For now, Priesters will have to stick to its famous pecans in Fort Payne, Alabama. But maybe not for long.
Priesters Pecans, an Alabama staple, is one of more than half a dozen sites across the state slated to receive millions of dollars in federal funding to expand access to chargers for electric vehicles.
Across the country, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law under then-President Joe Biden, is set to provide $5 billion to states for projects that expand the nations EV charging infrastructure.
But in a Feb. 6 letter, a Trump administration official notified state directors of transportation that, effectively, they cant spend it. The Federal Highway Administration rescinded guidance on the funds, which had been allocated by Congress, and is also immediately suspending the approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans for all fiscal years, the letter said.
Therefore, effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved.
POLITICO reported on Wednesday that a DOT spokesman said in an email that states were free to use a small portion of the fundingabout $400 millionbecause that was money the states had already obligated, or awarded to subcontractors. But that would still leave close to 90% of the funding up in the air.
Even before the administration had issued its letter, some Republican-led states, including Alabama, had already announced pauses to their states implementation of the national EV charging program.
In response to Unleashing American Energy, one of several Executive Orders that President Trump signed on January 20, 2025, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs has paused the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program as of January 28, 2025, the Alabama agency responsible for implementing NEVI posted on its website. In addition, for applications for funding that were originally due on March 17, 2025, ADECA has closed the application window until further notice.
Despite the announcement by the Trump administration, however, legal experts and those familiar with the electric charging program at issue say the president does not have the power to permanently nix the NEVI program.
NEVI funding was appropriated by Congress as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, and it cannot be canceled by the executive branch, said Elizabeth Turnbull, director of policy and regulatory affairs at the Alliance for Transportation Electrification, a trade group for the electric vehicle industry. Its not clear that the secretary of transportation has the authority to revoke states NEVI plans, and its quite clear that the executive branch lacks the authority to withhold the funding for any sustained period. So, we expect recent executive branch actions to be successfully challenged in court.
Even under the most aggressive arguments for a strong executive branch, the Supreme Court has stated clearly that the Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate and legislate.
Lawmakers, too, have weighed in on the legality of the Trump administrations NEVI directive, saying officials acted with blatant disregard for the law.
In a letter to administration officials, Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works urged the Department of Transportation to retract its Feb. 6 letter and implement the law according to your responsibilities.
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Youve probably heard that people don’t leave their job, they leave their manager. Its a popular saying because its often true. Having a toxic boss, however, is different than having one you simply dont like. If your boss is toxic, you need to take steps to protect yourself. But if its simply a matter of personalities not jiving, slow your job-search roll, suggests Stephanie Chung, author of Ally Leadership, How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You.
There are people in your family you probably don’t like, she says. But if you like your company, you like your colleagues, you like how much money you’re making, you like your benefits, and the only thing you don’t like is your boss, then you really shouldn’t just jump to another role or another job. . . . Look at the entire totality of your situation and then decide if you should stay or not.
Fortunately, you dont have to like your boss to grow in your career. Start by getting to the bottom of your dislike.
You don’t just naturally not like somebody, says Chung. Go a little bit deeper to figure out why you don’t like them. Maybe there’s something about them that reminds you of something or someone else. Usually, it’s that you come from different perspectives, different backgrounds, different upbringings, and therefore have different viewpoints. If youre bothered by everybody that’s different than you, you’re going to spend too much time hopping around.
Focus on Whats Important
Even if you dont like your boss, you still need to perform well at work. Is this person hindering you from being able to do your job? asks Chung. If the answer is no, and you just have different personalities or different communication styles, you can still get the job done.
When you dont like someone, the common response is to ignore them and talk to everyone but them. Chung says this is a mistake. Employees have a responsibility in creating a positive work environment.
People find comfort in complaining to their colleagues, she says. It’s easy to point fingers. To say, The boss doesn’t know what they’re doing. This is a stupid process. I’m looking for the worker who says, I don’t think this makes sense, but instead of talking to April, May, and June about it, I’m going to actually go to the boss and say, I am not sure that I agree with the thought process here. From my perspective, it doesn’t look like it makes a lot of sense. Am I missing something?
Often the root cause of not liking someone is lack of communication, miscommunication, or different styles of communication, says Chung, and the only way to fix that is to engage in more communication with them.
If you want to move up in your career, you dont have to wait for your boss to make the first effort, she says. It is possible that there’s something that you are not doing correctly or as good as you may think. If you want to be that person who’s constantly moving up in their career, who has a brand that stands for itself in a powerful way, you’re going to have to own your stuff. Part of that in the workforce is being able to own the fact that maybe it is them and maybe its not. You play a part in your relationship, as well.
By going to your boss to work out your differences or to clarify what could be misunderstandings, you demonstrate that you care about the company and want to take ownership for your career. Its managing up.
Employees who want to move up, want to be seen as people who are productive and can add value to the company, says Chung. How you do that is not being the person who’s sitting around complaining. Its being the person who’s trying to help leadership and your colleagues solve the problem.
An ability to work with people you dont likepeople who are not like youis an important skill to develop. Chung likens it to being on a sports team.
If everybody on the soccer team was a forward, you’d never win, she says. In the workplace, the same rules apply. There are different positions, different talents, different strengths, different weaknesses. Different perspectives ask different questions. When everybody gets along because we don’t have any disagreements, we’re all cookie cutters of each other. But that doesn’t help in business.
Leading diverse teamspeople who don’t think alike, act alike, have a back same backgroundis quite challenging, says Chung. The results are great, but there is a challenge to it because they’re so different. Real leaders [know] how to harness those differences in a powerful way that allows the team to be unstoppable and sets the company up to win.
The key is knowing that the leader doesnt always have to be the one higher up on the org chart.
Whether you’re setting up a new Windows PC or looking to enhance your current setup, there are some life-changing apps you can grab for free that will transform how you use your computer.
From screen grabbing to file searching to quick launching and more, these essential apps will supercharge your productivityall for the low, low price of nothing.
ShareX: Screen captures and then some
Windows includes a basic screen-capture tool. Dont settle for it, though: Get ShareX, which rivals even paid screen-grabbers. You can create custom-capture regions that remember your preferences, set up automatic uploads with instant-link copying, and configure workflows that process and organize your captures.
While the capturing features work great on their own, its the mind-boggling number of post-capture features that set this gem apart. If youre looking for a capture tool that does it all for nothing at all, this is it.
Everything: File search that just works
If Windows Search feels to you like it hasnt evolved since the Clinton administration, Everything wont leave you hanging. Instead of laboriously indexing entire files, Everything indexes just file and folder names, which means it can wrap its head around a clean Windows installation in about a second.
