Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stewart Ulrich, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Sam Houston State University
President Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, center, who is the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The senior Kusher now serves as U.S. ambassador to France.Marko Georgiev/AP
President Donald Trump is making full use of his pardon power. This year, Trump has issued roughly 1,800 pardons, or nearly six times the number he issued during the four years of his first term. Granted, about 1,500 of them involved individuals charged for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Congress. Still, the pace of Trump’s pardons this year have been nearly unprecedented.
That is, until you remember his predecessor. Joe Biden, at the end of his term, issued a full and sweeping pardon to his son Hunter for gun and drug charges. This was an unprecedented action by a president to pardon his own child, which had never been done before. Biden also granted pardons to several other family members on his final day in office.
Despite serving a single term, Biden holds the record for the most acts of clemency, or pardons combined with commuted sentences, of any president. It’s a record that’s not hard to imagine Trump could break.
As a political scientist who has studied pardons and other aspects of presidential power, I believe that the founders of our nation would be horrified by the contemporary use of the pardon power, which represents a far cry from the unifying act of mercy it was intended to be. While Biden issued pardons to family members, Trump has handed them out to political allies.
It remains to be seen whether this is a slight deviation from course or becomes a permanent pattern for all presidents in the future.
A clear break
There’s no question that Trump and Biden have acted within their authority in issuing pardons for federal offenses. Presidents can extend a pardon, or complete legal forgiveness of a crime, or a commutation, which is the reduction of a sentence. However, individuals pardoned for federal crimes may still face peril in state courts.
This extraordinary power may seem kinglike at first glance, but it was given to the president with a different vision in mind. The founders of the country viewed the pardon power not as a personal token for the president to hand out but as an act of mercy meant to check the other two branches.
At the end of his presidency, Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter, who faced sentencing on gun and tax charges. Eric Thayer/AP
If Congress passed a law that the president believed was poorly written, or if the courts unfairly punished someone for breaking it, the president could step in and right the wrong. This was seen by the founders as a merciful act, stemming from the tradition of old English law.
Throughout American history, we have seen presidents mostly adhere to this pattern. Both Abraham Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson issued pardons and amnesty to former Confederate citizens, with the aim of helping the nation come back together after secession and the Civil War. Harry Truman granted amnesty to certain World War II deserters, while Jimmy Carter granted pardons to hundreds of thousands of individuals who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.
But toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, presidents have used the pardon pen increasingly for personal and political reasons. The inflection point is undoubtedly the pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 by his former vice president and successor, Gerald Ford. This was issued a month after Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which involved Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign spying on his political enemies.
Ford justified his action by citing the need for national unity, saying the pardon would spare the country from a messy and dramatic public trial of a former president. Never before had a high-profile public politician received such a presidential grant, which caused Ford’s public standing to take a hit. Scholars and historians believe the act contributed to his reelection loss in 1976.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, seeking to spare the country the divisiveness of a trial involving a former president. AP
We have since seen Ford’s decision open the door to more pardons of political allies or personal friends. In 1992, George H.W. Bush pardoned officials he had served with in the Reagan administration who were tangled up in the arms-for-hostages, Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton pardoned Democratic donor Marc Rich in 2001; and George W. Bush commuted the sentence of vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in 2007.
Trump’s expanded use
As it happens, Trump issued a full pardon to Libby in 2018. During his first term, Trump also pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
At the end of his first term, Trump pardoned “”) his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his friend Roger Stone among other political allies.
Trump’s second term has seen clemency for his former lawyer and friend Rudy Giuliani, as well as crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, whose ties to Trump family businesses have raised questions about the pardon.
Trump’s use of the pardon power does not seem to follow a consistent doctrine or philosophy. Some of his clemency actions seem to contradict his administration’s policy, such as dozens of pardons of drug traffickers, despite the effort to stop drug trafficking in the Caribbean.
The pace of Trump’s pardons and commutations, however, suggests little hesitation. The question looking forward, beyond his presidency, is how much of a precedent his actions, along with Biden’s, may set for their successors.
We know this from earlier expansions of the pardon’s reach, as well as other areas of presidential authority: Few presidents willingly relinquish powers accrued by their predecessors. Once chief executives have exercised a certain type of authority, their predecessors seldom give it back, ultimately increasing the power of the presidency.
Stewart Ulrich 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 (2) – By Niral Shah, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences & Human Development, University of Washington
Yes, AI tutors can provide individualized feedback, but learning is inherently social. Maskot via Getty Images
In the Star Trek universe, the audience occasionally gets a glimpse inside schools on the planet Vulcan. Young children stand alone in pods surrounded by 360-degree digital screens. Adults wander among the pods but do not talk to the students. Instead, each child interacts only with a sophisticated artificial intelligence, which peppers them with questions about everything from mathematics to philosophy.
This is not the reality in today’s classrooms on Earth. For many technology leaders building modern AI, however, a vision of AI-driven personalized learning holds considerable appeal. Outspoken venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, for example, imagines that “the AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development.”
Years ago, I studied computer science and interned in Silicon Valley. Later, as a public school teacher, I was often the first to bring technology into my classroom. I was dazzled by the promise of a digital future in education.
Individualized learning has its place. But decades of educational research is also clear that learning is a social endeavor at its core. Classrooms that privilege personalized AI chatbots overlook that fact.
School districts under pressure
Generative AI is coming to K-12 classrooms. Some of the largest school districts in the country, such as Houston and Miami, have signed expensive contracts to bring AI to thousands of students. Amid declining enrollment, perhaps AI offers a way for districts to both cut costs and seem cutting edge.
Pressure is also coming from both industry and the federal government. Tech companies have spent billions of dollars building generative AI and see a potential market in public schools. Republican and Democratic administrations have been enthusiastic about AI’s potential for education.
Decades ago, educators promoted the benefits of “One Laptop per Child.” Today it seems we may be on the cusp of “one chatbot per child.” What does educational research tell us about what this model could mean for children’s learning and well-being?
Learning is a social process
During much of the 20th century, learning was understood mainly as a matter of individual cognition. In contrast, the latest science on learning paints a more multidimensional picture.
Scientists now understand that seemingly individual processes – such as building new knowledge – are actually deeply rooted in social interactions with the world around us.
Neuroscience research has shown that even from a young age, people’s social relationships influence which of our genes turn on and off. This matters because gene expression affects how our brains develop and our capacity to learn.
In classrooms, this suggests that opportunities for social interaction – for instance, children listening to their classmates’ ideas and haggling over what is true and why – can support brain health and academic learning.
