£800 million) a year in lost productivity. Universities report rising demand for counselling, and employers are dealing with burnout and stress-related absence. Automated early-warning systems can seem like an attractive answer.

When wellbeing becomes surveillance

But this technology can change something fundamental about how mental health is understood. Traditionally, mental health is assessed through conversations between a person and a therapist, where context matters enormously. These systems work differently, inferring psychological states from behavioural traces that were never intended to communicate emotional information.

Once those inferences are made, they can influence decisions well beyond healthcare. Assessments of someone’s emotional state could shape workplace programmes, student support systems or insurance models, affecting how institutions judge a person’s reliability or suitability for a role. In effect, psychological states become a new kind of data.

There are particular risks for some groups. Neurodivergent people often communicate in ways that differ from the norms assumed by many datasets. Someone speaking in a second language may pause more frequently, producing speech patterns an algorithm could misinterpret. A person going through grief or illness may display signals that resemble those associated with mental health conditions – without actually having one.

Used carefully by healthcare professionals, these tools could have genuine value – helping therapists spot early warning signs of deteriorating mental health. But the same capability looks very different when deployed across a workplace or university without people’s knowledge.

At a minimum, people should know when these tools are being used, what data is being analysed and whether the system has been independently tested. A claim that software can detect distress is not, on its own, enough.

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

– ref. Your voice, your typing, your sleep – what workplace wellbeing apps are really analysing – https://theconversation.com/your-voice-your-typing-your-sleep-what-workplace-wellbeing-apps-are-really-analysing-277692

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jake Phillips, Associate professor, University of Cambridge

The UK’s latest law on sentencing came into force on March 22. Among other changes, the new law means that, in England and Wales, people who would previously have been sent to prison for short sentences will instead serve those sentences in the community.

This means they will need to attend appointments with probation, do certain rehabilitative activities and may also be restricted from doing certain things or going to certain areas. They might also be required to do a set number of hours of community service.

The new law requires courts to avoid imposing custodial sentences of less than 12 months, except in exceptional circumstances. It also extends the maximum sentence that can be suspended from two years to three. This gives judges discretion to suspend sentences for more serious offences that would previously have required immediate custody.

Possession with intent to supply class A drugs (where a guilty plea can reduce a starting-point sentence to three years); street robbery; the most serious forms of controlling and coercive behaviour; and a third conviction for domestic burglary could now all, in theory, be suspended.

At the end of 2025, there were around 3,500 people serving a prison sentence of less than 12 months in England and Wales. Around 44% of all prison sentences are shorter than 12 months. They tend to be imposed for offences such as shoplifting, common assault or breaches of restraining orders.

People given short sentences have the highest reoffending rates when compared to other sentences. Evidence from Scotland, where a similar legal approach has been in place since 2019, has found that people released from a short sentence are reconvicted nearly twice as often as those sentenced to serve a community sentence.

Short sentences mean that people lose access to families, employment and housing, but they do not allow prisons enough time to provide the support that people need prior to release. As such, they account for more than half of all recalls to prison following release, and have contributed to increases in the prison population in recent years.

People serving short sentences typically have acute and unaddressed needs, such as housing instability, substance misuse and mental health concerns. And evidence shows that people sentenced for similar offences are more likely to offend after a short prison sentence than if they had been given a community sanction.

The changes are intended to alleviate pressure on the prison estate by reducing the number of people given immediate custody. Prisons in England and Wales have been working at capacity for years.

These new powers should also prevent the need for emergency early release schemes, which have failed in the past. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced emergency early release schemes in recent years. Under a scheme run by the previous Conservative government from 2023-24, 42% of people released were recalled to custody. This was partly due to an inability to plan for their release, and a shortage of support services such as accommodation.

We do not yet have recall data for the scheme introduced by the Labour government in 2024, which allows people to be released 40% of the way through their sentence. But overall recall rates have remained high.

With the new law in force, we should see a relatively quick decline in the number of people sentenced to custody. A steady reduction in the prison population should follow.

It is also worth highlighting that expanding the use of community sanctions can backfire, resulting instead in unintended net-widening: more people drawn into the penal system overall, rather than just reducing the number of people in prison. This could happen if judges begin to give more suspended sentences to those who would otherwise have been given a fine or community order. They may also sentence people to longer in prison to avoid the requirement to suspend the sentence – what criminologists call up-tariffing.

Read more:
How a doubling of sentence lengths helped pack England’s prisons to the rafters

Although broadly positive, these changes are not necessarily a silver bullet for the well-documented prisons crisis. For one thing, the reforms will result in more work for the probation service, which is already under pressure. In recent inspection reports, the probation inspectorate has described the service as having “too few staff, with too little experience and training, managing too many cases”.

Introducing more people with higher risk profiles into probation narrows the margin for error considerably. The service has been planning for these changes – by reducing the extent to which people at the end of their sentences are supervised – but how well it copes with these increased numbers remains to be seen.

If probation fails to cope, we may see more people breaching their orders. When this happens, their custodial sanction is activated, and they are swiftly put in custody to serve their sentence.

The effect on crime

There is also the question of whether the act will affect crime levels, which have been decreasing in recent decades. Criminological evidence has repeatedly shown that changing the seriousness of a punishment does not deter people from offending. What is much more important is the perception of whether one is likely to be caught, and the speed with which one might be punished.

In reality, most people who are about to commit an offence – especially those for which shorter custodial sentences are imposed – are not thinking about what sentence they may or may not receive at some undetermined point in the future.

Sentencing severity is a blunt tool for dealing with crime, especially given the complex reasons behind why people offend. The impact on crime will depend on other parts of the criminal justice system. Police performance, court backlogs and the nature of high-volume offending such as shoplifting and online fraud will all have much more immediate effects on crime levels than tinkering around the edges of sentencing.

Short sentences achieve very little beyond disrupting peoples’ lives and relationships and making it more difficult to find housing and employment, both of which are strongly correlated with re-offending rates. If probation copes with the additional workload, if recall rates do not skyrocket, and judges and magistrates stick to the ask, then the reforms could result in a more sustainable prison system that causes less harm than it currently does – that should be better for everyone.

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

– ref. Will ending short prison sentences fix prison overcrowding? What an expert thinks – https://theconversation.com/will-ending-short-prison-sentences-fix-prison-overcrowding-what-an-expert-thinks-278927