Its powerful search syntax then helps you quickly find recent documents, filter by size to free up storage space, and create bookmarks for frequently searched folders.
PowerToys: Microsoft’s best-kept secret
Microsofts free PowerToys is a productivity suite that packs features that arguably should’ve been built into Windows from the start. FancyZones lets you create custom window layouts that snap into place. PowerRename handles bulk-file operations. Text Extractor grabs text from images or non-selectable. Mouse Without Borders lets you use a single mouse and keyboard on up to four computers.
Those are just a few of the cavalcade of time-savers included with this excellent utility. If you havent already, get it installed and start reaping its benefits.
AutoHotkey: Automate anything
If you invest the time to learn how to use it, AutoHotkey will become the digital assistant you cant believe you ever lived without. Create custom keyboard shortcuts for just about anything, auto-fill forms with frequently used text, or launch multiple programs with a single command.
The real power lies in its ability to chain commands together. With a bit of creativity, you can automate entire workflows that used to take dozens of clicks.
Flow Launcher: Get there faster
Flow Launcher is a little window that delivers huge time savings. Open it with a customizable key combination, start typing, and let it handle the rest. Use it to quickly launch apps, control music, search the web, run system commands, and moreall without having to click your way through a bunch of menus and windows.
Its also got an excellent community-driven plugin ecosystem that lets you add features like password management, weather checking, and smart-home-device control.
Theres one scarce resource that nearly everyone wishes they had more of: time. It always seems like there are more things to do than hours in the day. Many ways to squeeze more productivity out of your workday may leave you feeling burned out. But there are ways to trim the time spent on many aspects of life that will leave you with at least a little more wiggle room.
Here are a few strategies:
Create a guide to reduce interruptions
If you often lose hours responding to emails and Slack messages asking different versions of the same questions, create an FAQ document with the answers all in one place. If you want to take it one step further, you can follow the lead of former Google vice president and Stripe COO Claire Hughes-Johnson, who created a Working with Claire guide.
Its basically a reference manual to instruct people you work with. Fast Company writer Stephanie Vozza, explains: In her guide, Hughes-Johnson sets expectations, such as how to share information with her, and the amount of time she needs to send a response. It also includes her preferences, styles, and approaches, as well as alternative sources for help when employees are in a pinch and cant move forward.
Trim all your meetings by at least 10 minutes
Yes, many people think all meetings are a waste of time. And while some companies have taken the extreme approach of eliminating all recurring meetings, many meetings are necessary and help build and maintain relationships.
However, very few of us fully pay attention for the entire length of a meetingespecially remote meetings. In fact, LiveCareer found that 9% of people start losing focus in less than 10 minutes into a meeting, while 43% said they lasted 20 to 30 minutes. Only 4% of people said they stayed focused for an hour or more.Knowing that attention (and therefore usefulness) drops off after 20 minutes, trim the meetings you have control over. Half-hour meetings become 20 minutes, hour-long meetings become 40 minutes, and by the end of the week youve reclaimed several hours.
Do it now or delegate it
To-do lists are a great productivity and organization tool, but we all waste a lot of time accumulating and then coming back to small tasks that end up eating up more time than they’re worth.
Vladislav Podolyako, founder and CEO of Folderly, uses what he calls the Touch it Once (TIO) principle. Heres how it works for him: If I can do a task in 10 minutes or less, I do it right away. If not, I either delegate it to someone else or set it aside for at least a week.”
Podolyako uses emails as a perfect example, explaining that many of the emails he receives require quick decisions. “If Im just bcc-ed, usually my action is no action at all. If I know someone who knows an answer better, I forward [the] email.” He adds that he saves time by focusing on “being helpful instead of crafting a beautiful-looking but useless email.”
Steven Heine is a professor of social and cultural psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Cultural Psychology, the top-selling book in the field. His research has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Newsweek, and New Scientist, among other publications.
Whats the big idea?
A lot of people right now feel lost, anxious, and despaired. During these dark times, preserving a sense of meaning in our lives is vital. Fortunately, meaning can be cultivated and ground us when life feels turbulent. The emerging field of existential psychology is refining practices for tuning in to the worth, purpose, and importance of your life.
Below, Steven shares five key insights from his new book, Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychology Can Help Us Build Meaningful Lives in Absurd Times. Listen to the audio versionread by Steven himselfin the Next Big Idea App.
1. Meaning in life helps protect against anxiety.
Everyone seems on edge these days. The world is going through somewhat of a mental health crisis as rates of anxiety, depression, and deaths of despair have jumped sharply in many countries. How can we cope with these dark times?
The sense of leading a meaningful life protects us from anxiety and uncertainty. When people feel that their lives are meaningful, a sense of purpose guides them, and their life makes sense. They feel that what they do matters and can make a difference in the world. People who feel their lives are meaningful can stand strong in the face of the slings and arrows thrown at them by these uncertain times. They enjoy greater well-being and fare better in coping with their anxieties.
The emerging field of existential psychology has provided evidence-based answers to what makes a life meaningful. Ultimately, meaning is about connections, and a meaningful life is richly connected. For example, interpersonal connections play a key role because people feel that their lives are more meaningful when they spend time with their closest relationships, especially when taking on a caretaker role. People also feel more meaningful when they are part of a community because it gives them a sense of belongingness and identity. Peoples connections to their work can also provide a sense of purpose and mastery. And people feel meaningful when their lives are connected to the transcendent realm, feeling that they are part of something much larger than the material world.
When peoples lives are sufficiently connected in these domains, they are existentially grounded. Their lives make sense, they feel a sense of purpose in what they do, and they feel that their lives matter in the grand scheme of things. This mindset helps people thrive during trying times.
2. We tell stories to make sense of life.
Our lives only feel meaningful when they seem to make sense. But the key challenge is that life often doesnt seem coherent. For example, we may seem like quite different people in different situations. We might act silly with friends, but on our daily commute, we may be short-tempered, and then at work, we become ambitious and responsible. Which persona is the real self?
Or we might struggle to identify a common thread connecting the different chapters of our lives. We might realize that the person we were in high school shares little in common with how we now think of ourselves. How can we weave all the different threads of our self together? We accomplish this by telling stories.
We create stories with our self as the central character, going on a journey where we confront all the experiences and challenges in our lives. These stories help us organize our understanding of who we are, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. It lays the foundation of self.
Stories integrate those inconsistent facets of ourselves because they allow us to focus on particular episodes and edit out parts that dont quite fit.
