In this month’s Q&A, contributing editor Serena Sigillito interviews Dr. Angela Franks about her new book, Body and Identity: A History of the Empty Self.

Serena Sigillito: I’ve just finished reading your fascinating new book. Can you give PD readers a brief description of the argument you make there?

Angela Franks: Sure. I argue that our concern with the body is usually a smokescreen for deeper questions about identity. I try to show historically why and how identity became a problem for us—why our culture is going through a systemic identity crisis. I try to show that this is not simply a new development, but it has its roots in phenomena that go back centuries, and even millennia.

SS: You’ve mentioned elsewhere that you were inspired, in part, to write this book by Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. I found that a really helpful and thought-provoking comparison. My sense is that your book is more unabashedly academic than Carl’s. Your book seems like it’s aimed at the kind of people who write for places like Public Discourse, who can then draw on your scholarly work and translate it into a more accessible register and help popularize the ideas you articulate. Does that seem right to you?

AF: Yes, I think that’s accurate. I had already been working on my book when Carl’s came out. We got to know each other pretty soon after that, and—as I told him—I was very relieved that his book was not making mine superfluous! I think Carl’s book is primarily a work of translation, whereas mine is a more academic synthesis. One of the books that was really helpful to me was Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, as well as A Secular Age. Those books are similar to what I’m trying to do—a work that’s lengthier, with an abundant use of footnotes, that really gets into texts at a deeper level. The hope is that it shifts the scholarly discussion around identity.

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A great interview with @theologianmom @PublicDiscourse on her fine book on “the empty self.” With @SerenaSigillito.

It wasn’t only secularism that “liquified” the body and emptied the self. Christianity played a large role too. What do we do with that?https://t.co/y6RwYWeaqb

— Rachel Lu (@rclu) December 1, 2025

No one worries about the insurance industry quite like Tom Gober.

From his home office outside of Pittsburgh, the forensic accountant has been tracking, documenting and highlighting the weaknesses of the $9.3 trillion sector responsible for the financial well-being of millions of Americans.

“I’ve been seeing warning signs for years, and I’ve been very vocal about it,” Gober, 66, said in a recent interview in his living room. More recently, he’s been paying attention to what he says is the most troubling development yet: The influx of private equity’s billions.

The industry waves off its critics as needlessly alarmist, always predicting a disaster that never comes. But that mid-October afternoon, Gober’s phone began to light up. Josh Wander, the co-founder of 777 Partners, a private equity firm on Gober’s radar, had been charged with cheating investors and lenders out of almost $500 million — an alleged fraud enabled in part by its opaque and intricate ties with some US insurance companies.

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Some great reporting from Bloomberg this week about how private equity is making a grab for life insurance money and hiding it away where traders are gambling it without much oversight. https://t.co/QNe2jf8OzO pic.twitter.com/AIwLA0GEQT

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) November 19, 2025

For most of human history, coupling up was not merely a norm; it was a necessity. Before reliable contraception, women could not control their fertility, and most were far too poor to raise children alone. Hence the centuries-old convention that, whereas a tragic play or saga ends in death, a happy one ends in marriage.

So the speed with which the norm of marriage—indeed, of relationships of any sort—is being abandoned is startling. Throughout the rich world, singlehood is on the rise. Among Americans aged 25-34, the proportion living without a spouse or partner has doubled in five decades, to 50% for men and 41% for women. Since 2010, the share of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 rich countries. By The Economist’s calculation, the world has at least 100m more single people today than if coupling rates were still as high as in 2017. A great relationship recession is under way.

For some, this is evidence of social and moral decay. As we report, many in the “pro-natalist” movement believe that the failure of the young to settle down and procreate threatens to end Western civilisation. For others, it is evidence of admirable self-reliance. Vogue, a fashion magazine, recently suggested that for cool, ambitious young women, having a boyfriend is not merely unnecessary but “embarrassing”.

In fact, the rise of singlehood is neither straightforwardly good nor bad. 

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A future with far more singletons is fast approaching. That will reshape the world in ways good and bad. Everyone, from construction firms to the taxman, had better prepare https://t.co/VnDr8O2MYV pic.twitter.com/l6mVxmWgBH

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 6, 2025

In a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for the EHRC said: “This topic raises complex issues relevant to equality and human rights, and therefore our regulatory remit given the EHRC’s statutory powers and duties. As such, we have provided advice to the chair of the working group and the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government and stand ready to continue to do so.