Research in the social sciences has long since proved the value of high-quality classroom discourse. For example, in a well-cited 1991 study involving over 1,000 middle school students across more than 50 English classrooms, researchers Martin Nystrand and Adam Gamoran found that children performed significantly better in classes “exhibiting more uptake, more authenticity of questions, more contiguity of reading, and more discussion time.”
In short, research tells us that rich learning happens when students have opportunities to interact with other people in meaningful ways.
AI in classrooms lacks research evidence
What does all of this mean for AI in education?
Introducing any new technology into a classroom, especially one as alien as generative AI, is a major change. It seems reasonable that high-stakes decisions should be based on solid research evidence.
But there’s one problem: The studies that school leaders need just aren’t there yet. No one really knows how generative AI in K-12 classrooms will affect children’s learning and social development.
Current research on generative AI’s impact on student learning is limited, inconclusive and tends to focus on older students – not K-12 children. Studies of AI use thus far have tended to focus on either learning outcomes or individual cognitive activity.
Although standardized test scores and critical thinking skills matter, they represent a small piece of the educational experience. It is also important to understand generative AI’s real-life impact on students.
For example: How does it feel to learn from a chatbot, day after day? What is the longer-term impact on children’s mental health? How does AI use affect children’s relationships with each other and with their teachers? What kinds of relationships might children form with the chatbots themselves? What will AI mean for educational inequities related to social forces such as race and disability?
More broadly, I think now is the time to ask: What is the purpose of K-12 education? What do we, as a society, actually want children to learn?
Of course, every child should learn how to write essays and do basic arithmetic. But beyond academic outcomes, I believe schools can also teach students how to become thoughtful citizens in their communities.
To prepare young people to grapple with complex societal issues, the National Academy of Education has called for classrooms where students learn to engage in civic discourse across subject areas. That kind of learning happens best through messy discussions with people who don’t think alike.
To be clear, not everything in a classroom needs to involve discussions among classmates. And research does indicate that individualized instruction can also enhance social forms of learning.
So I don’t want to rule out the possibility that classroom-based generative AI might augment learning or the quality of students’ social interactions. However, the tech industry’s deep investments in individualized forms of AI – as well as the disappointing history of technology in classrooms – should give schools pause.
Good teaching blends social and individual processes. My concern about personalized AI tutors is how they might crowd out already infrequent opportunities for social interaction, further isolating children in classrooms.
Center children’s learning and development
Education is a relational enterprise. Technology may play a role, but as students spend more and more class time on laptops and tablets, I don’t think screens should displace the human-to-human interactions at the heart of education.
I see the beneficial application of any new technology in the classroom – AI or otherwise – as a way to build upon the social fabric of human learning. At its best it facilitates, rather than impedes, children’s development as people. As schools consider how and whether to use generative AI, the years of research on how children learn offer a way to move forward.
Niral Shah 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.
As a young medical student in 1975, I walked into a basement lab at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to interview for a summer job.
It turned out to be the start of a lifelong affiliation – first as a trainee, then as a grantee running a university laboratory and finally, now, as a researcher of economics and public policy studying the agency’s impact on health care and on the national economy.
On that initial visit 50 years ago, I got my first direct experience with the NIH’s mission: to tap the enormous potential of basic science to improve human health and medical care. And over the long arc of my career, I watched the agency enact this mission in ways that brought enormous value to the country. NIH funding trained a legion of biomedical scientists, produced countless therapies that underpin much of modern medicine and catalyzed the launch of the biotechnology industry.
The NIH was founded through the Ransdell Act of 1930, which converted the former Hygienic Laboratory of the Marine Hospital Services into the seeds of a new government institution. That laboratory had been established in 1887 to develop public health measures, diagnostics and vaccines for controlling diseases prevalent in the U.S. at the time, such as cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, plague and diphtheria. With the act’s passage, the Hygienic Laboratory was reimagined as the National Institute of Health.
The NIH, initially called the National Institute of Health, was created in 1930 with the passage of the Ransdell Act. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the new NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., on Oct. 31, 1940, saying, ‘We cannot be a strong nation unless we are a healthy nation.’ National Institutes of Health
Sen. Joseph Ransdell of Louisiana envisioned the NIH as an agency with a broader mandate for translating scientific advances to improve human health. In arguing in 1929 for the creation of the new institute, he read into the Congressional Record an editorial from The New York Times that highlighted rapid advances in chemistry, physiology and physics.
The editorial lamented that “never in the whole history of the world had efforts to improve health conditions been behind the advance in other sciences.” Pointing to millions of Americans suffering from sickness leading to economic losses “into billions,” it argued for the need for a medical sciences institute coordinating “a national effort to prevent diseases that are or may be preventable.”
In 1945, a report called Science – The Endless Frontier, by Vannevar Bush, highlighted the government’s central role in supporting science that harnessed nuclear energy, implemented radar and developed penicillin – all important elements of the United States’ success in World War II. Bush argued that these wartime successes presented a model for growing the American economy, preventing and curing disease and projecting American power.
The NIH became central to this model. Its budget increased substantially during and just after World War II, with postwar adoption of Bush’s plan, and again after 1957 when the nation redoubled its commitment to science following Russia’s launch of Sputnik and the start of the space race. The National Cancer Act of 1971, which established the separate National Cancer Institute, reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to government-funded research. This new institute’s funding provided much of the seed capital for the emergence of biotechnology.
In the 1980s, the Stevenson-Wydler and Bayh-Dole acts created a clear pathway for developing commercial products from federally funded research that would provide public benefits and economic stimulus. These federal laws made it a requirement to pursue patenting and licensing of NIH-funded research to industry.
How one project’s evolution reflects the NIH’s mission
Today, the NIH represents the backbone of efforts to improve health and health care, supporting each step in the process from preliminary discovery to clinical advance. These steps correspond to the stages of an individual scientist’s path.
By putting study volunteers into a specially constructed metabolic chamber, NIH researchers in the 1950s could study how the human body uses air, water and food. The nurse here is affixing a hood onto a volunteer to measure oxygen consumption. National Institutes of Health
I experienced this progression in my own career. After establishing my first independent laboratory with a grant for early-stage researchers, then called a First Independent Research Support and Transition grant, a Research Project grant, widely known as an R01, funded my lab’s work identifying genes that cause inherited metabolic diseases in newborns. RO1 grants are the main mechanism that academic biomedical scientists in the U.S. rely on to support innovative research.
Later, an NIH Program Project grant enabled us to investigate how the genes we had identified could be used to treat children. A General Clinical Research Center grant supported the hospital facilities necessary for clinical research and paid for patient care. Other grants supported our medical students and fellows as they embarked on their own careers as well as applications of our research to areas such as child health, reproductive biology and gastroenterology.