Importantly, the stories we tell are not typically literal accounts of what happened but improvised tellings that make our lives feel sensible. Stories integrate those inconsistent facets of ourselves because they allow us to focus on particular episodes and edit out parts that dont quite fit. When we tell our stories well, we feel that our lives make sense.
While each story we tell about ourselves is unique in certain respects, it often shares features in common with stories told by others. Many of our stories share common themes, such as redemption, when our story highlights how we conquered a challenge, or a theme of contamination, when our story explains how our life suddenly went off a cliff.
Also, our stories rest upon simple but extremely important premises that guide how we experience the events in our lives. Our stories might be built around key premises such as I am good or People get what they deserve. These premises serve as a lens through which we see how our life unfolds. Part of leading a meaningful life is learning how to narrate the events in our lives through a compelling and sensible story.
3. When meaning is threatened, we seek to rebuild it.
A key challenge with leading a meaningful life is that things often dont feel meaningful. Feelings of meaning ebb and flow like the tide. But we have a psychological need to feel that things are meaningful. When things feel meaningless, we become especially motivated to make things seem meaningful again. Its akin to feeling hungry when we havent had enough food. Likewise, our brains signal to us when our lives arent sufficiently meaningful.
Research points to our brains having a sense-making system that strives to keep things feeling meaningful. When things feel meaningless, our brains detect a signal indicating a lack of sufficient meaning, and we are prepared to try to regain a sense of meaning. Its a homeostatic system, much like your thermostat at home, that only becomes triggered when meaning is insufficient. This is all occurring beneath our awareness.
There are different ways to rebuild a sense of meaning. Much research finds that people feel more meaningful after engaging in nostalgic reflections. Remembering how we were in past chapters of our life stories provides us with a better appreciation for how we became the person we are now, boosting our sense of meaning.
We are most likely to drift off in a nostalgic reverie precisely when we feel that life is unsatisfyingly low in meaning. For example, our lives feel more meaningless when we are lonely or bored. When a sense of meaning is hard to come by, we make unconscious efforts to boost meaning. So, we often turn to memories in an effort to regain an existential footing. We may play songs from the soundtrack of our youth or flip through a photo album. Our sense-making system was tripped, and nostalgic reflections are one way to regain a sense of meaning.
I dont think its a coincidence that since the 2010s, the world has undergone a nostalgia boom. Movie theatres are playing remakes of films that were created decades earlier. New television series set in previous decdes are discussed as much for their plots as they are for how they nailed the décor, fashion, and music of those times. During this anxious period, weve felt a collective need for meaning, and the world has been turning to the past to gain the meaning-boosting effects of nostalgia.
4. Life struggles can provide greater meaning.
Feeling meaningful and feeling happy share much in common. However, there is more to meaning in life than positive feelings. We can learn a lot by focusing on how meaning is distinct from happiness.
Jean-Paul Sartre perceptively observed that human life begins on the far side of despair, and much research supports this contention. One study explored the characteristics of people with more meaningful lives and found that they reported more negative life experiences, even though these experiences came with a cost to happiness. Our struggles can often feel meaningful.
Likewise, we can see this relation when considering where meaningful lives are commonly found. Curiously, you are more likely to find them where life is harder. On average, the poorer a country, the more meaningful its citizens report their lives to be. The comfort and ease that people living in wealthier countries can enjoy appear to come at an existential cost: it often doesnt provide the struggles that people rely on to build resilience and meaning.
Peoples spiritual lives often become deeper after a trauma.
Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed, That which does not kill me makes me stronger. Research finds that people often do rise to the challenges that life throws at them. The most common reaction to trauma is post-traumatic growth. People make more meaning in the aftermath of trauma because their relationships often become closer, as they usually receive a great deal of social support. It is also common for people to develop a new sense of purpose as they re-evaluate their lives, and they often become more altruistic toward others who have experienced tragedies. People also tend to grow because they discover that they had inner strengths that they hadnt realized. In addition, peoples spiritual lives often become deeper after a trauma. And last, the realization that so much can be lost in an instant makes survivors of trauma more appreciative of what they still have. They no longer take their lives for granted.
We can never lead a life without suffering, and our struggles certainly come with a cost to happiness. But it is reassuring that difficult times can help make our lives more meaningful.
5. Meaning in life can be cultivated.
Meaning in our lives can be nurtured. We are not born with a certain amount of meaning; meaning can be cultivated, just like any other ability.
First, there are existential exercises that provide temporary boosts to feelings of meaning, which can be invaluable for helping us get out of a rut. I think of these as the existential equivalent of a shot of espresso. One simple exercise helps people feel existentially groundeda clear understanding of who they are and what they stand for. People will feel more grounded after reflecting upon their most important values. Simply writing a brief paragraph about your most important values puts you in a better position to respond with greater resilience to challenges.
A second way to cultivate a more meaningful life is to examine your lifes foundations for meaning: our connections, especially with closest relationships, with communities, with work, and with a transcendent realm. I encourage you to conduct an existential audit of yourself to evaluate how deeply connected you are in these domains and identify where you have the most room for growth. Hardly anyone is richly connected in all these domains, but meaning is fungible. That is, the meaning you derive from one domain of connections can make up for a shortfall of meaning in another domain. Its as though we can pay for the meaning in our lives from different accounts.
Remember that our life stories tie together the threads of our lives and provide a sense of coherence, purpose, and importance. We cannot change the past, but this doesnt mean that our life stories are carved in stone. As the author Gabriel García Márquez put it, What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. Some ways of telling a life story provide more meaning than other ways, and you would likely benefit from reflecting on your own life story in a different way.
One of the most successful templates for stories, which the mythologist Joseph Campbell calls the Heros Journey, focuses on an individual conquering difficult challenges with a band of allies. When people are instructed to think of their own lives in terms of the individual elements from the Heros Journey template, they come to feel that their lives are more meaningful. If you try to identify your transformations, allies youve relied on, or seemingly insurmountable quests, you too can likely learn how to reflect on your life in a more constructive, meaningful way.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
As a subject for delightful conversation, personal insurance ranks somewhere between polyp removal and credit default swaps. Which means most of us don’t know what we don’t know.
No one likes to dwell on what might go wrong in the futurewhich is part of the reason why we all tend to regard insurance professionals with a healthy level of skepticism. But protecting yourself and your money from the unexpected has to be part of getting your financial house in order. Otherwise, a single bad event could erase all your hard work.
To figure out what kinds of insurance you might need, start with the following basic rules of the insurance industry.
Social benefit and private profit
The goal of insurance is to share risk among a large pool of people. If everyone pays a small amountknown as the premiumto their insurance company, the insurer assumes the risk of any one individual suffering a large loss. At that point, the insurance company will pay out to make that individual whole after the loss.