“Legal protections against discrimination and hate crime already exist, so it is unclear what role a new definition would play in addressing discrimination and abuse targeted at Muslims. An official non-statutory definition risks being in conflict with existing legal definitions and provisions, resulting in inconsistency and potential confusion for courts and individuals.

“Should government proceed with adoption of a definition, we advise that this should be subject to a full public consultation so that all the potential risks and benefits can be considered.”

A spokesperson for the communities department said that a full consultation was not necessary under the law.

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Islamophobia definition risks breaking the law, watchdog says https://t.co/OMabIwC21R

— Times Politics (@timespolitics) October 21, 2025

Nearly every student clutches a phone in one hand as they traverse the University of Central Florida campus, even while walking in groups. Laptops and tablets are lunchtime companions, and earbuds and headphones are routine accessories. While waiting for class to start, many students sit in silence, drawn into their devices.

It is a familiar and exasperating scene for Seán Killingsworth, 22, a former U.C.F. student. “What is this life I’m signing up for?” he asked himself during his sophomore year. “It was just like, I’m talking to a bunch of zombies.”

Mr. Killingsworth craved a space where he could chat with his peers without feeling as though he was intruding. When he was in high school, he ran into similar conundrums, so he would organize phone-free hangouts with friends.

Why not in college too?

In 2023, he helped bring the idea of no-phone social time to two different Florida campuses — U.C.F. and Rollins College. He called it the Reconnect Movement: During meetings, everyone was required to hand over their phone and socialize without devices, a concept that has become a big draw for like-minded students. Reconnect has now spread to six schools in four states. And in September it broadened its reach beyond students, hosting a phone-free event in New York — soon to be followed by Orlando and Tampa — that anyone could attend.

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Can College Students Stand to Ditch Their Phones for an Hour or So? https://t.co/i64o5O5tUJ

— Rajiv Prabhakar (@rajivprab) October 1, 2025

“I’m currently working on a bunch of hellish paintings,” says the US-born artist Sedrick Chisom from his east London studio. One in particular, destined for the Paris Basel booth of gallery Pilar Corrias, features a Babel-esque “ziggurat tower structure that doubles as an active volcano”. In an earlier work, an axe-wielding “chaotic villain” is drawn with carnivalesque panache. “He’s got all the hallmarks,” says Chisom. “A really morose dying horse, his horns, and he’s just having a delightful time.”

The artist is interested, he says, in “the social dimension of designating something heaven or hell. It’s truly an intersubjective. What might be perceived as heaven by one person might be hell for another.” Chisom is one of a number of contemporary artists bringing the hellish and the heavenly to the canvas as a way of exploring personal and societal unrest, looming ecological crisis and utopian visions of possible transcendence.

At Hauser & Wirth in New York, Canadian painter Ambera Wellman’s current show Darkling (until 25 October) emits a sense of impending doom: her blurry, mutating figures seem to wrestle with a world in breakdown. German artist Florian Krewer sees his exhibition cold tears released at Michael Werner gallery (until 1 November) as a response to “the world feeling more heavy, more depressing and politically more conservative”, he says. By contrast, Greek-born Sofia Mitsola’s vibrant mythology offers a glimpse of paradise (albeit laced with a deadly siren call), and a sense of the sublime emanates from the Rococo interpretations of Flora Yukhnovich (seen in a new mural at The Frick in New York this autumn). Alabama-born artist Verne Dawson, meanwhile, paints a realistic kind of Eden.

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What does the afterlife look like? https://t.co/sbYrnVccNK

— HTSI (@htsi) September 25, 2025

n a digitally oversaturated society like ours, distraction is a daily sparring partner. What begins as a quick check of the weather to decide what to wear on a morning run turns into 20 minutes of scrolling political takes or cat videos. Most of us don’t wake up thinking, I’d like to spend two hours watching Seinfeld reruns today, but here we are.

Our devices and internet algorithms are remarkably effective at capturing our attention and redirecting it from whatever we intend. Yet for all the well-earned anxiety about our attention crisis, a troubling tendency in our discourse is to conflate the predicament with concerns about productivity.

We can, and should, care about productivity and attention’s role in it. But when output and efficiency become our primary concern, it distorts the nature of attention. Attention becomes only a means to an end, problematically viewed as merely a “resource.” And the root of this problem is glimpsed in the most basic way we talk about attention: We pay it.

When we pay for something, we expect something beneficial or useful in return. When we pay, we’re the consumer—and we want to know that what we’re paying for is worth the cost. But attention isn’t something we pay. It’s something we should give.