As our research on gene therapy progressed, NIH Small Business grants contributed to our founding a company that raised US$200 million in investments and partnerships and created hundreds of new jobs in Houston. Grants to small businesses continue to play a crucial role in helping universities commercialize discoveries.
Is the NIH effective?
For the past decade, I have led a research center focused on characterizing the process of developing new drugs. Our work, which is not funded by the NIH, shows that an established foundation of basic research on the biology underlying health and disease is necessary for successful drug development – and that most of this research is performed in public institutions.
Based on research conducted at the NIH, azidothymidine, or AZT, in 1987 became the first drug approved to treat AIDS. Here, the drug, added to the middle vial, protects healthy immune cells from being destroyed by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. John Crawford, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
Medicines enabled by NIH funding have been crucial for increasing life expectancy and health – dramatically decreasing deaths due to heart disease and stroke, improving cancer outcomes, controlling HIV infection, improving the management of immunological diseases and easing the burden of psychiatric conditions.
The Trump administration is currently questioning the role of science in maintaining the nation’s health, economy and global posture. Yet the NIH stands as a testimony to the vision articulated by its early architects.
At its heart is the conviction that science is good for society, that persistent investment in basic research is essential to technological advances that serve the public interest, and that our nation’s health and economy benefit from developments in biology.
Fred D. Ledley’s research has been supported by grants to Bentley University from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, National Pharmaceutical Council, West Health, and the National Biomedical Research Foundation.
From left, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Britain Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leave a meeting on Dec. 8, 2025, at 10 Downing Street in London.AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Prospects for a lasting peace remain dubious. One reason, I believe, is that the proposals pay little attention to the relationship between peace and justice – a flaw shared by previous plans.
Is peace worth having if it’s unjust? Is justice worth pursuing if it prolongs war? Those are questions as troubling as they are old. “Peace is the effect of justice,” as St. Thomas Aquinas argued in the 13th century. Ceasefires built on coercion or exhaustion inevitably fail because they do not resolve the conflict’s causes.
Aquinas is a major figure in the just war tradition, the focus of my research. This area of ethics helps weigh when war is justified – and also how it should end.
Past agreements and proposals aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine failed because in the rush to stop the fighting, they ignored questions of justice. The literature on transitional justice, by contrast, encourages negotiators to attend to fourinterdependent principles: truth, justice, reparations and safeguards against future recurrence.
1. Truth
Truth is essential for peace. As St. Augustine, one of the earliest Christian just-war thinkers, put it in the fourth century, “false justice” arises when the pursuit of truth is abandoned.
A mother cries at the coffin of her son, Oleh Borovyk, a Ukrainian serviceman, during his funeral in Boiarka, Ukraine, on Dec. 3, 2025. AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka
But reconciliation requires a complete accounting of the harms done. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid, explained that “forgiveness depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth.”
Truth-telling also prevents false narratives from creating “justifications” for renewed fighting. Thus, peace in Ukraine will require a global effort to combat disinformation legitimizing Russia’s aggression and obscuring its war crimes.
2. Justice
Justice demands holding perpetrators to account. If, as Aquinas argued, a just war is “one that avenges wrongs” or seeks “to restore what [has been] seized unjustly,” ignoring these concerns when ending a war would itself be unjust.
Treating collaborators with fairness requires nuance. In some cases, pardoning individuals who acted under duress – and even willing but nonviolent collaborators who fully disclose their actions – can support postwar reconciliation. Especially in areas once occupied by enemy forces, frank confessions can help rebuild social trust.
Realistically, neither forum can try those responsible without either Russia’s defeat or Putin’s removal from power. But in the interim, other countries can continue to support Ukrainian courts handling war crimes cases.
Justice also requires holding one’s own side accountable, even if the other side will not reciprocate. Allegations of war crimes by Ukrainian soldiers are far rarer, but Ukrainian courts must also prosecute these. Fair trials for all combatants are essential, lest, as Aquinas cautions, judgments seek “to sate … hatred under cover of correction.”
A woman hugs a soldier who came back from Russian captivity during an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine on May 25, 2025. AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
3. Reparations
Reparations aim to make survivors whole again. This principle, too, has roots in classical just war thinking. The 16th-century theologian Francisco de Vitoria, for example, argued that reparations within the bounds of “equity and humanity” could help redress losses and restore justice.
That summer, Russian-backed separatists downed a Malaysian Airways flight, spurring the international community to seek a quick resolution. The hastily drafted Minsk agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015, established a ceasefire monitoring mission and required the removal of foreign military units. They also demanded Ukrainian constitutional reforms – ostensibly to secure more autonomy for the country’s largely Russian-speaking east.
The Minsk agreements temporarily froze the conflict, but relative quiet didn’t mean peace. Ceasefire violations were perpetual. Russian-supported militias were not disbanded, and Russia continued to send mercenaries and military forces to the Donbas. Human rights violations proliferated in Russian-occupied areas. And in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Given this history, a durable peace would require that Russia accept constraints on its power. The various peace proposals put forth since 2022, however, have demanded security concessions only from Kyiv, requiring Ukraine to abandon hopes for NATO membership and restricting the size of its military.
Russia is unlikely to agree to caps on its military. Deterrence, then, could take the form of credible commitments from other countries to enforce whatever peace agreement emerges.
Ukraine’s vulnerability to future Russian aggression means it will need binding promises from its partners. Russia will not sign a treaty that permits Ukraine to join NATO, which Moscow claims would be a threat. Other possible safeguards for Ukrainian sovereignty include a proposed international peacekeeping force or an alternative set of security alliances.
Therein lies the catch. Transnational justice can be hijacked, with aggressors trying to portray themselves as victims. Separating fact from fiction, and genuine concerns from manufactured pretext, is essential at the negotiating table.
A quick end to the war is tempting, but a hasty peace is a fragile one. A durable peace, rather than yet another ceasefire, requires attention to justice – even if that takes more time to achieve.
Valerie Morkevicius 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.
The holiday season sparks a significant increase in consumer spending. This year, Black Friday alone saw consumers shell out a record US$11.8 billion. It’s the time of year when many Americans make purchases to decorate for the holidays — lights, ornaments and Christmas trees.
If you bought a Christmas tree in Denver this year, you may have noticed a pretty steep price tag. It turns out that all festive products are getting more expensive, and that includes Christmas trees, both freshly cut and artificial.
I study the psychology of consumption at the University of Denver. I’ve always been curious about how people make financial decisions under certain circumstances, including around the holidays. Christmas trees are an interesting case study.
What’s driving the increase
The cost of real Christmas trees is directly impacted by a long production cycle and transportation costs, particularly for landlocked markets like Denver.
Raising tiny tree seedlings to a marketable size is a fraught business. Growers are exposed to a decade of weather, labor and pest risks, which increases the financial uncertainty of any planting season. This long lead time has made the supply unpredictable, putting constant pressure on Christmas tree wholesale prices.