But insurance companies are not there just as a social benefit. These companies are in business to make a profit. This means insurers make it their business to understand what kinds of losses are most likely to happen. And if something is more likely to occur, the insurance company will charge higher premiums for it.
This is why life insurance for a nonsmoking 20-something costs pennies compared to the giant chunk of change the same insurance costs for a pack-a-day 58-year-old with diabetes. Its possible the young adult might die in a freak stamp-collecting accident and perhaps the smoker might live to 109but the odds are that the 20-something has decades of life ahead and the 58-year-old does not.
Since it is more likely that the insurance company will have to pay out for the smokers life insurance policy relatively soon, the premiums for that policy are higher. This is how the insurance company protects its profits while still offering the payout benefits.
Mo money, mo likely
The insurance industrys understanding of probable outcomes can help consumers identify which policies they need. Specifically, if a personal insurance policy is expensive, that usually means the insurer thinks its likely it will have to make a payoutand that can indicate that you might need that kind of coverage.
This is not a one-to-one correlation, of course. Just because a policy is expensive doesnt mean you need it. And some types of insuranceidentity theft insurance and renters insurance, for exampleare extremely helpful to have and generally low-cost.
But understanding why insurers charge high premium prices can help consumers figure out which types of policies they might need. The most expensive types of insurance include the following.
Disability
This kind of personal insurance helps pay a portion of your salary until youre able to go back to work, which can help keep you financially stable. While you might assume that youre unlikely to suffer a disability, since the most strenuous thing you do is staple Mr. Lumbergs TPS reports, remember that about 1 out of every 4 current 20-year-olds will become disabled before reaching retirement age. Thats why its expensive to purchase disability insurancebut also why its important.
Auto insurance
Car crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States, with a total about 120 people killed per day in car accidents. Getting behind the wheel is the riskiest activity most Americans engage in on a daily basis, which means the insurance to protect you from that risk is also expensive. (The good news is that you can lower your risk and your auto insurance costs by driving like your dad: hands on 10 and 2, brake gently, check your mirrors, and assume everyone on the road is trying to kill you.)
Life insurance
Even though you wont notice if you die without life insurance, any dependents who rely on your income will struggle if you pass away. And that likelihood is 100%, since none of us are getting out of this thing alive. Life insurance is cheapest for young and healthy individualswho are the least likely to need it or buy itand the price goes up with age and health problems.
Homeowners insurance
This kind of insurance not only covers damage to your home and possessions because of a covered disaster, but also liability for injuries or property damage experienced by a visitor to your home. (This is why dog owners, even apart from the growing trend to take out healthcare policies on our furry friends, may pay a higher premium than pet-free homeowners, and certain dog breeds are not covered at allsince they are more likely to bite a stranger.) And even though homeowners insurance covers damage caused by certain disasters, not all types of hazards are covered. In particular, flooding is a common hazard that isnt covered.
Flood insurance
Nearly no insurers include flood damage in homeowners or renters insurance policies. Instead, you may have to purchase a policy through the National Flood Insurance Program, which is a partnership between the federal government, insurance companies, and local communities to provide affordable flood protection. This is because floods are so likely to happen in so many areas that the federal government had to help subsidize the cost of flood insurance.
While these are not the only hazards you should protect yourself against, these are the ones the insurance industry (and its army of statistics nerds) think are most likely to occur. That means its a good idea to start with the types of losses you are most likely to face.
Protect your moneymaker
In addition to looking at which hazards are most likely, its also helpful to think about what valuables you have that would be most difficult to replace. For most people, these valuables fall into the same categories as the most expensive types of insurance: your earning potential, your life, and your home represent your most valuable assets.
But its important to insure whtever assets you have that would be financially devastating to lose. For example, opera singers have been known to insure their voices, since they cant earn their living if they cant sing. More commonly, small business owners and freelancers often purchase professional liability insurance, also known as errors and omissions insurance, to protect themselves from lawsuits.
Thinking about insurance as protection against financial loss can help you pinpoint what kinds of personal insurance you need most.
Dont fear the reaper (or the insurance rep)
Theres a reason no one invites Ned Ryerson to dinner: talking about the kinds of doom-and-gloom that insurance professionals know intimately is a major bummer.
But personal insurance is an important part of a healthy budget. You need insurance to protect you from the risk of a devastating financial loss, which it does by spreading the risk among a pool of individuals and asking the insurance company to assume the financial risk.
Understanding how insurers price their policies can help you figure out which types of personal insurance are most important, since the industry charges higher premiums to protect against the most likely losses. Thats why disability insurance, auto insurance, life insurance, home insurance, and flood insurance are among the most expensive types of policies available. Insurers know they are likely to have to make payouts on these policies, so they price the premiums accordingly.
Consumers can also figure out the right coverage by thinking about what assets it would be financially devastating to lose. For most people, that includes their income potential, life, and home, but depending on your circumstances, you may also want to protect other important assets that you rely on or would be unable to replace.
The American economy runs on what are known as heuristics, a diverse array of mental short-cuts that help consumers make a dizzying number of choices to navigate the wild complexity of everyday life. These shortcuts help us select the restaurants we may choose to patronize, the cars we drive, the food we purchase, and the schools we attend and to which we send our children. We rely on scoring systems, certifications, and ranking methodologies to consider what movies to see, what music to listen to, and whether to purchase fair-trade products. These shortcuts come in many forms, from the complex (like the tools used to rate bonds and other financial products) to the straightforward (like the letter grades that many municipalities generate to inform consumers whether a particular restaurant follows safe food-handling practices).
Sometimes these systems are managed and operated by the government, like the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administrations system for grading automobiles and trucks for their performance in crash tests, but often by private entities, like Consumer Reports. Sometimes the ratings are purely peer-to-peer and aggregated, like the ubiquitous five-star rating systems for ride-hailing companies or delivery services. In the end, consumers rely on these systems every day to make decisions great and small, to help make sense of a complex world where we are too easily prone to information overload.
One area that cries out for a methodology that would provide consumers with critical details about the products and services they are using is one that is largely devoid of these types of shortcuts: our online life.
We search, scroll, bank, shop, talk, text, stream, post, like, stan, and even hook up in the digital world. And we enter sites, download apps, communicate over platforms, access our financial information, and provide intimate details about our health and welfare without the slightest clue about what the entities with which we share such information do with it. The truth is, most will use it for their own profit and often sell it to data brokers: the third-party entities that, in turn, pass it along to other companies that might then use and abuse it, selling us products, pushing content to us we may not want, and perhaps even getting us to engage in behavior we might otherwise avoid if we were truly educated consumers about the uses and abuses of our digital data. AI only amplifies that influence.