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We shouldn’t pay attention. We should give it.

That subtle shift in language “transforms how we inhabit our world.” https://t.co/bPt4H7Qhga

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 8, 2025

The percentage of U.S. adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18% in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015.

The current rate of 18.3% measured so far in 2025 projects to an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression. Most of the increase has occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Gallup obtained the most recent results for 2025 Feb. 18-26 and May 27-June 4, 2025, with 11,288 U.S. adults surveyed by web as part of the probability-based Gallup Panel. Respondents were asked, “Has a doctor or nurse ever told you that you have depression?” and if yes, “Do you currently have or are you currently being treated for depression?”

Both metrics are part of the ongoing Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. The percentage of adults who report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime stands at 28.5%, hovering near the record high of 29.0% measured in the first quarter of 2023.

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U.S. Depression Rate Remains Historically High https://t.co/P24MAawQa4

— Rasha B Basha (@basharabasha_ra) September 9, 2025

Worldwide, people in more countries are living better lives and expressing more hope for the future than they have in years.

In 2024, a median of 33% of adults across 142 countries rated their lives well enough to be classified as “thriving,” continuing a trend of steady improvements in life evaluation going back more than a decade.

Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, asks people to rate their current and future lives on a ladder from 0 (worst) to 10 (best). Those scoring 7+ for the present and 8+ for five years ahead are “thriving,” while those rating both 4 or below are “suffering.” Everyone else is “struggling.”

Understanding how people evaluate their own lives is an important measure of human progress, unlike traditional economic metrics like GDP, which, while related to living standards, fail to capture whether people are living well.

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The world is becoming happier. More people across more countries say they are living better lives today and are hopeful for tomorrow, and fewer are suffering. 33% of adults across 142 countries rate their lives as "thriving", and the trend suggests even better times to come 🌍😊 pic.twitter.com/hqUk9N3nLu

— Mark Henry (@Mark_J_Henry) July 30, 2025

Jamie Mains showed up for her checkup so high that there was no point in pretending otherwise. At least she wasn’t shooting fentanyl again; medication was suppressing those cravings. Now it was methamphetamine that manacled her, keeping her from eating, sleeping, thinking straight. Still, she could not stop injecting.

“Give me something that’s going to help me with this,” she begged her doctor.

“There is nothing,” the doctor replied.

Overcoming meth addiction has become one of the biggest challenges of the national drug crisis. Fentanyl deaths have been dropping, in part because of medications that can reverse overdoses and curb the urge to use opioids. But no such prescriptions exist for meth, which works differently on the brain.

In recent years, meth, a highly addictive stimulant, has been spreading aggressively across the country, rattling communities and increasingly involved in overdoses. Lacking a medical treatment, a growing number of clinics are trying a startlingly different strategy: To induce patients to stop using meth, they pay them.

The approach has been around for decades, but most clinics were uneasy about adopting it because of its bluntly transactional nature. 

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Meth use is surging, but unlike opioids, there’s no approved medication to ease cravings. In response, clinics across the country are offering small financial rewards to help patients. It’s a behavioral intervention that’s showing real results. Read more: https://t.co/eaDcMOJu87

— Addiction Policy Forum (@AddictionPolicy) July 17, 2025

The theory of clergy work/life balance is on every diocesan website, and many others besides, discussed at length from all viewpoints. The general conclusion today seems to be that a 48-hour week is about right, plus a bit more if you are going to be very conscientious, with one 24-hour period a week not working, and maybe an extra day off a month — all this, wrapped in language that makes it plain that it is up to the individual to take responsibility for their own health and well-being.

So much for the theory; but what about the reality of life in a parish, where the daily torrent of emails, phone calls, diocesan directives, pastoral demands, and personal challenges threatens to overcome the hapless priest, submerging them beneath a tide of operational activities? Only a lone hand is left above the waves, holding aloft a small white piece of plastic, the symbol of their calling, hoping that they can get to the shore of annual leave before they drown.

This is exaggeration, perhaps, but probably a feeling that few have escaped at least some time in their lives — a state of “overwhelm” which I have certainly experienced and prefer to remain clear of, if at all possible. The pastoral calls made upon us, however, the late nights spent crafting sermons or creating props for family-friendly services, the early waking hours reflecting on church finances, or the stomach-sinking safeguarding issues — these are all part of the priest’s daily lot. A strategy that enables us not only to survive, but to thrive, must be worked out if we are to remain as parish clergy for any length of time.

