Adam Hegarty and Laura Sparkes discuss the lasting effects of brain rot and the mental decline in teenagers and young adults who have grown up surrounded by screens. Internationally renowned cognitive neuroscientist Dr Mark Williams has been studying the effects of excessive screen time on a developing brain, and he is one of many experts sounding the alarm on the increasing number of young people exhibiting signs of early-onset dementia. Digital Dementia (2026) ► Full story: • Brain fog and disassociation from being ch… ► Subscribe: http://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J ► WATCH Full Episodes on 9NOW: https://9now.app.link/uNP4qBkmN6
It’s a tough time to be looking for a job in the age of AI. But executives say workers who can adapt to the times still have an edge. During a panel at VivaTech in Paris, business leaders discussed how AI is reshaping hiring. Sue Duke, LinkedIn’s head of global policy and economic graph, pointed to internal data showing that hiring across Europe is down 25% from pandemic-era highs and 15% year over year.
In the U.S., LinkedIn data shows hiring remains 24% below pre-pandemic levels and was down 6% year over year as of March. Even as hiring slows, employers say the roles that remain open increasingly demand a new mix of hard, soft, and AI skills.Companies are prioritizing candidates who can use AI tools effectively while bringing strengths that are harder to automate.
For many employers, that means knowing when to use AI, how to evaluate its outputs, and how to integrate it into existing workflows.
“We see the most resilience in hiring in roles that combine AI efficiency and unique human skills,” Duke said during the panel. Because fixed skill sets age quickly, human skills are becoming more important. Duke said adaptability and curiosity are essential to getting hired as AI reshapes the workplace.
LinkedIn estimates that 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change by 2030, with AI acting as a major catalyst. As job requirements evolve, workers who can continuously learn and apply new technologies have an advantage. Software engineering offers a glimpse of what that shift looks like in practice.
Before generative AI, employers largely hired engineers for their coding ability. Today, tools like Codex and Claude Code can generate high-quality code, pushing companies to look beyond technical proficiency. Employers want engineers who can work alongside AI and help organizations integrate it effectively, said Ruth Harper, SVP and chief marketing and sustainability officer at Manpower Group, a global talent recruitment agency.
That requires cross-functional collaboration, change management, and the ability to bring colleagues along.“How do you drop AI into the workflow? How do you help your organization get comfortable with agents working next to your humans, for your humans? How are they part of the team? That is not a technology job,” Harper said.Still, leaders emphasize that hard skills like coding remain essential.”The combination [of skills] is what can be absolutely critical,” Harper said. “The technical skills are a given, but if you only have technical skills, somebody else is going to get to the top of the list first.” The bar for landing a job keeps rising. As AI reshapes work across industries and experience levels, employers are looking for candidates who can adapt alongside it. Specialized expertise alone is no longer enough. Workers are increasingly expected to pair technical skills with emotional intelligence, strong communication, and a willingness to learn. In a world where more tasks are being automated, the most valuable employees may be those who can demonstrate they have deeply human advantages.
Recommended by Vishal Patel, Harvard Medical School clinical fellow in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
I came to medicine by way of philosophy of science, so I am partial to old questions asked well. Edith Hall asks the oldest one: What makes a life go well? Her answer, drawn from Aristotle, is not a feeling but a practice. Eudaimonia — usually flattened into “happiness” — is something you do, the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. You become good by doing good things, until the doing becomes habit. That reframing has stayed with me on the wards.
A residency is built from thousands of small, unglamorous acts repeated until they are second nature, and Aristotle’s claim is that character is forged exactly there, in the repetition, not in the grand gesture. I find that both demanding and reassuring. The virtues he prizes — practical wisdom, the golden mean between extremes, the habit of consulting others before a hard decision — read less like ancient ethics than like a quiet description of good clinical judgment.
What I most admire is Hall’s refusal to make this easy. Flourishing is available to nearly everyone, she insists, but only to those who decide to work at it. As a researcher I spend my days asking what interventions actually change outcomes; here is one, 23 centuries old, that asks me to be the intervention. I read it slowly, a few pages at a time, and keep coming back.