But what if there was a way to use the power of heuristics to protect our digital privacy through simple shortcuts that could give consumers basic information about how different sites, apps, and platforms were exploiting the digital activities they harvest from us?
At present, some American states and the European Union have created rules of the road for the sunny information superhighway, as it was once called so quaintly in the 1990s. Instead of an information superhighway where consumers can travel at will, free of harm or surveillance, when we enter the digital world today, a better metaphor is the Upside Down: the shadowy, parallel world from the hit TV series Stranger Things, where entities with access to our digital lives create replicants of us that follow us around, always just below the surface, waiting to do us harm.
We are already living in a world where we get asked to accept a particular companys cookies policy or its terms of service. These relatively light touch disclosure regimes are the product of laws and regulations passed around the world. The Europeans General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has largely set the global standard because tech companies do not want to have to ascertain when a particular consumer is subject to those regulations or not. And it is the GDPR, and the European Union, that we have to thank for those ubiquitous pop-ups that ask us to accept the companys cookies policy.
But those rules actually mask what is going on under the hood. Companies can comply with the disclosure requirements by giving consumers the option of accepting their practices or not, and burying those disclosures in user agreements that are unintelligible to the average user. As a result, current practices in the digital world require a far more robust regulatory response than that which the relatively weak disclosure regimes that presently exist currently offer.
Consumers are also routinely presented with complex terms of service, which few will read to the end, and even a smaller number will completely understand. Indeed, rare is the consumer who ever actually reviews these policies prior to entering a site or download an app. If they did, they would likely find few privacy-protective policies, if any. Instead, more likely than not, a review of those policies would reveal that the company engages in cross-site tracking, sells consumers information, and forces such consumers to go to arbitration even for violations of those very terms of service policies, among other things.
What legal protections do exist on the internet actually largely protect companies, and not consumers. Laws like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act insulate many companies that engage in activities online from being sued for the content on their sites. Courts, too, following federal law, largely enforce the terms of service that require that disputes about a companys actions must be resolved, not through the courts, but through arbitration. All of this is a result of a powerful tech lobby that not only fights any meaningful regulation of their activities but also complains that any government intervention will stifle innovation and the economic benefits and convenience these companies generate.
Enter the Zone
But there is another way, one that does not require the heavy hand of government, that can still foster innovation and put the power in the hands of consumers to drive business behavior and not the other way around. A more robust regulatory regime for the digital world could draw on the power of grading systems to send a clear message to consumers about the risks that particular apps or sites may pose to our digital privacy. It would provide this information to consumers in an easy-to-understand format that does not require a deep dive into the bowels of a companys end-user agreement, or a certificate in legalese. Instead, whenever a consumer accessed a site, app, or platform, that service would communicate whether it is protective of the consumers privacy or not.
While there are many ways that a company can protect, or violate, a consumers privacy, and engage in activity that makes it unaccountable to that consumer should it breach their privacy, a simple, easy-to-understand system would grade companies on how well they do in terms of protecting their customers privacy or routinely violate it. That information would be communicated through one letter, a grade, that the company would have to reveal prominently as any consumer accessed the service. The consumer would then know, immediately, whether this is an entity that looks out for consumer privacy and which tends to exploit it. But where would such grades come from?
Some grading systems are opaque, with the ultimate grade issued by a government agency, like the restaurant letter grades in New York City. One can assume that an A grade means that the restaurant meets basic quality standards. And its hard to find a restaurant worth their salt that does not have that A grade. In fact, anything less is usually enough to ward off many customers.
In regime for the digital world, one could adopt a type of digital zoning modelled after land-use restrictions in IRL. In land-use zoning, certain uses are permitted and others are excluded in particular areas or zones. You generally dont have a power plant or waste treatment facility abutting single-family homes. Thats because of zoning.
If an area is zoned for particular uses, individuals and businesses that wish to engage in those uses are free to do so within it. Developers, government regulators, commercial establishments and residents can easily find out what is permitted and what is not from a predetermined description of particular zones. Anyone can comply with those restrictions, or find themselves facing litigation, fines, an order to stop what they are doing, and perhaps even dismantle any illegal development that has occurred.
Zoning in the digital world could work much the same way. Privacy-protective uses will be clustered in the best zone; lets call it Zone A. In that zone, companies would not track a consumers activities on their site, not even keep personally identifying information unless it was necessary for their own purposes, and certainly would not sell such information to third parties. They would agree to stiff punishments for violations of their consumers privacy and allow those disputes to be resolved in a court of law, instead of forcing individuals to go through business-friendly arbitration settings of those businesses choosing, as many companies choose to do today. Ultimately, a company agreeing to provide this suite of privacy-protective practices by operating within Zone A would be able to market to its customers that they are doing so by displaying an A prominently on their home page, their apps site on an app store, or whenever a consumer starts to enter that site from their smartphone.
If a company failed to provide these sorts of privacy protections, it would not receive that grade. Instead, it could choose from a number of different zones that would offer a different suite of protections along a spectrum, from best to worst. When a company provides some privacy protective measures, that would justify it displaying a higher grade, even if not an A. The system would cluster an array of practicescovering search, sale of data, monitoring user behavior, etc.and grade companies on the extent to which they meet the more privacy-protective practices or are more likely to take advantage of their customers. Those companies that are least protective of their customers data would earn an F.
All companies would have to display their grade prominently whenever a consumer engages with that companys site, service, app, or platform. Consumers would have an immediate read on whether the company is looking out for the customer or abusing their data for its own benefit.
While disclosure-based regimes are sometimes themselves abused, by, for example, companies making it difficult to understand what their policies are, or burying the important disclosure in legalese, a disclosure regime that is clear and easy to understand will put the power back in the hands of the consumer. Such a regime could create a race to the top, with companies vying to be more protective of their consumers data because they have to be completely transparent about their data privacy practices.
Instead of stifling innovation and competition, digital zoning could actually encourage both, prompting companies to find ways to deliver their products and services in ways that are more protective of their customers interests and not less. Moreover, companies have a clear choice within this regime: no particular grade would be mandated. Companies would be free to do as they please with their customers dataprovided they are open and honest about their practices.
What are the exact contours of this system and who would get to begin to cluster the different practices that determine the grade companies would receive? All of us. Legislators, technology companies, online safety and security experts, and consumers could engage in a dialogue around these issues to start to chart a course forward when it comes to our digital life that will encourage innovation that is protective of our privacy and does not simply see privacy as, at best, something to get around, or, worse, something to exploit.