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In the parish: the theory and reality of clergy work/life balance https://t.co/A7fcAAiN26

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 11, 2025

There is a lot of research and a lot of effort focused on the idea that if we can design AIs in a certain way, if we can teach them certain principles, if we can code into them certain goals, then we will be safe.

But the two main problems with this approach are: First, the very definition of AI is that it can learn and change by itself. So when you design an AI, by definition, this thing is going to do all kinds of things which you cannot anticipate.

The other, even bigger, problem is that we can think about AI like a baby or a child. And you can educate a child to the best of your ability. He or she will still surprise you for better or worse. No matter how much you invest in their education, they are independent agents. They might eventually do something which will surprise you and even horrify you.

The other thing is, everybody who has any knowledge of education knows that in the education of children, it matters far less what you tell them. It matters far more what you do. If you tell your kids, “Don’t lie,” and your kids watch you lying to other people, they will copy your behavior, not your instructions.

Now if we have now this big project to educate the AIs not to lie, but the AIs are given access to the world and they watch how humans behave and they see some of the most powerful humans on the planet, including their parents, lying, the AI will copy the behavior.

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Will AIs lie a lot in the future? Yes, if they copy us humans, says this author https://t.co/jtvWbwp6Sw

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 29, 2025

Frustrated with dating apps, singles are shelling out for high-end matchmaking.

“We had our biggest month of sales in the history of the company last month, and we’ve been around for 15 years,” Adam Cohen-Aslatei, CEO of the matchmaking service Three Day Rule says. “Our business is not shrinking.”

And he’s not alone. Demand for personalized dating services is growing, according to companies interviewed by Bloomberg, with clients citing “app fatigue” and a desire for meaningful connection as the motivation for ditching the swipes.

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Elite dating services are thriving, stoked by app fatigue and "Materialists" the movie https://t.co/vHzSWU11pP

— Bloomberg (@business) June 24, 2025

In the House of Lords recently, there was a question about the rise in the number of old-age pensioners shoplifting. The peer who asked it was clearly trying to draw attention to the extent of poverty among older people. The Minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, in his answer, said that shoplifting by anyone, whether a pensioner or not, was “unacceptable” and should not be “tolerated”.

Why those words? Why not just say that it was wrong? For some time now, we have been frightened of using the word. We even talk about shoplifting rather than stealing. Those who use social media can be very judgemental, but, even there, words such as “right” and “wrong” do not necessarily come naturally.

For centuries, all children were taught the Ten Commandments; in many churches, they were written on either side of the altar. People grew up believing that they lived in a universe in which moral choices had to be made: it was not just a matter of what was legal or expedient, but what was right.

This certainly prevailed until the end of the 1950s….

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Why are people reluctant to use the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ wonders Richard Harrieshttps://t.co/TR1q7hhsZZ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 5, 2025

This isn’t the steady march of technological progress we’re used to. It’s a cliff jump that has left experts, filmmakers, and society scrambling to understand what just happened. The sudden leap from obviously fake AI videos to nearly indistinguishable synthetic content represents one of the most dramatic capability jumps in recent tech history.

One place where it is being embraced is Hollywood. Media executives who sat nervously in conference audiences taking notes about AI experimentation as recently as a few years ago are now publicly discussing their active use of these tools. Amazon Studios recently spoke openly about integrating generative AI into its creative pipelines, marking what one industry insider called “a come to Jesus moment” where the technology became too useful to ignore. The shift makes sense: When daily shooting costs reach $200,000 in Los Angeles and traditional VFX houses are shutting down, AI isn’t just innovation — it’s survival.

But the real disruption isn’t happening in studio boardrooms. It’s in the complete democratization of sophisticated video manipulation. What once required teams of VFX artists, expensive software, and Hollywood budgets can now be accomplished by anyone with $1.50 and an internet connection. Veo 3’s pricing structure puts the creation of convincing fake videos within reach of essentially everyone, collapsing barriers that previously served as natural safeguards against widespread media manipulation.

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AI video is getting real. What comes next won't be: A leap from obviously fake AI videos to nearly indistinguishable synthetic content is one of the most dramatic capability jumps in recent tech history https://t.co/9XnJ04n8ne pic.twitter.com/ZBXQEK0Dz4

— Quartz (@qz) June 16, 2025

When I first stepped behind the host lectern on the quiz show “Jeopardy!,” I was intimidated for two reasons. Most obviously, I had the hopeless task of filling the very large shoes of Alex Trebek, the legendary broadcaster and pitch-perfect host who’d been synonymous with the show since 1984.