Summary: Losing the senses of smell and taste inflicts an emotional, social, and psychological toll comparable to living with some of the world’s most serious chronic illnesses. The new review analyzed years of clinical evidence measuring quality-of-life metrics across a wide array of long-term conditions.
The findings decisively challenge the pervasive societal misconception that olfactory and gustatory impairments are merely superficial inconveniences. Instead, the research reveals a bleak reality for millions of sufferers, documented by exceptionally high rates of clinical depression, persistent social isolation, nutritional issues, and chronic anxiety linked to an underestimated sensory loss.
Key Facts
Chronic Illness Equivalence: Standardized quality-of-life scores for individuals suffering from smell and taste disorders (SATDs) directly match and frequently fall below those recorded for patients living with diabetes, stroke, heart failure, and Parkinson’s disease.
The Psychological Burden: Deprived of chemosensory inputs, patients describe a profound sense of emotional numbness and widespread social withdrawal. The study identifies high, recurring rates of clinical depression linked to the loss of daily life’s sensory milestones.
Nutritional Dysregulation: When eating shifts from a primary pleasure to a purely functional chore, patients experience dramatic metabolic changes. Sufferers face severe weight loss from a complete lack of appetite or experience weight gain after aggressively chasing overly strong or sweet flavor profiles.
Environmental Safety Anxiety: Beyond emotional distress, the condition induces chronic survival anxiety. Sufferers report feeling persistently unsafe due to their absolute inability to detect hazardous environmental cues like smoke, gas leaks, or spoiled food.
Systemic Medical Sidelining: Despite rigorous data showing extensive patient misery, healthcare models historically dismiss chemosensory disorders as temporary or minor, resulting in a critical global shortage of diagnostic infrastructure and specialist treatment clinics.
Source: University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia research reveals that smell loss can affect quality of life as severely as conditions including diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s, and kidney failure.
For millions of people, the ability to smell a morning coffee or taste a home‑cooked meal is something they barely think about.
But a new study shows that when those senses disappear, life can quickly become bleak – with patients reporting levels of misery comparable to some of the most serious chronic illnesses.
Smell and taste disorders cause profound emotional and psychological distress that statistically matches the disease burden of severe chronic conditions like diabetes and stroke, highlighting an urgent need for specialist healthcare infrastructure. Credit: Neuroscience News
The findings challenge the widespread belief that losing smell or taste is merely an inconvenience – and expose what experts say is a dangerous underestimation of just how debilitating these conditions can be.
How the research happened
Researchers reviewed years of medical evidence across dozens of studies comparing quality‑of‑life scores across a wide range of chronic illnesses – including diabetes, stroke, heart failure, asthma, cardiovascular and respiratory conditions.
Lead researcher Prof Carl Philpott, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “We found that smell and taste disorders consistently produce significant emotional, social and psychological suffering, often rivaling conditions routinely considered life‑altering.
“Patients described loss of pleasure in food, difficulties socialising, heightened anxiety around personal safety – such as being unable to smell smoke or gas – and a disturbing sense of emotional numbness.
“Perhaps most alarming was the fact that rates of depression and social withdrawal among people with smell and taste loss were repeatedly found to be high.”
Food as fuel
The study found that for many sufferers, eating stops being one of life’s pleasures and becomes a purely functional act.
“Smell accounts for most of what people perceive as taste,” said Prof Philpott. “So when this is lost, meals can feel bland, metallic or even repulsive. Some people lose weight due to lack of appetite, while others gain weight after chasing stronger or sweeter flavours.”
The review highlights how this sensory loss strikes at the heart of daily life, disrupting family meals, celebrations and social rituals that most people take for granted.
Despite these profound effects, smell and taste disorders have historically been sidelined by healthcare systems – a situation the authors describe as deeply concerning.
Prof Philpott said: “The problem is that doctors often reassure patients that the problem is minor or temporary, even when symptoms persist for years. Few specialist services exist, and access to treatment remains limited.
“Yet our research shows that when patients fill in standard quality‑of‑life questionnaires, their scores frequently match – or even fall below – those seen in people with recognised long‑term conditions.