Colorado gets some of its Christmas trees from North Carolina, which grows more than 26% of the Christmas trees in the U.S. Allison Joyce/GettyImages
A retailer in Denver must also cover local operational overhead, such as labor costs, storage and the rental of temporary sales lots, which increases prices by about 10% on average based on wholesale Christmas tree prices. This is especially true for large trees, those taller than 9 feet (2.74 meters), as they do not grow in Colorado. Having said that, there are Christmas tree growers in Colorado, and the Douglas Fir is native to Colorado and grows naturally throughout its mountains.
One option offers an emotional appeal, while the second choice may have to do more with cost savings and perceived environmental impact.
Buyers of real trees are driven by pleasure, satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. Often, buyers of fresh-cut trees are driven by nostalgia and a desire to inhale the powerful scent. Depending on the qualities of the tree, like how long it keeps its needles, how stiff the branches are and how rare it is, Denver customers often spend between $50 and $870 annually on fresh-cut Christmas trees.
In 2025, however, the decision to buy an artificial tree may feel less rational. Retailers are raising prices by 10% to 15% due to tariffs.
Artificial Christmas trees have a higher up-front cost than many real trees, but over time are more affordable. UCG/GettyImages
The financial and environmental superiority of the artificial tree is dependent on how long a consumer plans to keep and use it.
The financial break-even point is reached only when the artificial tree is reused for at least five years. The environmental break-even point is higher — around 10 years — due to the carbon emissions from manufacturing and global shipping of artificial trees. Their carbon footprint can be up to 10 times greater than a properly disposed-of real tree.
Behavioral changes in consumption
What about a third option that may appeal to Coloradans’ love of the outdoors?
Choose-and-cut businesses invite customers to visit a farm to select their tree and cut it down themselves. The tree is no longer just something you buy — it is the center of an experience you share.
Choose-and-cut Christmas tree farms enhance profitability by transferring the high cost of harvesting labor directly to the customer. Glenn Asakawa/GettyImages
For the grower, this model is a highly effective form of agritourism, which makes use of the farm environment to boost revenue. It dramatically enhances profitability by transferring the high cost of harvesting labor – which can run from $15,000 to $50,000 annually – directly to the customer as a labor of love. The purchase of a tree may be the main point of the visit, but growers can improve their bottom lines through the sale of profitable goods and services like wreaths, hot chocolate, food and carriage rides. Motivated consumers are willing to pay more for the experience and the opportunity to recreate a meaningful ritual.
Ali Besharat 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.
We are researcherswho study whistleblowing, which is when employees disclose information in the public interest about wrongdoing they have witnessed at work. Our new book draws on firsthand accounts from whistleblowers in national security, intelligence and government in the U.S., Australia and the U.K., among other countries. Their experiences show the limits of legal protections, but also the power of networks, solidarity and collective resistance in the face of institutional secrecy.
In this moment of democratic backsliding, whistleblowers show that civil disobedience – breaking the law to uphold the public good – remains an essential principle of political and moral life. They also show how legal reform and support networks designed to protect whistleblowers are critical for protecting accountability and democracy itself.
The limits of legal protections
The whistleblowers featured in the book, including former CIA officer John Kiriakou and Craig Murray, the former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, learned the hard way that legal protections can end precisely where power begins. Both revealed grave human rights abuses – torture, kidnapping, imprisonment and complicity in war crimes – and both were prosecuted rather than protected.
Their stories underline a paradox: Even as new whistleblower protection laws have proliferated in many countries, prosecutions of national security and intelligence whistleblowers are on the rise. In national security contexts, where no public interest defense is permitted, laws meant to protect whistleblowers have become another weapon of “lawfare” – used to silence, bankrupt and criminalize.
For example, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the U.S. torture program in 2007. The Bush administration initially declined to prosecute him, but this changed under the Obama administration, which imprisoned Kiriakou in 2013 for 30 months. Kiriakou’s refusal to participate in the CIA program of “enhanced interrogation” of terrorism suspects, which included waterboarding, and his later decision to publicly confirm the CIA’s use of torture were acts of conscience. Yet it was he, not the torturers, who went to prison as a result of his disclosures.
The pattern is familiar. From Chelsea Manning in 2010 to Edward Snowden in 2013 and Daniel Hale in 2016, prosecutions under the U.S. Espionage Act and equivalent statutes elsewhere signal a broader shift: Making the powerful transparent is redefined as treason. The prosecution of national security whistleblowers who reveal crimes of the state continues to be an ongoing problem, as highlighted by more recent cases, including Reality Winner and David McBride.
When the law is used to enforce secrecy and punish dissent, the moral terrain shifts. Civil disobedience becomes not only justified but necessary. Human rights lawyers have commented that whistleblowers and journalists who work with them are being subjected to increasingly harsh treatment by the state, including imprisonment and on occasion torture.
From traditional media to networked whistleblowing
Historically, whistleblowers relied on the press to act as an intermediary between them and the public, as well as a protector because of the publicity they offer. But as investigative journalism has been hollowed out – starved of resources and constrained by political and corporate pressure – this model has faltered.
As journalist Andrew Fowler, one of our book’s contributors, wrote, “It may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources.” Across the globe, attacks by governments on journalists criticizing strongman leaders become more brazen.
In 2010, Manning blew the whistle on U.S war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many major outlets turned Manning away before WikiLeaks provided the infrastructure to publish what mainstream media would not. Her disclosures raised the public’s awareness of government complicity in war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Such stories also reveal how reluctant mainstream journalism can be when confronted with power.
More recently, in 2016 McBride blew the whistle on members of the Australian SAS who murdered civilians in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to prison in 2024 and is currently serving a sentence of five years and eight months for his disclosures of war crimes.
This decline in formal protections has given rise to an ecology of “networked whistleblowing”: decentralized alliances of whistleblowers, activists and independent journalists using encrypted tools to share information and protect sources. While these networks can offer safety in numbers, they also carry risks – of being co-opted or exploited by those in power, and of being framed collectively as enemies of the state for their attempts to hold the powerful to account.
Yet they also represent a profound reimagining of public accountability in a digital age where secrecy is structural and systemic, demonstrating the force of people working together.
As the traditional institutions of democracy falter, our research shows these alternative infrastructures embody a new form of democratic practice: horizontal, distributed and defiant.
New alliances supporting whistleblowers
The whistleblowers whose stories appear in our book did more than expose wrongdoing. They built communities of care and resistance – new institutions to protect truth-telling itself.