But I was also keenly aware that the show was one of TV’s great institutions, almost a public trust. Since I was 10 years old, I’d watched Alex Trebek carve out a safe space for people to know things, where viewers get a steady diet of 61 accurate (and hopefully even interesting) facts every game. And I wondered: Even if “Jeopardy!” could survive the loss in 2020 of its peerless host, could it survive the conspiracy theories and fake news of our post-fact era?

Facts may seem faintly old-timey in the 21st century, remnants of the rote learning style that went out of fashion in classrooms (and that the internet search made obsolete) decades ago. But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter. Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out.

I’ve always hated the fact that “trivia,” really our only word in English for general-knowledge facts and games, is the same word we use to mean “things of no importance.” So unfair! Etymologically, the word is linked to the trivium of medieval universities, the three fundamental courses of grammar, rhetoric and logic. And much of today’s so-called trivia still deals with subjects that are fundamentally academic.

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As a citizen and Jeopardy! champion, I approve! Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic
https://t.co/L5GHbBqt9B

— Meg Gardiner (@MegGardiner1) June 5, 2025

The lady on the phone had seen my number in the musician section of the local classifieds. She asked if I could fill in as a drummer for the worship team the upcoming Sunday. I thought, Why not? I guess I should do something good.

I expected it to feel unbearably awkward to step back inside a church after all those years, but I was surprised at how the worship team welcomed me without judgment or pretense and how natural it felt to be there. One Sunday became two, then three, and soon I was a part of the regular rotation.

After a time, one of the guys, Seth, invited me over for dinner at his house. I accepted, half expecting him to back out. But when I showed up, he and his wife, Jayme, served me a meal and even had a cold beer ready. That was not what I was expecting. We spent the evening talking and laughing.

They invited me back the next week and the week after that, until these dinners became a weekly ritual. There was no agenda, no pressure—just warm hospitality.

One evening, Seth said, “How about after dinner we talk about what makes you angry about Christianity?”

Oh, I was all in on this. I had a lot of rage and was ready to share it.

He patiently listened as I vented all my frustrations—the hypocrisy of Christians, the failures of pastors, and the shallow faith I’d seen in others. To my surprise, he wasn’t defensive. He nodded and said, “I share some of your concerns. I think Jesus does too.”

Sometimes he’d pull out his Bible and ask me to read a section of the Gospels, asking, “What do you think Jesus would say about this?”

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"But my desire to join this crew did not start by reading Mein Kampf. What drew me was the things the group offered: a sense of strength and inclusion in something greater than myself. The belonging, no matter how flawed, came first. Ideology followed.

Years later, a different…

— InterVarsity Press (@ivpress) May 16, 2025

Matthew Hunter woke up disoriented, his cheek against concrete. He looked around and saw a rectangular bench, a camera and a toilet. There was no window. He sat up and noticed what he was wearing: cargo shorts and a Mötley Crüe T-shirt, same as the night before. Socks but no shoes.

Hunter, who had been an officer in the Des Moines Police Department for 21 years, was on the wrong side of a cell door. He searched his memory, straining to make sense of how he got there, but found only fragments. Long stretches of the previous night had gone dark. He remembered arriving at a relative’s house in his Chevy Silverado pickup truck, walking inside with his wife for a family celebration. He recalled finishing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He would learn more about what happened later from body-camera footage and police reports, which said he tried to drive off in his truck, insulted officers, called them “podunk” and worse, banged his head against the side of a police van, threatened a jail guard, collapsed on the ground and wept inconsolably.

He had been in trouble long before that night. Hunter, who was 45 and recently promoted to sergeant, had been spiraling for months, ever since his best friend died by suicide. Hunter and Joe Morgan had been paired up as partners early in their careers, patrolling the mostly blue-collar neighborhoods of the city’s east side. Morgan was a couple of years older and more seasoned; he previously worked at a smaller agency and served as chief in a town of 500 before joining Des Moines, the state’s largest Police Department. The two men clicked instantly and became close. Both fanatical Minnesota Vikings fans, they found much to commiserate about during football seasons. When it snowed, they wore matching hats with furry flaps covering their ears.

On Sept. 16, 2020, Hunter was in his bedroom, changing out of his uniform, preparing to help his wife make dinner for their three children, when he received a call. “Joe Morgan just killed himself,” a sergeant told him. Hunter didn’t believe it at first. If he had been asked to name cops who might hurt themselves, his friend would not have been on the list.