This type of robust and meaningful disclosure can occur without heavy-handed government intervention. Government will certainly have a hand in helping to write the rules of the road and setting the contours of the zones, with extensive input from a wide range of stakeholders, but it will not need to engage in extensive regulation of private companies. Of course, there will be a need to police company practices to make sure they are complying with the requirements of the letter grade they say they deserve, but that can be accomplished by stiff penalties, fines, and damages actions when companies misrepresent the types of protections they afford their customers. Such policing can come from state attorneys general and consumers themselves. It will also require strong whistleblower protections so that employees are free to come forward if the companies for which they work are not following the law, as well as stiff penalties for companies that engage in this sort of fraudulent behavior.
Digital zoning would establish a clear and easy-to-understand approach to online privacy, empowering consumers while promoting corporate transparency and accountability. It could create a market-driven system that makes clear to consumers which companies protect their privacy and which might violate it. And it can enlist the government to police the boundaries of the zones, and not necessarily impose command-and-control policies from on high. Such a market-driven approach would place the consumers in the drivers seat and give them a clear sense of the rules of the roadand who is following them around.
As technology becomes more and more present in our lives, it’s important we have a clearer way to know if the companies we do business with are harvesting our data or selling it to those who will use it for purposes we don’t know, and would never accept if we knew it was happening. The time is right for us to better understand how technology serves us, rather than having such technology serve us up to anyone eager to exploit our data.
Adapted from The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Ray Brescia. Published by NYU Press. Copyright 2025 by Ray Brescia. All rights reserved.
The American economy runs on what are known as heuristics, a diverse array of mental short-cuts that help consumers make a dizzying number of choices to navigate the wild complexity of everyday life. These shortcuts help us select the restaurants we may choose to patronize, the cars we drive, the food we purchase, and the schools we attend and to which we send our children. We rely on scoring systems, certifications, and ranking methodologies to consider what movies to see, what music to listen to, and whether to purchase fair-trade products. These shortcuts come in many forms, from the complex (like the tools used to rate bonds and other financial products) to the straightforward (like the letter grades that many municipalities generate to inform consumers whether a particular restaurant follows safe food-handling practices).
Sometimes these systems are managed and operated by the government, like the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administrations system for grading automobiles and trucks for their performance in crash tests, but often by private entities, like Consumer Reports. Sometimes the ratings are purely peer-to-peer and aggregated, like the ubiquitous five-star rating systems for ride-hailing companies or delivery services. In the end, consumers rely on these systems every day to make decisions great and small, to help make sense of a complex world where we are too easily prone to information overload.
One area that cries out for a methodology that would provide consumers with critical details about the products and services they are using is one that is largely devoid of these types of shortcuts: our online life.
We search, scroll, bank, shop, talk, text, stream, post, like, stan, and even hook up in the digital world. And we enter sites, download apps, communicate over platforms, access our financial information, and provide intimate details about our health and welfare without the slightest clue about what the entities with which we share such information do with it. The truth is, most will use it for their own profit and often sell it to data brokers: the third-party entities that, in turn, pass it along to other companies that might then use and abuse it, selling us products, pushing content to us we may not want, and perhaps even getting us to engage in behavior we might otherwise avoid if we were truly educated consumers about the uses and abuses of our digital data. AI only amplifies that influence.
But what if there was a way to use the power of heuristics to protect our digital privacy through simple shortcuts that could give consumers basic information about how different sites, apps, and platforms were exploiting the digital activities they harvest from us?
At present, some American states and the European Union have created rules of the road for the sunny information superhighway, as it was once called so quaintly in the 1990s. Instead of an information superhighway where consumers can travel at will, free of harm or surveillance, when we enter the digital world today, a better metaphor is the Upside Down: the shadowy, parallel world from the hit TV series Stranger Things, where entities with access to our digital lives create replicants of us that follow us around, always just below the surface, waiting to do us harm.
We are already living in a world where we get asked to accept a particular companys cookies policy or its terms of service. These relatively light touch disclosure regimes are the product of laws and regulations passed around the world. The Europeans General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has largely set the global standard because tech companies do not want to have to ascertain when a particular consumer is subject to those regulations or not. And it is the GDPR, and the European Union, that we have to thank for those ubiquitous pop-ups that ask us to accept the companys cookies policy.
But those rules actually mask what is going on under the hood. Companies can comply with the disclosure requirements by giving consumers the option of accepting their practices or not, and burying those disclosures in user agreements that are unintelligible to the average user. As a result, current practices in the digital world require a far more robust regulatory response than that which the relatively weak disclosure regimes that presently exist currently offer.
Consumers are also routinely presented with complex terms of service, which few will read to the end, and even a smaller number will completely understand. Indeed, rare is the consumer who ever actually reviews these policies prior to entering a site or download an app. If they did, they would likely find few privacy-protective policies, if any. Instead, more likely than not, a review of those policies would reveal that the company engages in cross-site tracking, sells consumers information, and forces such consumers to go to arbitration even for violations of those very terms of service policies, among other things.
What legal protections do exist on the internet actually largely protect companies, and not consumers. Laws like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act insulate many companies that engage in activities online from being sued for the content on their sites. Courts, too, following federal law, largely enforce the terms of service that require that disputes about a companys actions must be resolved, not through the courts, but through arbitration. All of this is a result of a powerful tech lobby that not only fights any meaningful regulation of their activities but also complains that any government intervention will stifle innovation and the economic benefits and convenience these companies generate.
Enter the Zone
But there is another way, one that does not require the heavy hand of government, that can still foster innovation and put the power in the hands of consumers to drive business behavior and not the other way around. A more robust regulatory regime for the digital world could draw on the power of grading systems to send a clear message to consumers about the risks that particular apps or sites may pose to our digital privacy. It would provide this information to consumers in an easy-to-understand format that does not require a deep dive into the bowels of a companys end-user agreement, or a certificate in legalese. Instead, whenever a consumer accessed a site, app, or platform, that service would communicate whether it is protective of the consumers privacy or not.
While there are many ways that a company can protect, or violate, a consumers privacy, and engage in activity that makes it unaccountable to that consumer should it breach their privacy, a simple, easy-to-understand system would grade companies on how well they do in terms of protecting their customers privacy or routinely violate it. That information would be communicated through one letter, a grade, that the company would have to reveal prominently as any consumer accessed the service. The consumer would then know, immediately, whether this is an entity that looks out for consumer privacy and which tends to exploit it. But where would such grades come from?
Some grading systems are opaque, with the ultimate grade issued by a government agency, like the restaurant letter grades in New York City. One can assume that an A grade means that the restaurant meets basic quality standards. And its hard to find a restaurant worth their salt that does not have that A grade. In fact, anything less is usually enough to ward off many customers.