Each of them, after suffering retaliation and exclusion, turned outward: campaigning for reform, mentoring others and building cross-sector alliances. Their transformation from individual insiders to collective activists reveals a crucial insight: Legal reform alone isn’t enough. What sustains truth-telling isn’t the promise of protection from above but solidarity from below.
Strengthening and supporting these alliances would help preserve freedom of expression and the right to know. That means supporting cross-border networks of journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders who can collectively safeguard disclosure when national laws fail. It also means recognizing whistleblowing as a public good.
At a time when many democracies are retreating from openness, these whistleblowers remind us that law and justice are not the same thing. When laws entrench secrecy or punish dissent, we believe breaking them can be an act of civic virtue. Civil disobedience can renew democratic life by holding power to account.
Kiriakou’s conclusion in his chapter resonates beyond the intelligence world: “We all have to fight. It’s the only way we are going to change anything.” His words recall a longer lineage of civil disobedience – from suffragettes to anti-war protesters to environmental activists – each confronting systems that refused to hear them until they broke the rules.
The cases in our new book illustrate how quickly law can be used to enforce secrecy rather than accountability during periods of democratic backsliding. They also highlight the practical conditions that make truth-telling possible – including collective support that extends beyond any one country’s legal system.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Revisiting Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus is no small feat. Joe Barton, the writer behind Netflix’s Black Doves, has taken on the challenge of reworking Shaffer’s dense account of Mozart’s life and legend into a five-episode series for Sky Atlantic. It’s a bold move: the original play – and the 1984 film adaptation – already felt exhaustive, sometimes overwhelmingly so.
Yet Barton manages something unexpected. Shaffer’s monologue-laden tale of Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri’s guilt becomes a sharper, more fluid exchange between two men bound by genius and self-destruction. This Amadeus is less about one man sabotaging another and more about two talents quietly collapsing under the weight of their own obsessions.
Less emphasis too is placed on Salieri’s ravings as “mad”, although his anguish is still front and centre. And because of the greater expressive range of both Paul Bettany as Salieri and Will Sharpe as Mozart, these performances feel more nuanced than their familiar counterparts from the 1984 movie. Bettany resists telegraphing Salieri’s insincerity towards Mozart in the way that his predecessor F. Murray Abraham does too often, while Sharpe is much more convincing than Tom Hulce in playing Mozart’s brilliance while maintaining his exuberance and obnoxious self-absorption.
The results are an essential binge-watch for the Christmas period. Barton fleshes out the drama with scenes such as a keyboard competition between Mozart and his senior rival composer Clementi (Richard Colvin), contextual scenes involving the Emperor’s (Rory Kinnear) military responsibilities when war breaks out and the infidelities of both Mozart and his wife Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy).
The trailer for Amadeus.
Television writing allows the space for some longer, more intimate exchanges between the two composers. This time around, it’s clear that Mozart’s brilliance is genuinely misunderstood while Barton makes Salieri’s jealousy both artistic and psycho-sexual (a new conceit). The frank sexuality shown in Black Doves (2024) is present here too, this time showing Salieri engaging in kinky sex to help make his psychological torture physical. His mind is bleeding, so his body must too. Mozart also can’t resist screwing his way through life, his drinking and promiscuity leading to his dissolution and destitution.
Much of this is not true to life, however. Records show that Salieri was kind to Constanze after Mozart’s death and the younger composer was generally successful, though the frequent swearing in Barton’s teleplay reflects the coarse language found in Mozart’s letters.
But Barton is smart in acknowledging the mythology too. The final episode is dominated by a conversation between Alexander Pushkin (Jack Farthing) and Constanze Mozart about whether the rumour that Salieri killed her husband is true. Pushkin wrote a short play that inspired Shaffer’s version, and in the new Amadeus, Constanze says he’s welcome to write his version of events: she’ll take the truth to her grave.
It’s all invented, but that’s OK, Barton seems to say. Mythology is how we express our depth of feeling, not only for Mozart specifically but for transcendent genius in general.
Admittedly, there are some rough spots. I thought the conclusion of the Marriage of Figaro sequence, its premiere supposedly interrupted at the very end by protesters, unconvincing, and I’m afraid the opera scenes in general aren’t well designed. Implausibly, the backdrop for Figaro is the same for the first and final acts but suits the situation of neither. Nor are Bettany nor Sharpe convincing as orchestral conductors, and I was confused as to why the document purporting to be Salieri’s Requiem (but actually Mozart’s) played at his funeral was only a few pages long.
Musically, the film’s performances are also generally disappointing, the singing in particular falling well short of world class. In this, the new version seems weak compared to the 1984 film. A film about classical music’s OG should offer a much stronger soundtrack.
Nonetheless, when the focus is on dialogue, the show crackles along with extraordinary pace. Alongside Bettany and Sharpe, the ensemble cast is uniformly strong. Kinnear is ideally characterful as Emperor Joseph, foolish as a musician but credible as the leader of a major country. Creevy is especially strong as Mozart’s wife Constanze, popping up (like Bettany) in prosthetics to hear Salieri’s confession in old age. Enyi Okoronkwo offers strong support as Mozart’s librettist and best pal Lorenzo Da Ponte and Jack Farthing helps to carry the final episode as Pushkin, the playwright in search of a musical legend.
All in all, a smart and sexy triumph for Sky. If Mozart’s music itself doesn’t quite get the investment it deserves, Amadeus makes up for it by offering a compelling drama about the nature of the human spirit.
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Dominic Broomfield-McHugh 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.
The Grinch is one of the holiday season’s most familiar icons. The grumpy, green, fur-covered misanthrope who plotted to sabotage Christmas in Dr Seuss’s classic 1957 work has now become a quintessential part of the yearly festive ritual he so despised.
But beneath that snarl and green fur, what kind of creature is he, really? Not even Dr Seuss really had an answer.
As an anatomist, I can’t help but wonder what the Grinch would look like on the dissection table – and what his skeleton, muscles and brain can tell us about his unique origins.
The skull
The Grinch’s most recognisable feature is, of course, his face. And underlying these characteristic features would be a unique skull – unlike anything you’d find in Whoville or on Earth.
Structurally, the Grinch’s facial skeleton would blend primate and canine traits: short, broad snout, high cranium and powerful jaws. It’s a face evolved for expression, adeptly capable of sneering, gloating and ultimately smiling with genuine warmth.
His zygomatic arches (cheekbones) are broad and flared to accommodate for the large zygomaticus major muscles needed to lift the corners of his mouth into his exaggerated, mischievous smirk.
Beneath his eyes would be a large bony canal, carrying nerves to his whisker-like facial hairs – granting exquisite tactile sensitivity to changes in air currents. Like a cat’s whiskers, they’d help him sense approaching Whos or dangling baubles – crucial for a creature who thrives on stealth.