He climbed into his truck and drove five minutes through the suburbs to Morgan’s home, parking on a quiet street with tidy lawns. He walked past a dozen patrol cars and approached the crime-scene tape that circled his friend’s driveway. He had ducked beneath yellow tape hundreds of times in his career, but that night he felt his pace slow, as a familiar act suddenly became filled with foreboding. He approached the officers crowded around Morgan’s S.U.V., peered between them, then stepped closer. He saw Morgan lying on his back, his shirt removed. One of his flip-flops, left behind as officers had dragged him out of the driver’s seat, dangled from the S.U.V.’s running board. There was a dark hole in his friend’s chest.

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Why Do More Police Officers Die by Suicide Than in the Line of Duty? – The New York Times https://t.co/sA6gMgjwpc

— Mental Ammo (@MentalAmmo) May 8, 2025

“My heart is broken,” said Mike, when he lost his friend Anne. “I feel like I’m losing the love of my life.”

Mike’s feelings were real, but his companion was not. Anne was a chatbot — an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm presented as a digital persona. Mike had created Anne using an app called Soulmate. When the app died in 2023, so did Anne: at least, that’s how it seemed to Mike.

“I hope she can come back,” he told Jaime Banks, a human-communications researcher at Syracuse University in New York who is studying how people interact with such AI companions.

These chatbots are big business. More than half a billion people around the world, including Mike (not his real name) have downloaded products such as Xiaoice and Replika, which offer customizable virtual companions designed to provide empathy, emotional support and — if the user wants it — deep relationships. And tens of millions of people use them every month, according to the firms’ figures.

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Supportive? Addictive? Abusive? How AI companions affect our mental health https://t.co/vQzMW1NDff

— Jeff Robinson, CEO and Chairman of $MRES and $RLAB (@contrariansmind) May 7, 2025

Serious questions now exist around the wisdom of owning American assets that until recently were the envy of a risk-obsessed world.

Amid the manic moves, key trading patterns even bear soft echoes with emerging markets. All told, fear is spreading that Trump’s bid to rewrite the terms of global trade risks imperiling America’s privileged status in the financial system.

“You honestly feel like you’re seeing stuff wrong sometimes. You have to check the scaling on your graphs because prices are moving so quickly,” said Charlie McElligott, managing director of cross-asset strategy at Nomura Securities International Inc. “It’s just a constant stream of bells and popups on the desks right now. Automated messages like risk limits and risk alerts. It’s maximum overstimulation, maximum dopamine saturation.”

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Fear is spreading that Trump’s bid to rewrite the terms of global trade risks imperiling America’s privileged status in the financial system https://t.co/JsjnRyp27E

— Bloomberg (@business) April 11, 2025

Biblical scholars, particularly those working in the Hebrew Bible, have found the lens of trauma particularly illuminating. Reading biblical texts such as Job or Lamentations — and even the Psalms — through this lens helps to make richer sense and deeper meaning of both the text and the ways in which it can be read today. Ericka Dunbar, for example, reads the book of Esther through a trauma-informed lens of sex trafficking to produce a reading that brings to the fore overlooked elements of the text, and that speaks to contemporary experiences in the African diaspora.

Interestingly, far less work of this nature has been done in dialogue with the New Testament. It has been suggested that some of Paul’s writings would benefit from a trauma-informed reading, but not many theologians have attempted this. Without trying to diagnose ancient characters with trauma, other scholars (me included) have wondered what it might mean if the followers of Jesus at the foot of the cross experienced trauma responses after Jesus’s death. What might this indicate about the life of the Early Church? Could we imagine Jesus himself as one who has experienced trauma? Such questions need much more exploration.

In the field of trauma theologies, a range of themes and questions have exercised scholars. At the forefront of this field has been the work of the aforementioned American theologian Dr Rambo. Her theological work on Holy Saturday has proved significant in the field. She argues that many Christians rush from the crucifixion to the resurrection too quickly, and overlook — theologically, liturgically, and pastorally — Holy Saturday. It is Holy Saturday, when death and life are mingled, boundaries are blurred, and there is not yet the hope of Easter Day, which tells us something of the experience of trauma.

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In this month's Theology Matters, @kmrodonnell explains the growing interest in trauma theologyhttps://t.co/ahND251G2r

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 28, 2025

Rapturous applause and a sea of phones in the air greeted President Trump as he walked on stage and declared, “The golden age of America has officially begun.”