Covid woke the world up – but not enough
“The Covid pandemic brought sudden attention to smell loss, known as anosmia, and loss of taste, known as ageusia, as millions experienced the symptoms during infection.
“While many recovered, others were left with permanent or distorted sensory perception – including parosmia, where every day smells become nauseating.
“But our work suggests Covid merely exposed a problem that had existed for decades – one that medicine has been slow to take seriously.”
“Better recognition, investment in specialist clinics, and greater research into treatments are urgently needed – not as a matter of comfort, but of genuine health and wellbeing,” he added.
‘Comparing quality of life in smell and taste disorders with other chronic conditions – a narrative review’ is published in the journal Clinical Otolaryngology.
Key Questions Answered:
Q: Why do smell and taste disorders have such an unusually devastating impact on emotional well-being?
A: The olfactory system possesses a unique, direct neuroanatomical link to the brain’s emotional architecture. Unlike other senses, olfactory signals pass directly into the olfactory bulb, which is wired straight into the amygdala (regulating emotion) and the hippocampus (regulating memory). When this pathway is severed, individuals lose an essential biological anchor for emotional memory, situational context, and basic neurochemical reward loops, resulting in a distinct form of emotional numbness.
Q: How do these sensory deficits systematically disrupt a patient’s nutritional health and behavior?
A: Because smell accounts for the vast majority of flavor perception, its absence reduces eating to a bland, metallic, or sometimes repulsive task. This triggers two unhealthy behavioral extremes: some patients experience severe food avoidance and dangerous weight loss due to a complete absence of sensory reward, while others suffer rapid weight gain by overcompensating with highly processed, excessively sweet, or oversalted foods to elicit a sensory response.
Q: What major clinical gaps in current healthcare systems did the UEA review expose?
A: The study highlights a troubling systemic neglect where front-line clinicians routinely downplay persistent sensory loss as temporary or minor. Despite objective data revealing severe patient suffering, healthcare systems offer minimal diagnostic pathways, very few dedicated specialist clinics, and heavily restricted access to validated therapies, leaving millions to manage a chronic, life-altering condition entirely isolated.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this olfaction and depression research news
Author: Lisa Horton Source: University of East Anglia Contact: Lisa Horton – University of East Anglia Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen use this “Behind the Curtain” column to synthesize a flurry of news showing the U.S. faces rising AI competition across Asia and Europe:
The Five Eyes intelligence alliance issued a rare joint warning this week that frontier AI capable of crippling governments and businesses is close. The fast rise of Chinese and Japanese models helps explain the urgency and fear, officials tell us.
Why it matters: Yes, Anthropic’s Mythos model is the most cyber-lethal threat in the world. But OpenAI is close here in America. And China and Japan, using much cheaper models, have gotten closer, faster than intelligence agencies anticipated.
“The timeline is not years, it is months,” Five Eyes warned.
Five Eyes, composed of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is considered the world’s most comprehensive and powerful spy network.
The big picture: President Trump told Marc Caputo on “The Axios Show” that “we’re beating China by a lot” on AI. But that lead, which U.S. leaders and businesses have been banking on, is eroding.
Three new disruptions show just how fast it’s happening:
It’s becoming harder to put up a wall around America’s advancements. Japan’s Sakana AI launched Fugu Ultra, an orchestrator that it claims offers “frontier capability without the risk of export controls” by switching between publicly available models. The Tokyo-based company says it can reach Mythos-level performance by using U.S. labs’ work as interchangeable infrastructure.
China is eating away at that lead by stealing America’s best work. In February, Anthropic accused DeepSeek, Minimax and Moonshot of illicitly training their own models via “distillation,” using thousands of accounts to have millions of exchanges with Claude — a cheap shortcut to years of pricey research.
American labs are wondering whether the frontier is worth the risk. Two weeks ago, the Commerce Department export-controlled Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5, leading the company to shut off access for everyone. The best domestic AI companies may be wary to show off their highest-capability models, fearing further government intervention.