His teeth would be similar to a chimp’s, with sharp canines for tearing through Who “roast beast,” sturdy molars for grinding tougher festive fare and incisors adapted for nibbling fruitcake or the occasional candy cane.
The upper jaw, or maxilla, would be robust and slightly vaulted, lending resonance to that infamous laugh echoing through Mount Crumpit.
The face
The Grinch’s yellow eyes, with large, forward-facing eye sockets, suggest a crepuscular lifestyle: most active at dawn and dusk.
Many animals with yellow eyes, such as owls and cats, are adapted to low light. The yellow pigment filters blue light and sharpens contrast, allowing movement to be detected in the half-light. Perfect for a nocturnal gift thief.
His nasal aperture would be tall and narrow, with a complex set of internal conchae (nasal bones) to warm the cold alpine air of Mount Crumpit. The constant twitching of his nose might indicate a highly attuned sense of smell to detect roast beast from a distance.
The Grinch’s expressiveness would involve a complex set of muscles – many of which would be unusually large so he can convey every scheme, doubt, pang of guilt and emotion he experiences. For example, he would probably have very distinct levator labii superioris alaeque nasi – “Elvis muscles” – so he can lift his upper lip sneeringly.
The spine
If you watch the Grinch walk, he’s upright but fluid, almost serpentine. His spine would probably resemble a cross between a gibbon and a cat – long, flexible and sinuous.
The lower back would be extended and highly mobile, allowing that characteristic slouch and coiled posture. The thoracic vertebrae (found in the middle and upper back) would produce a gentle outward curve – creating a hunched silhouette suited to skulking. His cervical vertebrae (neck bones) would be elongated, letting him tilt and crane his head with exaggerated expressiveness.
Like a cat, he’d be digitigrade – meaning he walks on the balls of his feet and toes rather than on the soles (as humans do). This stance softens each step – allowing for the quiet, agile motion needed to lurk through Whoville stealing presents on Christmas eve.
Though his pelvis supports an upright posture, his centre of gravity sits slightly forward and low — a design that sits somewhere between human and primate.
The brain
Anatomy often mirrors personality. Judging by behaviour, the Grinch’s frontal lobes, particularly his prefrontal cortex, would be on the small side – explaining his flat and small forehead.
Given this region governs planning, impulse control and moral reasoning, it would explain why he lacks these faculties at the story’s start. Having a smaller frontal lobe also explains his rash decisions and inability to foresee consequences beyond the next stolen bauble.
His temporal lobes, would be large and active. They process sound and memory – ideal for recognising (and despising) Whoville’s Christmas carols. They also house functional areas that process smells – important for sniffing out hidden cans of Who-Hash.
His occipital and parietal lobes would also be well developed, supporting the sharp vision, coordination and spatial awareness he needed to climb, leap and slide down chimneys.
The Grinch’s amygdala (also involved in experiencing emotions) would probably be hypertrophied – explaining his emotional volatility, paranoia and exaggerated reactions. Combined with his limbic system, part of the brain’s memory and emotion centre, creates a creature ruled by passion and reactivity.
The heart
No anatomical analysis of the Grinch is complete without addressing the moment when “his heart grew three sizes.”
Biologically, such a sudden expansion would be catastrophic. In humans and other mammals, cardiomegaly (an enlarged heart) is a dangerous condition linked to heart failure, arrhythmias and poor pumping efficiency.
A real heart simply cannot enlarge in an instant of emotional revelation. But the brain can change rapidly.
The Grinch’s transformation is probably better understood as a neurological shift – with increased activity and connectivity occurring between the prefrontal cortex (empathy and regulation) and the limbic system (emotion and reward). His “growing heart,” is probably not an anatomical miracle but a metaphor for his brain becoming more socially attuned.
Anatomy of a redemption arc
To anatomists, the Grinch is more than a Christmas curiosity. He’s a case study in form and function. And in his final form, anatomy and morality align.
The muscles that once powered a sneer now lift into a genuine smile. The hands that stole presents now carve roast beast. His limbic system now fires with satisfaction.
So perhaps the real message of the Grinch’s anatomy is this: change is always possible.
Lucy E. Hyde 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 Ane Grum-Schwensen, Associate Professor at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, Principal Investigator of "Fairy Tales and Stories – The Digital Manuscript Edition", University of Southern Denmark
Hans Christian Andersen is one of Denmark’s most cherished writers – a master of the literary fairy tale whose influence stretches far beyond The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes and the other classics many of us first encounter in childhood.
Born in 1805 in Odense, on the island of Funen, Andersen was the son of a shoemaker and an illiterate washerwoman who would grow into an author who wrote across genres – novels, travelogues, poems and plays. But in his short tales he created a form uniquely his own: emotionally daring, stylistically inventive and rich with both whimsy and existential bite.
His tales have been read aloud for generations, adapted into countless winter performances and films and returned to each year for their blend of wonder, melancholy and moral imagination. They remind us that the season is not only about sparkle and celebration, but also reflection, hope and the small fragile miracles of being human.
So, as the days grow shorter, we’ve asked four leading Andersen experts to choose one story they believe is perfect for reading – or rereading – this Christmas. Their selections may not be the Christmas tales you’ve come to associate with Andersen. But they showcase the author at his most profound and playful – and offer new ways into his writing.
The Story of a Mother
Ane Grum-Schwensen, associate professor in the Department of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
Choosing a single Andersen story as a favourite feels almost impossible. There are so many remarkable ones and my favourite often ends up being the one I have most recently revisited. Yet some stories return to me repeatedly, both in thought and in research.
One of these is The Story of a Mother, first published in 1847. It is a fantastic tale in every sense of the word. It includes classic fairy-tale elements: a protagonist – the mother – leaving home and facing trials, helpers guiding her and an ultimate antagonist, Death. Yet Andersen challenges this structure: the helpers demand steep prices and the antagonist could even be seen as a kind of helper. The story also reflects the fantastic, as seen in modern fiction, through its dreamlike quality and its unsettling open ending, where the mother finally allows Death to carry her child into the unknown.
This story is profoundly moving. It portrays both the desperate lengths a parent will go to to protect a child and the crushing surrender when confronted with an irreversible fate. Andersen’s ability to capture this parental anguish so vividly, despite never having been a parent himself, is striking.
The theme of the dying child was common in 19th-century art and literature, partly because of the harsh reality of child mortality. In the early decades of the century, roughly one-third of all Danish children died before their tenth birthday. Andersen addressed this theme repeatedly. Indeed, his first known poem, at age 11 was written to comfort a grieving mother. Later, in 1827, another poem he wrote, The Dying Child was published anonymously and widely translated.