In regime for the digital world, one could adopt a type of digital zoning modelled after land-use restrictions in IRL. In land-use zoning, certain uses are permitted and others are excluded in particular areas or zones. You generally dont have a power plant or waste treatment facility abutting single-family homes. Thats because of zoning.
If an area is zoned for particular uses, individuals and businesses that wish to engage in those uses are free to do so within it. Developers, government regulators, commercial establishments and residents can easily find out what is permitted and what is not from a predetermined description of particular zones. Anyone can comply with those restrictions, or find themselves facing litigation, fines, an order to stop what they are doing, and perhaps even dismantle any illegal development that has occurred.
Zoning in the digital world could work much the same way. Privacy-protective uses will be clustered in the best zone; lets call it Zone A. In that zone, companies would not track a consumers activities on their site, not even keep personally identifying information unless it was necessary for their own purposes, and certainly would not sell such information to third parties. They would agree to stiff punishments for violations of their consumers privacy and allow those disputes to be resolved in a court of law, instead of forcing individuals to go through business-friendly arbitration settings of those businesses choosing, as many companies choose to do today. Ultimately, a company agreeing to provide this suite of privacy-protective practices by operating within Zone A would be able to market to its customers that they are doing so by displaying an A prominently on their home page, their apps site on an app store, or whenever a consumer starts to enter that site from their smartphone.
If a company failed to provide these sorts of privacy protections, it would not receive that grade. Instead, it could choose from a number of different zones that would offer a different suite of protections along a spectrum, from best to worst. When a company provides some privacy protective measures, that would justify it displaying a higher grade, even if not an A. The system would cluster an array of practicescovering search, sale of data, monitoring user behavior, etc.and grade companies on the extent to which they meet the more privacy-protective practices or are more likely to take advantage of their customers. Those companies that are least protective of their customers data would earn an F.
All companies would have to display their grade prominently whenever a consumer engages with that companys site, service, app, or platform. Consumers would have an immediate read on whether the company is looking out for the customer or abusing their data for its own benefit.
While disclosure-based regimes are sometimes themselves abused, by, for example, companies making it difficult to understand what their policies are, or burying the important disclosure in legalese, a disclosure regime that is clear and easy to understand will put the power back in the hands of the consumer. Such a regime could create a race to the top, with companies vying to be more protective of their consumers data because they have to be completely transparent about their data privacy practices.
Instead of stifling innovation and competition, digital zoning could actually encourage both, prompting companies to find ways to deliver their products and services in ways that are more protective of their customers interests and not less. Moreover, companies have a clear choice within this regime: no particular grade would be mandated. Companies would be free to do as they please with their customers dataprovided they are open and honest about their practices.
What are the exact contours of this system and who would get to begin to cluster the different practices that determine the grade companies would receive? All of us. Legislators, technology companies, online safety and security experts, and consumers could engage in a dialogue around these issues to start to chart a course forward when it comes to our digital life that will encourage innovation that is protective of our privacy and does not simply see privacy as, at best, something to get around, or, worse, something to exploit.
This type of robust and meaningful disclosure can occur without heavy-handed government intervention. Government will certainly have a hand in helping to write the rules of the road and setting the contours of the zones, with extensive input from a wide range of stakeholders, but it will not need to engage in extensive regulation of private companies. Of course, there will be a need to police company practices to make sure they are complying with the requirements of the letter grade they say they deserve, but that can be accomplished by stiff penalties, fines, and damages actions when companies misrepresent the types of protections they afford their customers. Such policing can come from state attorneys general and consumers themselves. It will also require strong whistleblower protections so that employees are free to come forward if the companies for which they work are not following the law, as well as stiff penalties for companies that engage in this sort of fraudulent behavior.
Digital zoning would establish a clear and easy-to-understand approach to online privacy, empowering consumers while promoting corporate transparency and accountability. It could create a market-driven system that makes clear to consumers which companies protect their privacy and which might violate it. And it can enlist the government to police the boundaries of the zones, and not necessarily impose command-and-control policies from on high. Such a market-driven approach would place the consumers in the drivers seat and give them a clear sense of the rules of the roadand who is following them around.
As technology becomes more and more present in our lives, it’s important we have a clearer way to know if the companies we do business with are harvesting our data or selling it to those who will use it for purposes we don’t know, and would never accept if we knew it was happening. The time is right for us to better understand how technology serves us, rather than having such technology serve us up to anyone eager to exploit our data.
Adapted from The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Ray Brescia. Published by NYU Press. Copyright 2025 by Ray Brescia. All rights reserved.
The 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live is so big, it’s not even on Saturday.
Airing Sunday and spanning three hours, the, yes, live SNL 50: The Anniversary Celebration will assemble a dream team of stars who have helped the show become an enduring pop culture force, including alumni like Tina Fey and Eddie Murphy, notable hosts like Dave Chappelle and Steve Martin and at least four of the surviving original cast members: Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman.
The show will also pack in musical guests, with Paul McCartney, Sabrina Carpenter, Bad Bunny and Miley Cyrus among those scheduled to appear, as well. The special is double the usual 90 minutes of each SNL episode.
With so much television and comedy history to cover, here are some key things to know about the SNL50 show.
When is the SNL 50th anniversary tribute show?
NBC will air SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration on Sunday beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific.
The anniversary show will also stream on Peacock.
Which SNL alums are slated to appear?
Oh, so many. NBC says in addition to Murphy, Fey and some of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, you can expect: Adam Sandler, Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Chris Rock, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, Jimmy Fallon, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Seth Meyers, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell and Will Forte. Current cast member Kenan Thompson’s appearance was also touted.
Which notable hosts will appear on SNL50?
Martin, who has left an indelible comedic mark on SNL over the years, will be among the many successful hosts returning for the show’s 50th celebration.
Other prolific and returning hosts range from actors like Tom Hanks, Martin Short, and Scarlett Johansson (who is married to current SNL cast member Colin Jost) to athletes like Peyton Manning. Former SNL writer John Mulaney will appear, as will Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, Kim Kardashian, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro and Woody Harrelson.
Is there a regular edition of Saturday Night Live this week?
No, the show is on a break this week. Timothée Chalamet hosted the most recent Saturday Night Live broadcast, on Jan. 25. He did double duty, performing Bob Dylan songs Chalamet plays Dylan in the Oscar-nominated film A Complete Unknown and spent years preparing for the role.
But fans tuning in Saturday night during the regular time slot can see the show’s very first episode, from October 1975 and hosted by George Carlin, beginning at 11:30 p.m. Eastern and 8:30 p.m. Pacific.
