News

Research sheds light on unintended consequences of money laundering regulations

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:37:54 +0000

Research sheds light on unintended consequences of money laundering regulations Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/28/2026 - 08:37

Bradley Worrell

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder economist Alessandro Peri finds that when authorities cracked down on offshore money laundering, criminals redirected that money into domestic businesses and properties

Economists traditionally focus on economic indicators such as growth, inflation and trade—not on organized crime. Yet a recent paper co-authored by Alessandro Peri, an economist and associate professor in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Economics, dives deep into the economics of money laundering, exploring how international regulations meant to tamp down the practice in one part of the world can inadvertently cause it to take hold in different areas and in different ways.

Peri says his interest in money laundering was sparked in 2018 after attending a presentation on the topic. He also notes that his interest in the phenomenon of riciclaggio di denaro—Italian for money laundering—was partly shaped by his father, who worked for Guarda di Finanza, the Italian tax enforcement agency tasked with fighting financial crimes.

“I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon,” says Peri, whose research focuses on the macroeconomic implications of economic policy and legislative changes. “Specifically, on the process through which illicit profits—from drugs, counterfeit goods or other illegal activities—find their way into legitimate businesses and the real economy.”

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder economist Alessandro Peri and his research colleagues find that international regulations meant to tamp down money laundering in one part of the world can inadvertently cause it to take hold in different areas and in different ways.

To understand money laundering, Peri says it’s important to grasp its purpose. Criminal enterprises—from drug cartels to counterfeit goods networks—generate mountains of “dirty” cash that needs to find its way into the legitimate economy. Traditionally, banks were the preferred channel to make “dirty” money look “clean.”

In their research, Peri and his co-authors take a step further and explore the question: What happens when governments make it harder for criminals to hide illegal money in offshore banks? The answer, they discovered, is that criminals don’t stop laundering money. They often just switch to other methods and re-channel dirty funds from offshore financial account to domestic activities (such as local businesses) in the United States, a process they call “money laundering leakage.”

“If you target only one channel, the money leaks into others,” Peri explains. “It’s like squeezing a balloon.”

Tightening regulations

To address this question, the authors focused on a tightening in anti-money-laundering regulations that in 2009 involved Caribbean nations, historically considered havens for both tax evasion and money laundering. Peri says both of those activities exploit weak oversight, but their economic impacts differ, as stricter tax enforcement may reduce domestic investment, given that firms can no longer save on taxes, whereas tighter laundering controls can cause criminals to look for new domestic channels to “clean” their illicit gains.

Facing international pressure, Peri says Caribbean countries formed the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, and from 2008 to 2015 underwent a mutual evaluation process aimed at curbing money laundering activities by strengthening oversight of financial institutions and enforcing compliance across jurisdictions.

“Passing laws is not enough. Enforcement of the law is just as important, and over time these countries did a really good job of that,” Peri says. As a result, laundering operations via financial havens became more difficult and expensive.

At the same time, Peri and his co-authors document how that action resulted in unintended consequences, by providing indirect evidence of a re-channeling of these offshore laundering operations into the United States.

Measuring the impact

How do you study an activity designed to be invisible?

Peri’s team employed some creative methods, including using information uncovered by investigative journalists in the Panama Papers—which documented financial linkages between U.S. localities and Caribbean jurisdictions—to determine which counties had stronger exposure to the regulatory changes happening in the Caribbean jurisdictions.

The researchers then used county-level data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2004 to 2015 to look at patterns in business activities. In U.S. counties with stronger financial connections to Caribbean jurisdictions, Peri and his co-authors were able to determine that there was a measurable uptick in business establishments—particularly small, cash-intensive firms. Peri says such businesses often exhibit telltale signs of “front companies”: few employees, unusual revenue patterns and operations in cash-intensive businesses such as liquor stores, laundromats, florists, restaurants and car dealerships.

Additionally, Peri says he and his colleagues found that cash-based real estate purchases increased—another common way criminals use to clean illegal money. “Someone seeking to clean criminal proceeds may purchase a home and quickly resell,” he says.

“If a crook were to launder money, they wouldn’t buy a multi-million-dollar company (like Apple), as they would get detected. They’d buy a car wash, which makes it much less likely to get audited,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Alessandro Peri about money laundering. (Photo: Jason Leung/Unsplash)

“This started as a theory paper, but in the end, we were able to provide some indirect evidence of how offshore AML (anti-money laundering) efforts impacted money laundering (in the U.S.) and its impact on local economies,” he says.

Notably, the evidence suggests a more pronounced increase in the use of front companies in high-intensity drug-trafficking areas, suggesting a link between local illicit economies and laundering demand, Peri says.

Ultimately, laundering decisions hinge on a cost-benefit analysis, Peri says, as criminals weigh the risk of detection against the need to legitimize funds.

“If a crook were to launder money, they wouldn’t buy a multi-million-dollar company (like Apple), as they would get detected,” he says. “They’d buy a car wash, which makes it much less likely to get audited.”