The language and narration in The Story of a Mother are quintessential Andersen. Within the first few paragraphs, the theme is clear and features his imagery-rich language:
The old clock whirred and whirred, the great lead clockweight slid straight down to the floor, boom! and the clock too stood silent.
Although Andersen had written about dying children before, he struggled with the ending of this story, even in the handwritten copy he delivered to the printer. His first version was what you might call a happy ending: the mother wakes to find it was all a dream. He immediately crossed this out and replaced it with: “And Death went with her child into the ever-flowering garden”.
Still unsatisfied, he changed “ever-flowering garden”, a synonym for paradise, to “the unknown land”. A Danish critic recently described this creative shift as “how to punk your sugar-coated sentiment into salty liquorice” – a fitting metaphor for Andersen’s refusal to settle for sentimentality.
Today, the story is not as well known as some of his other tales, yet its influence in its own time was undeniable. It was translated into Bengali as early as 1858 and became popular in India. When Andersen turned 70 in 1875, one of his gifts was a polyglot edition of the story translated into no less than 15 languages – a testament to its global reach.
You can read the full version of The Story of a Mother, here.
The Comet
Holger Berg, special consultant at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
No spectacular comets appeared in the sky in 1869, but the year nevertheless stands out in literature thanks to The Comet. Andersen’s reflective tale of the cosmos and the soul begins simply. A boy blows bubbles while, by the light of a candle, his mother seeks signs about the child’s life expectancy. Childlike delight and superstition live side by side in their home.
The superstitious mother was an archetype, but Andersen’s depiction is shaped by memories of his own mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter. Illustration by Lorenz Frölich. The Hans Christian Andersen Centre. Public Domain.
More than 60 years pass. The boy has become an elderly village schoolmaster. He teaches history, geography and astronomy to a new generation, bringing each subject vividly to life. Science has not destroyed his wonder – it has deepened it. Then the very same periodic comet returns.
What allows The Comet to echo across the ages is, paradoxically, its quiet, unassuming form. In earlier works, Andersen confronted one of the great fears of his age: that a comet might strike the Earth and end human civilisation. He responded either with comedy or with factual precision, but neither approach proved moving.
In 1869, he shifted away from satire and intellectual argument and towards poetic prose. Meaning now emerged through suggestion rather than debate. He also abandoned the romantic mode of his youth, in which the moon, the morning star and other celestial bodies directly commented on earthly affairs.
Part of my fascination with this tale lies in the four surviving manuscripts. Andersen gradually developed his narrative from a quaint scene in a village classroom into a life story with genuine cosmological reach and this can be seen in each version of the story.
It’s often said that a human life is merely a glimpse when measured against astronomical time. In Andersen’s time, people quoted the Latin expression homo bulla: the human being is but a soap bubble. To this familiar poetic image, Andersen in his second manuscript added the comet. Against the brevity of the bubble, he set the vastness of the comet’s arc – and with it, the question of where the human soul travels once it leaves the body.
This print unites six of the largest comets known in 1860. Andersen had seen three of them. In late January 1869, he began the first full draft of The Comet. Engraving by James Reynolds in a copy at The Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.
Andersen achieved his narrative breakthrough in late January of 1869 through a shift in both theme and structure. In the third manuscript, he added a final paragraph nearly identical to the opening. This narrative circle matches the subject at hand: “Everything returns!” the schoolmaster teaches us, be it periodic comets or historical events. And yet the tale ends by imagining what does not return: the “soul was off on a far larger course, in a far vaster space than that through which the comet flies”.
Andersen invites us to gaze upward with the openness of a child. And raises profound questions about what it means to be human, both in this world and, for spiritually inclined readers, in whatever may lie beyond it.
You can read the full version of The Comet, here and listen to a podcast on the story here.
The Shadow
Jacob Bøggild, associate professor at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen was first published in 1847. In some ways, it is Andersen’s darkest tale. The character the reader is led to believe is the protagonist is known only as “the learned man,” a figure never given a name, whereas his shadow – which breaks away from him – gives the tale its very title.
At the end of the story, the shadow has the learned man executed and marries the daughter of a king, implying that they will rule her country together. Thus, the shadow triumphs in the manner of a genuine fairy-tale protagonist, while his former master dies miserably.
But the tale is not solely dark and tragic. The scene in which the shadow separates from the learned man is perfectly choreographed in accordance with the way a shadow follows every movement of the body that casts it.
Afterwards, it irks the learned man that he has lost his shadow, but since he is visiting a country with a warm climate he soon grows a new one. And one reason the shadow can seduce the princess is that he is a wonderful dancer – he is, of course, ever so light on his feet. Throughout the tale, Andersen treats each impossible occurrence as though it were entirely natural, and the effect is extremely funny (as well as uncanny).
In traditional fairy tales, the protagonist often leaves home because some imbalance has occurred. Away from home, out in the wide world, the protagonist must accomplish a number of tasks. The happy ending usually means that the character finds a new home, often by marrying a princess and becoming ruler of half a kingdom.
In The Shadow, the learned man is already away from home at the beginning, visiting a country with a hot climate before returning to his own homeland with a cold one. It is here that his former shadow appears and manipulates him into exchanging roles, making the learned man literally the shadow of a shadow. The two then travel to a spa. The learned man is once again far from home, and it is there that he dies.
The shadow, on the other hand, begins its story “at home”, since its home is wherever the learned man is. It then separates itself, goes out into the world and becomes highly successful – albeit through mischief. Its ultimate triumph comes when it establishes a new home for itself by marrying the princess. The Shadow is a reversed fairy tale in every possible sense.
The way Andersen executes this reversal is a masterpiece and bears witness to his acute awareness of genre conventions and narrative structures – something that has, unfortunately, rarely been recognised as fully as it deserves.
You can read the full version of The Shadow, here.
The Princess on the Pea
Sarah Bienko Eriksen, postdoctoral researcher at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
The Princess on the Pea has suffered the odd fate of being so popular that many people never bother to read it. This is an oversight. And given that it clocks in at about 350 words, or shorter than the article you’re reading right now, it’s also a problem that’s easily remedied.
The tale opens with a prince’s worldwide search for a “real” princess. He’s met plenty of hopefuls along the way, but they weren’t really “real”, and for him, only a “true” one will do. The words “real” and “true” (in Danish, rigtig/virkelig) appear in this tiny story a total of nine times — very much in defiance of certain truisms about good writing and the spice of life.
So when a prospective princess shows up to the castle one stormy night with rainwater gushing down her hair and out of her heels, she quite literally embodies the problem of how to tell whether something is real or not. Is it visible at a glance? Can it be observed through behaviour? Or must we simply feel it?