What musical guests will appear during the SNL 50th anniversary tributes?
Music is a huge part of SNL and a mix of global artists are scheduled to make an appearance on SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration. Its important to note that NBC hasnt specifically said artists like McCartney, Cyrus, Bad Bunny and others will perform.
Lovers of music on SNL have other chances to celebrate. NBC has scheduled SNL50: The Homecoming Concert for Friday night. It’ll stream live on Peacock, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific.
The Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, Jack White, Cyrus, Robyn, Bonnie Raitt are some of the planned performances.
The musical legacy of SNL is also explored in the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music, from Oscar-winner Questlove. It’s currently streaming on Peacock.
Watching SNL those first seasons gave me a musical vocabulary that I dont think would have happened on its own, he told The Associated Press last month before the special aired.
Who was in the first SNL cast and why won’t all of them appear?
The first Saturday Night Live cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players and consisted of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Jane Curtin.
Radner and Belushi have since died. Aykroyd’s absence from the list of returning cast members was unclear, though he posted enthusiastically about the 50th anniversary on social media last week. Aykroyd’s publicist did not return the AP’s request for comment.
As part of its anniversary celebration, Peacock is streaming a four-part documentary series, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, about the show.
Will there be a red carpet?
It’s fitting that the anniversary special falls smack in the middle of awards season, because it definitely sounds like an awards show three hours, on a Sunday … and with a red carpet, to boot.
SNL50: The Red Carpet will air live on NBC, Peacock and E!, the network announced Thursday. Beginning at 7 p.m Eastern, the carpet show will be hosted by SNL alum Leslie Jones and NBC News’ Willie Geist. Matt Rogers, an actor and comedian who co-hosts the podcast Las Culturistas with SNL cast member Bowen Yang, will serve as a correspondent.
Amelia Dimoldenberg of Chicken Shop Date fame no stranger to red-carpet correspondency will report from the red carpet for the SNL50: Red Carpet Livestream on SNL social and digital platforms.
I broke its neck.
When making a vase at the potters wheel, I torqued its slippery neck clear off the pot as I tried to thin it into a graceful curve.
I find vases gratifying to make and their shapes especially pleasing to the eye. But vases also must be handled with particular care because one part of their body the neck is often so narrow that it can be easily broken.
That day at the wheel, I realized that it was not unlike the human neck. Though only a small portion of the human body about 1% by surface area our necks have an outsize influence on our psyche and culture.
From selfies to formal portraits, the neck positions the head in expressive poses. The necks vocal cords vibrate to make meaningful words and moving songs. We passionately kiss it and spritz it with alluring perfume. We use it to nod our head in agreement, tilt our head in confusion and bow our head in prayer.
Ornaments such as necklaces can express fashion sense as well as signal wealth and status. Collars can accent the face in portraits as well as denote occupational class, blue collar versus white collar.
Yet, for all its aesthetic and expressive potency, the neck is also a site of fear and deep vulnerability. Villains and vampires zero in on the neck. Stressful days at work make us clench our neck muscles until they ache. A pleasant meal can be jolted into terror if a morsel slips into the wrong tube in the neck, sending us into a coughing fit.
For millennia, people in power have oppressed their subjects by exploiting the narrowness and fragility of the neck a dark history of dominating and terrorizing one another using shackles, nooses and guillotines. The widely circulated video of George Floyds murder was a brutal reminder that violent asphyxiation is hardly confined to the distant past.
Marie Antoinette’s execution by guillotine on 16 October 1793: at left, Sanson, the executioner, showing Marie Antoinette’s head to the people. [Art: Wikipedia]
As I became aware of the significance of the neck in culture, I began to explore how these two attributes its expressive vitality and unnerving vulnerability could coexist and be concentrated so intensely in one small region of the body. Eventually, it became a book.
I am foremost a biologist, and in writing my book, I came to see that the necks vitality and vulnerability are rooted in its biology: The neck performs an especially wide variety of crucial functions, and it is the product of a quirky evolutionary history.
The neck does so many things, all at the same time. For example, it transports over 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) of blood, air and food between the head and the torso every single day. It moves the head every six seconds on average to direct our visual attention. Its vocal cords vibrate hundreds of times per second with every spoken word.
But this multifunctionality, this vitality, is possible only because of its vulnerability. To be mobile and flexible, the neck must be narrow, and so it is easily strained. Its crucial transport tubes the windpipe, esophagus and blood vessels must also be thin and near the surface, making them easily punctured and compressed.
From water to land
Our vertebrate ancestors invented this peculiar contraption as they evolved from water to land.
Our fish ancestors had no neck because they needed a single rigid axis to move efficiently through water. Since moving around on land did not require a stiff spinal column, early terrestrial vertebrates evolved flexibility just behind the head, enabling them to widely scan the environment and to direct their mouths toward prey without moving their whole bodies. Picture a zebra swinging its head side to side surveying the savanna for predators, or a lizard tilting its head down and to the side to snap up a crawling bug.
Early land vertebrates also evolved lungs, and this transformation freed up the gill structures that fish used for breathing to evolve into various useful and sometimes problematic neck structures, such as the voice box, tonsils and the little flap that separates the windpipe and esophagus.
American Flamingo by Robert Havell and John James Audubon, 1838. [Art: National Gallery of Art]
This repurposing of scraps left over from the gills of our distant ancestors contributed to the diverse capacities of our neck. But as products of a quirky evolutionary renovation, humans and other land vertebrates live with a jerry-rigged design that fates us to carry many collateral vulnerabilities at the neck.
The peculiar human neck
While the human neck retains the basic design of our ancestors, its nonetheless quite unusual among vertebrates.
Most land vertebrates elevate their bodies on four legs, so their necks must be long enough to lower their heads to the ground to feed and strong enough to raise it up high to look around. Again, think of a zebra feeding on the savanna.
Because humans walk on two legs, we balance our head atop our spine. Since we use our hands to grab our food, we dont need strong neck muscles to move the head around. So, compared with most mammals our size, our necks are relatively weak, making them more prone to strain and injury.
As another milestone in human evolution, the voice box migrated to a relatively low position in the neck, and this unusual placement contributes to our capacity to make an especially broad range of vocal sounds that we use for speech. However, this descent of the voice box within the throat also makes us more susceptible to choking and sleep apnea.
The neck epitomizes the dual nature of the human condition, the ways in which beauty and frailty are often entwined, two sides of the same coin in our biology, in our relationships and, yes, even in ceramic vases.
Kent Dunlap is a professor of biology at Trinity College.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