An LLM leaderboard by Artificial Analysis, a benchmarking company, puts GLM-5.2 alongside OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, at about a fifth of the cost to run. When it comes to coding, Arena’s web development ranking has the Chinese model second only to Fable — making it the best-performing model you can actually use right now.
Alex Stamos, former Facebook chief security officer, toldAxios Future of Cybersecurity’s Sam Sabin that it’s quite possible the Chinese “have things privately that are really, really good. [It] is arrogant and foolish of us to think that just because we’re American that we’ve got the best stuff.
“He added that Chinese military hackers are likely “laughing hilariously right now at the Americans fighting between themselves and cutting each other off left and right.”
Zoom out: It’s Europe, too. Domyn — an AI company based in Milan, Italy — announced last week that its Europa project is a frontier open-source AI model that will support all 24 official languages of the European Union.
What we’re watching: The Five Eyes call to action said a “whole-of-society response is required” to respond to the accelerating cyber risk.
“Boards and executives should ensure cyber resilience is in place and works under pressure,” the bulletin says. “It is not enough to have controls. Leaders must be confident those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires reassessing long-standing trade-offs and using AI deliberately to strengthen defense — not just improve efficiency
.”The bottom line: America’s AI lead is real but shrinking. Every move to protect it only hands rivals another reason to route around it — all while the capabilities that have Five Eyes on edge are already loose, downloadable and impossible to recall.Axios’ Shane Savitsky and Sam Sabin contributed reporting
They continue to give out Irish citizenship like snuff at a wake Around 4,600 people from more than 139 countries will become Irish citizens at ceremonies taking place in Kerry over today and tomorrow. Minister of State with responsibility for Migration, Colm Brophy is in attendance today. “Irish citizenship is about freedom – freedom to participate fully in society, to vote, to shape the future of your community, to raise your family with security and belonging,” Mr Brophy said.
The contested legacy of Edmund Dene Morel – the man who exposed the murderous exploits of King Leopold II in the Belgian Congo
Published: June 23, 2026 11.04am BST
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Young shipping clerk Edmund Dene Morel was working as for the Liverpool firm Elder Dempster when he noticed what appeared to be a discrepancy in the figures. What Morel found in his investigation of that discrepancy would expose one of the most notorious systems of violence of the colonial era: the Congo Free State, ruled personally by King Leopold II of Belgium.
Leopold founded the Congo Free State in 1885. It was his private colonial possession, not a Belgian colony. During Leopold’s 23-year rule, millions of Congolese died amid widespread atrocities – murder, torture, mutilation, forced labour – driven by the extraction of ivory and rubber.
Morel would become the most effective public campaigner against Leopold’s regime. His writings helped transform what had been scattered missionary testimony into an international scandal. But while dedicating much of his energy to exposing Leopold’s crimes in the Congo, Morel proved far less willing to confront abuses linked to some of his own allies and financial supporters.
Born Georges Edmond Pierre Achille Morel de Ville in Paris in 1873, Morel moved to Britain with his English mother following his father’s death. In 1891 he joined Elder Dempster as a clerk. Four years later, when the firm opened a shipping route between Antwerp and West Africa, the bilingual Morel was an ideal candidate for the job.
He supplemented his income with journalism, drawing on information from sailors, traders and officials who passed through Elder Dempster’s offices. While researching an article, Morel noticed a striking imbalance in Congo trade statistics. Large quantities of rubber and ivory were being shipped to Belgium, but almost nothing flowed back to Africa except firearms and ammunition.
For a shipping clerk accustomed to ledgers and manifests, the implications were stark. Trade normally moved in both directions. The Congo figures suggested something closer to organised extraction: wealth leaving Africa, force returning in its place. Morel began to piece together testimony from missionaries, traders and officials, realising that the violence reported from the interior was not incidental but structural – an economic system sustained by terror. He described Leopold’s Congo as “a secret society of murderers with a king for a croniman”.
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When Morel raised his concerns with Elder Dempster’s managing director, Alfred Jones, he was offered a promotion in return for his silence.He refused. In 1903 he launched a newspaper, The West African Mail, and the following year founded the British Congo Reform Association (CRA), which aimed to end Leopold’s rule.