To see if their guest is the genuine artefact, the queen tests her with a bed fit for a princess: 20 duvets piled atop of 20 mattresses and at the very bottom, a single pea. Not a pearl or a diamond but the lowliest of domestic objects.
The guest, however, doesn’t miss a thing, awakening black and blue and worse off than when she arrived. The court is immediately satisfied – only a true princess could be so sensitive! – yet amusingly, the entire exercise brings them no closer to actually spotting one: it’s her powers of observation that pass the test, not theirs. The real, it seems, simply knows itself.
We can all guess what happens next, but what comes after the wedding? Here we find Hans Christian Andersen’s most innovative contribution to this traditional fairy tale: namely, that the pea gets its own ending, receiving a place of honour in the Royal Museum “where it can still be seen, providing no one has taken it”.
A Dane reading this story in 1835 couldn’t help but notice this nod to the 1802 theft of Denmark’s national treasure, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, from that same location. Less obvious is that with this reference, Andersen bursts the bubble containing all fairy tales and thrusts the pea into the real world.
Did we feel it? Perhaps not. But then again, it might have been stolen.
“Now, that was a real story!” the tale concludes, knowingly. Not a true story, mind you, but the impossible state of being “real fiction”. (And if we wish to test this for ourselves, it won’t be Andersen’s fault that the genuine artefact is missing from the Royal Museum.)
Unlike our princess, this tale offers no tidy resolution, which is precisely the richness of great art: it prompts reflection, hides wonder in the humble detail and is never truly finished, inviting us to play along in happily ever after.
You can read the full version of The Princess on the Pea, here.
This article was commissioned as part of a partnership collaboration between Videnskab.dk and The Conversation.
Ane Grum-Schwensen receives funding from Augustinus Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond and The Danish Research Reserve.
Holger Berg receives funding from Augustinus Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond and The Danish Research Reserve.
Sarah Bienko Eriksen receives funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Jacob Bøggild 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.
Labour won the election but its support fell a lot more than any other party’s during the campaign period. Labour started the campaign 25 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives and ended it just 15 points ahead.
That was partly because a fair few people who might have voted Labour either voted tactically for the Liberal Democrats in the end or didn’t bother to vote at all as it looked like Labour was heading for an easy win. But the loss was also down to some voters’ concerns about Labour’s lack of ambition and some concerns about its stance on Israel-Gaza. This helps to explain why the Greens enjoyed a late surge.
2. Fear of tax rises wasn’t really a factor
Since coming to office, the government has been plagued by indecision about what to do about taxes and fearful of angering voters.
But our analysis shows voters expected all along that a Starmer government would put taxes up – and they were apparently reconciled to it. Neither Rachel Reeves’s pledges not to increase the big three taxes, nor Tory attacks on Labour tax rises seem to have had any discernible impact on voters’ overall views about the parties’ intentions on tax and spend.
On balance, voters in 2024 felt that taxes in general (if not necessarily their own taxes) should go up to fund spending, meaning Tory promises of tax cuts fell on unusually stony ground.
3. Labour and the Conservatives lost support to more radical alternatives
In the course of the 2024 campaign, Labour lost support to the Greens, who for the first time (and at least where Gaza independents weren’t standing) picked up lots of Muslim voters.
The Tories (especially after Nigel Farage entered the fray) lost support to Reform UK, whose candidates tended to split the right-wing vote. This helped Labour win back many “red wall” seats in the north and the Midlands, as well as helping the Lib Dems take parts of the “blue wall” in the south. That split on the right also spared Labour’s blushes in Wales, where their vote actually declined.
4. Muslim voters turned away from Labour
Muslim voters swung away from Labour to an unprecedented degree in 2024. The loss of support from a community that had long backed the party cost Labour several seats, along with several near misses. Health secretary Wes Streeting’s Ilford North seat (which he won by just 528 votes, down from 5,198 in 2019) was just one example of a close contest.
Though the shift among Muslims was most dramatic, Labour also fell back among Hindu voters. The Conservatives’ sole gain came in Leicester East, the seat with the highest share of Hindu voters in Britain. Labour’s claim to be the natural choice for ethnic minority voters has never looked weaker.
5. The Conservatives ran out of cash
While in office, the Conservatives raised national campaigning limits to around £34 million. But, ironically, and unlike their Labour opponents, they ran out of money before the 2024 campaign was even over.
Party spending in 2024
How spending fluctuated in the campaign. T Bale, CC BY-ND
The lack of cash was especially evident in online campaigning, where Conservative party activity fell off a cliff towards the end, even as Labour efforts ramped sharply up.
6. This was an ‘all politics is local’ election
Local conditions, local campaigning and tactical voting mattered more than ever in the 2024 election. Voters’ behaviour varied more widely from one seat to the next than in any previous recent contest and people were more aware of and responsive to the local stakes in their seat than ever before, making the parties’ voter contact efforts even more important than usual.
7. Scotland is always different
The election campaign in Scotland once again ran along radically different lines to what was happening in England and Wales. There was a huge swing from the SNP to Scottish Labour, with the latter making dramatic gains, sometimes rising to first place from third. This was boosted by tactical voting among people opposed to Scottish independence.
The SNP, incidentally, was particularly active on social media, Labour posted more than Reform on TikTok and Nigel Farage has more page followers on Facebook than the Labour party. But, for all that, this was not the “TikTok election”. Social media matters, especially for younger people, but that’s not where most people go for election coverage.
8. Sadly, the sofa was the biggest winner
Voter turnout fell sharply to the second lowest level in postwar history (just ahead of 2001), and more people stayed home (41%) than voted for the winning Labour party (34%). These figures also don’t take account of the 8.2 million people who are entitled to vote but aren’t registered to do so. Shockingly, only one in five eligible voters voted for the party that was swept into government with a landslide majority.
9. Many party members sat it out too
Perhaps surprisingly, even members of the country’s political parties weren’t feeling excited by this election. Over half of Conservative party members and nearly half of Labour party members said they’d devoted no time at all to helping out their party during the campaign. Fewer than one in five of all party members knocked on doors or picked up the phone to canvass voters. Party members were a little more generous with their money than they were with their time, although Conservative members were notably reluctant this time to donate to the cause.
10. The election reshaped parliament
This is the most ethnically diverse, gender balanced House of Commons in history. But it is also the most inexperienced Commons in modern political history. More than half of MP are currently serving their first elected terms. This includes 56% of the MPs on the Labour government benches – also a record.
Talking of records, there are fewer privately educated MPs sitting in the House of Commons than ever before: just 23%. However, for the first time, the parliamentary Labour party elected in 2024 doesn’t contain a single MP who has arrived in the Commons direct from a job in a manual occupation.
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Tim Bale received funding from Research England for surveys of party members.