He says the smartest operations focus on diversification—buying a handful of businesses across sectors and locations rather than concentrating their operations in one sector.

“Hypothetically, if they went out and bought every restaurant in Boulder, they would probably get detected and audited,” Peri explains. “But if they buy just a few restaurants, as well as some florists and auto dealerships to diversify their operations, it likely reduces their risk of getting caught. That’s what we believe is at the heart of this process of diversification.”

The scale of the challenge

In pop culture, money laundering is portrayed as a shadowy process involving suitcases full of cash and offshore accounts. From Scarface to Breaking Bad, the trope is familiar: illicit profits transformed into legitimate wealth through clever schemes.

Peri says those cinematic dramas don’t do justice to how sophisticated modern money laundering schemes have become or the scope of such operations today. The United Nations Oﬃce on Drugs and Crime estimates that money laundering is a trillion-dollar problem, accounting for nearly 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) annually. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire economic output of Germany, he notes.

What’s more, Peri says money laundering isn’t just a criminal issue—it’s an economic one. He says that by injecting illicit funds into legitimate markets, money laundering can distort local markets, misallocate resources and crowd out legitimate firms. For example, when illicit funds flood into real estate, housing prices can soar, pricing out ordinary families.

“Are these firms creating jobs? Yes,” he notes. “But at what cost to the local economies? The answer is unclear and requires further research.”

The scope of the challenge is daunting, Peri says, and the field of money laundering is evolving. In addition to traditional channels for cleaning currency, he says he believes criminal organizations engaged in money laundering are now purchasing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and engaging in complex trading schemes that can add layers of opacity to their operations.

“Partial measures create leakage. To be effective, enforcement must be coordinated across financial and non-financial channels, and across borders.”

“We just scratched the surface,” he says of what his research uncovered. “There are always new methods.”

A call for vigilance

What should governments do about money laundering?

Peri’s paper stops short of prescribing detailed enforcement strategies, but he says his research does underscore two imperatives. First, domestic agencies including financial regulators, tax authorities and law enforcement must collaborate, and international agencies must harmonize standards. Second, Peri says targeting one channel is insufficient, so efforts must span financial systems, real estate and emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies.

Peri draws an analogy to climate policy, which is also a research focus of his. Just as carbon emissions shift to countries with lax regulations, he says dirty money flows to jurisdictions—or sectors—where oversight is weakest.

“Partial measures create leakage,” he warns. “To be effective, enforcement must be coordinated across financial and non-financial channels, and across borders.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about economics? Show your support.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder economist Alessandro Peri finds that when authorities cracked down on offshore money laundering, criminals redirected that money into domestic businesses and properties.

Traditional

White

Top image: iStock

Film addresses the dark side of aging

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:39:05 +0000

Film addresses the dark side of aging Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/27/2026 - 15:39

Megan Clancy

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder sociologist Laura Patterson makes screenwriting debut with short horror film “Silent Generation”

Laura Patterson of the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Sociology does a lot in her field, teaching courses in research methods and environmental sociology. She also teaches about the sociology of horror in courses such as Gender, Race, and Chainsaws and co-hosts the podcast “Collective Nightmares,” which examines the sociological implications of horror films.

Now she’s added screenwriter to her resume. After years of development, writing and filming, Patterson recently completed an eight-festival circuit, including the Denver Film Festival in late 2025, showing her new film, “Silent Generation.”

Laura Patterson, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant teaching professor of sociology, screened her short horror film "Silent Generation" at the recent Denver Film Festival.

“I think one of the things that horror can do well is make us look at the stuff that we don’t want to look at,” says Patterson.

“Silent Generation” is an eight-minute horror film that explores the dark side of aging and isolation. It follows an octogenarian as he goes about his day alone at home, watching TV and doing the laundry—a perfectly mundane task that turns bloody. And the inspiration for the film’s gruesome moment is rooted in a true story.

“It happened to my grandma, but she wasn’t living alone. My grandpa was there and my grandma was downstairs doing laundry,” Patterson recalls. “She calls to my grandpa and says, ‘Eddie, bring down the scissors.’ And so he brought the scissors down and she had got her hand stuck in the wringer washing machine, and it tore the top of her finger off. And she wanted him to just cut it off—which he wasn’t going to do. He took her to the emergency room, and they fixed things.”

But this incident got Patterson thinking about what would have happened if nobody else had been there. Thus, the idea for “Silent Generation” took hold.

“It stood out to me as a really important moment in life. The time when you notice that the people who were your caregivers now need care. And just the thin thread connecting older people to the rest of society, and how needed that connection is, because when that gets cut off there’s real danger just in the house where people are living,” says Patterson. “And you realize things that used to be normal become a threat.”

The idea stayed with Patterson for years, but she struggled to piece together how to make it into a movie.

“Since it is so short, writing the screenplay was not a big undertaking, because I kind of had the vision. But then to actually figure out how to make it, I just tried to take off like one piece at a time.”