Morel’s associates included the Liverpool businessman John Holt and the Anglo-Irish diplomat Roger Casement.Holt had extensive commercial interests in West Africa, including in rubber. Casement’s 1904 report for the British government documented widespread violence in the Congo’s rubber districts. Casement would later be executed for treason following his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising.
Defending powerful allies
The CRA relied heavily on wealthy donors. Its largest single financial contributor was the British cocoa manufacturer William Cadbury. Cadbury paid Morel £50 per quarter as editor of the West African Mail – more than one-third of Morel’s personal income at the time – and asked that the arrangement remain private. He later helped fund the education of Morel’s eldest son and encouraged Morel to stand for parliament, promising further financial support.
At the same time, Cadbury Brothers were facing growing criticism for purchasing cocoa from plantations on the Portuguese islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.These plantations relied on coerced African labour recruited from Angola under a contract system that critics widely described as a form of slavery.
The issue was exposed publicly by the journalist Henry Nevinson in 1905 and 1906. Nevinson argued that British chocolate manufacturers, including Cadbury, bore responsibility for sustaining this system by continuing to buy plantation cocoa. Some humanitarian organisations went further: figures within the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society argued that British firms should boycott cocoa produced under coercive labour systems, a position Morel declined to endorse.
Cadbury’s response was cautious and incremental. The firm commissioned investigations, lobbied Portuguese officials and resisted immediate boycotts, arguing that sudden withdrawal would worsen conditions for workers.Morel consistently defended this approach in his journalism. While acknowledging the existence of abuse, he questioned Nevinson’s judgment and tone, portrayed Cadbury as acting in good faith, and worked to limit public criticism of the firm while the Congo campaign was ongoing.
Abuse on the plantations was not the point of dispute. What divided critics was how – and how forcefully – British firms should be held to account. On this question, Morel consistently sided with Cadbury’s cautious strategy, prioritising the Congo reform campaign and the cohesion of its supporters over public confrontation elsewhere. His humanitarianism was shaped as much by strategic calculation as by moral outrage.
Campaigner: Edmund Morel as editor of the West African Mail in 1905. LSE Library
Morel’s legacy
Once the Congo campaign wound down, Morel remained politically active. He became a prominent critic of British foreign policy during the first world war and was imprisoned in 1917 for his opposition to the war. After the conflict, he joined the Labour Party and was elected MP for Dundee in 1922, defeating Winston Churchill. He died in 1924 at the age of 51.
Morel’s work against Leopold’s Congo has rightly been recognised as a landmark in the history of humanitarian activism. His investigative methods, international networking and ability to mobilise public opinion influenced later reform movements. In recognition of his activism, Morel’s name is inscribed on the Humanitarian Wall at the Wilberforce Institute in Hull, alongside other prominent historical figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
He was also the subject of an early day motion proposed by Labour MP Jim McGovern in 2013 to “pay homage to his dedication to the Congo Reform Association and his early work in championing human rights for all”. The motion was signed by 17 MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.
But his legacy is not a simple one. Morel’s career shows how humanitarian campaigns can coexist with compromise, prioritisation and silence.He was capable of denouncing extreme violence while defending allies whose commercial interests were entangled with coercive labour systems elsewhere.
This does not negate Morel’s achievements. It does, however, complicate them. His story is a reminder that humanitarian activism has never been morally pure, and that understanding its impact requires attention not only to what reformers opposed, but also to what they chose not to confront.
Political commentator Nick Delehanty examined Irish media funding, questioning whether media organisations receiving millions in state-backed grants can remain truly independent. He argued that growing links between government funding, media outlets and NGOs are undermining public trust and narrowing the range of views presented to the public.
• Brain fog and disassociation from being ch… ► Subscribe: http://9Soci.al/chmP50wA97J ► WATCH Full Episodes on 9NOW: https://9now.app.link/uNP4qBkmN6
Zoom out: It’s Europe, too. 
What we’re watching: The Five Eyes 
If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: 
canisgallicus 