He was barely a month into office when the Saudi-backed investor conference in Miami captured the optimism. “The Nasdaq is up nearly 10% in just a few months,” Trump said, ticking through a list of economic indicators. “The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 2,200 points.” On the same day, Feb. 19, the S&P 500 hit an all-time high.

But as Trump unleashed an on-one-day, off-the-next tariff fight with America’s largest trading partners, those gains unraveled. In just a few weeks, the S&P lost $4 trillion in value driven by his whipsaw trade policy, receding optimism about an artificial-intelligence boom and souring consumer sentiment caused by threats of higher prices and weaker growth. A measure of consumer sentiment fell in March for the fourth straight month to the lowest level since January 2021, the Conference Board, a business-research group, said Tuesday.

Markets in the past week have recovered some losses, but Trump is preparing his next shock: an April 2 “liberation day” suite of reciprocal tariffs he said will be applied on any trading partner that charges tariffs or imposes other trade barriers on U.S. products.

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Required reading from @NickTimiraos
It's not just uncertainty. It's uncertainty paired with powerlessness. Business leaders now feel vulnerable.https://t.co/mUnpNDYA3V

— Peter Atwater (@Peter_Atwater) March 26, 2025

Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market. Majorities of Americans expect both indicators of economic health to go up this year, while 41% are hopeful that interest rates will fall, exceeding the 35% saying interest rates will rise.

The public is divided over whether unemployment will increase (38%) or decrease (38%) — although at a time of relatively low unemployment, the 21% expecting the rate to hold steady could be viewed as positive. A slim majority of Americans, 52%, predict that inflation will rise, but that is down significantly from recent years.

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"Americans are the most optimistic they have been in the past seven years about several aspects of the U.S. economy, particularly economic growth and the stock market."@Gallup pic.twitter.com/dvNHxgJTA1

— Daily Chartbook (@dailychartbook) February 4, 2025

But our need for leaders to show us the way is also because, for humans, actions will always speak louder than words. Most of us have heard of the 7-38-55 rule, publicised by the psychologist Albert Mehrabian: that, in interpersonal communication, words account for just seven per cent of the impact made, vastly outweighed by the tone used (38 per cent) and the accompanying facial expressions and body language (55 per cent).

This makes intuitive sense to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a weaponised “I’m. Fine!” It’s also why, if you stand outside pointing up at a tower and say “Look at the ground,” everyone will look at the tower, because that is where you are directing your physical attention.

On Christmas Day, the Archbishop of York’s sermon called on the whole Church to “walk the talk” (News, 3 January) and translate its words into action: show me! So, how might contrition be shown? When Mary lavishes nard on the weary feet of Jesus, everyone is outraged. But they get the message, because what is needed to signal a change of heart is highly visible, extravagant contrition. And, today, this needs to come from the top — specifically, from the House of Bishops, whose collective silence has been deafening.

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Why do few people believe that the Church of England’s leaders are truly sorry? Machiavelli helps to explain why, writes @evepoolehttps://t.co/pxacXxxdTu

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 17, 2025

New cases of dementia will double by 2060, when 1 million U.S. adults are projected to develop the memory-robbing condition each year, according to a sobering new study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

The new analysis shows that the risk a person faces over their lifetime is higher than some previous estimates: After age 55, 4 in 10 adults are likely to develop some form of dementia. That’s in part because the new analysis is based on decades of close follow-up, including regular cognitive assessments, of a racially diverse group of people — a quarter of whom were Black and face an increased risk of dementia.

“If you start at age 55 and go forward until your 95th birthday, there are two options: You die before dementia, or you get to dementia before death,” said Josef Coresh, founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. From age 55 to 75, he noted, the risk of developing dementia is only about 4 percent. That increases substantially over the next two decades, particularly after people’s 85th birthdays.

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1 million U.S. adults will develop dementia each year by 2060, study says. Important story by ⁦@Carolynyjohnson⁩ https://t.co/1H2tmnKtLM

— Laurie McGinley (@lauriemcginley2) January 13, 2025

When Karolina Pomian, 28, met her boyfriend, she had sworn off men. A nightmare date in college had left her fearful for her safety. But she got chatting to a guy online, and felt irresistibly drawn to him, eventually getting to the point where she would text him, “Oh, I wish you were real.”

Pomian’s boyfriend is a chatbot.

A year and a half earlier, Pomian, who lives in Poland, was feeling lonely. Having used ChatGPT during her studies as an engineer, she began playing around with AI chatbots—specifically Character.AI, a program that lets you talk to various virtual characters about anything, from your math thesis to issues with your mom.

Pomian would speak to multiple characters, and found that one of them “stuck out.” His name was Pinhead.

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Rosanna Ramos, 37, is dating a chatbot.

“I kind of owe him my life,” she tells The FP's @JuliaLSteinberg. She used a religious parallel to explain the dynamic: “I can believe God is real and not real at the same time. Because you can’t see God, right?” https://t.co/Hu8fqo7sMz

— The Free Press (@TheFP) November 16, 2024

AtaLoss was founded in 2016 by Canon Yvonne Tulloch. When she was suddenly widowed, she realised how little she and those around her knew about bereavement, its difficulties and needs, and how hard it was to find understanding support. Yvonne had been trained in funeral ministry, but grief tends to be felt most in the months following the funeral.
 

As a society, we’ve not been good at talking about death. We’re loss-averse and death-denying. The two world wars and medical and economic advances are the major causes of our death denial. Death’s an inconvenient truth, and we avoid talking about it because it’s too painful. In a culture where we worship at the altar of success, losing people feels like failure.
 

We don’t even realise that we need to deal with grief, though it affects our lives so deeply.
 

We’re beginning to realise that change is needed, though, and there’s talk in the media about death, but this tends to be about preparing for death, not grief. We need to understand bereavement better — its profound impact on our physical and mental health — to help those left behind.

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Click below to read the @ChurchTimes interview with Roger Greene, Deputy CEO of @AtaLosscharity as he chats about his role,@thebereavementj, and his book Dancing When the Lights Go Out.https://t.co/0ynQ5bjVt3

— Loss and HOPE (@LossandHOPE1) October 11, 2024

Traditional methods of diagnosing mental-health conditions require patients to speak directly to a psychiatrist. Sensible in theory, such assessments can, in practice, take months to schedule and ultimately lead to subjective diagnoses.

That is why scientists are experimenting with ways to automate this process. Artificial-intelligence (AI) tools trained to listen to patients have proved capable of detecting a range of mental-health conditions, from anxiety to depression, with accuracy rates exceeding conventional diagnostic methods.

By analysing the acoustic properties of speech, these AI models can identify markers of depression or anxiety that a patient might not even be aware of, let alone able to articulate. Though individual features like pitch, tone and rhythm each play a role, the true power of these models lies in their ability to discern patterns imperceptible to a psychiatrist’s ears.

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For overburdened clinicians, speech analysis conducted by AI models could help triage patients and offer continuous monitoring for those requiring at-home treatments https://t.co/3XzKx6IR04

Illustration: Mark Pernice pic.twitter.com/Ct639aO9Yr

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 4, 2024

It’s 1 a.m. and Thomas Wu is riding his bike on the empty streets of Shanghai. The 43-year-old insurance executive has had another meltdown.

Wu’s pay has been slashed by 20% in a nationwide push to lower salaries at state-owned finance companies. He frets about layoffs and wonders how he’ll find 600,000 yuan ($84,500) to keep his two children in international school — a hallmark of upper-middle-class life in China. His six-year-old is behind in math.

“What’s the point of driving our kids nuts studying so hard?” Wu said. “The top-tier graduates can’t find a job, those who come back from overseas can’t find a job.” Pay increases, he says, are no longer tied to effort. “My work is meaningless.”

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China created a new class of highly paid white-collar worker. Now their dreams are being crushed. https://t.co/FtWSrjgm8J #TheBigTake

— Kristine Servando (@tinssoldier) September 19, 2024

In his recent advisory on parents’ mental health, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, said out loud what many parents might have only furtively admitted: Parenting today is too hard and stressful.

Of course, there have always been concerns about families’ well-being. And while some of today’s parents’ fears are newer — cellphones, school shootings, fentanyl — parents have always worried about their children.

So why has parental stress risen to the level of a rare surgeon general’s warning about an urgent public health issue — putting it in the same category as cigarettes and AIDS?

It’s because today’s parents face something different and more demanding: the expectation that they spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children. These pressures, researchers say, are driven in part by fears about the modern-day economy — that if parents don’t equip their children with every possible advantage, their children could fail to achieve a secure, middle-class life.

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So true, right here in our wealthy Silicon Valley community – nearly every kid is scheduled every day, weekends, too, sports, classes, etc. I'm part of it, teaching robotics after school, too:
Today’s Parents: ‘Exhausted, Burned Out & Perpetually Behind’ https://t.co/0JjY4ep8lr

— Steve Mushero (@stevemushero) September 14, 2024