One of the most difficult parts of creating the film, Patterson says, was actually finding the machine that would be centered in the climactic scene. The search took over a year. She eventually found the dated appliance in the 1,500-washing-machine collection of retired CSU professor, Lee Maxwell, who had curated the warehouse full of machines to represent the story of women’s liberation.

Laura Patterson's eight-minute horror film "Silent Generation" explores the dark side of aging and isolation.

Sitting with discomfort

To produce the film, Patterson connected with director Francisco Solorzano, producer Kenny Shults and cinematographer Kesten Migdal.

“They knew how to take this idea and put it onscreen. And they were amazing. Frank knew how to shoot the things and what sort of emotional tone I wanted. They knew how to actually evoke it on screen,” says Patterson. “Frank was really able to bring out the loneliness of the whole script. He was great at thinking about the timing and the way it was shot. Just to let you as an audience member really sit in that was very much something that I think he pulled out or leaned into very well.”

When it came to casting, Patterson turned to Leo Smith, the father of her podcast co-host, who readily agreed to be the film’s sole actor. Smith was making his film debut at 90 years old.

“He’d never acted before in a film, but he was excited about doing this project and kind of commenting on mortality. And this was just his house, and his laundry. We brought in the ringer washing machine, but otherwise, he just did what he does.”

Patterson sees her film as making an important comment on the peril that comes in the solitary life of a stoic generation.

“I wanted to make a film that would have a positive social impact,” she says. “The line on the poster for the film says, ‘When was the last time you called?’ I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from audiences. First you see people cringing when they’re watching the film. And then it’s kind of nice, because it seems to be accomplishing what we wanted it to accomplish. Afterward, they’re like, ‘I need to call my, you know,’ fill in the blank.

“We can all think of people—especially of that generation—that that sort of resonates with,” Patterson adds. “So, there's been a lot of audience discussion around that, and around this sort of generational divide between then and now.”

Patterson aimed to make audiences sit with the discomfort.

“It's like, no, this isn’t pleasant,” says Patterson. “But it’s even worse if you don’t look, because then this person’s sitting alone having to navigate this.”

As for whether she has another film in the works, Patterson says she’s unsure.

“I think the pieces came together so well for this to happen. And I had wanted to do it for so long, in part to inform the other things I do. I think it makes sense to have some idea what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera and just understand what that process feels like. I have a lot of film students who come into my class. Now I can have a little bit of a connection point with them, having gone through this experience.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder sociologist Laura Patterson makes screenwriting debut with short horror film “Silent Generation."

Traditional

White

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:52:38 +0000

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/22/2026 - 15:52

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice

This spring, the �鶹��Ѱ�� Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of History, together with the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, present the traveling exhibition “Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories” in the Macky Gallery.

The exhibition, open now through March 15, was created by California-based artist and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina and honors the legacy of one of the most influential movements in Black American history.

As part of Black History Month programming, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside Lamaina and CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka, on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549). The discussion will focus on the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party and its relevance in today’s political climate.

Living history

Hear firsthand accounts of the history of the Black Panther Party and the 1960s Black Freedom Struggle—along with their legacies in Trump's America. The program is part of the accompanying events for the traveling exhibit "Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories" that is on display through March 15 in the Macky Gallery.

What: A panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12

Where: Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549)

Learn more

Additional programs featuring former Panthers will take place throughout that week on campus.

The “Revolutionary Grain” exhibition features a social-documentary photographic essay of portraits and personal narratives from more than 50 former members of the Black Panther Party. Lamaina spent five years traveling across the United States to interview and photograph participants, offering them the opportunity to tell their own stories.

“This work is meant to spark conversation,” Lamaina explained of the project, noting that the exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding and ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States. The exhibition situates the movement’s history in what Lamaina describes as a new phase of the Black Freedom Struggle in contemporary America.

Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party initially focused on addressing police violence in Black communities. By the late 1960s, the party had become a national and international symbol of resistance, establishing nearly 50 chapters across the United States and an international presence in Algiers, North Africa.

“Putting on the Black Panther uniform and committing our lives to the liberation struggle changed the purpose and meaning of our entire identities,” Dixon wrote in his 2012 memoir My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. “It was a liberating experience. Societal restriction and conformities dropped by the wayside, leaving a fearless, defiant, powerful human being. We no longer looked at ourselves in the same way, nor did we look at the system and its representatives in the same manner. We were the freest of the free.”

In addition to its revolutionary political stance against capitalism, imperialism and fascism, the party launched “survival programs” that provided free breakfasts, medical services and other essential resources to thousands of Black Americans. Despite its community-based activism, the Panthers were frequently targeted by federal authorities, with the Nixon administration labeling the party “the greatest danger to the internal security” of the United States. A number of its members, among them Fred Hampton in Chicago, died at the hands of police officers.

The exhibition seeks to counter decades of misrepresentation by bringing first-person accounts from former members to the foreground, connecting their experiences to present-day debates over racism, police violence and political organizing.

“At a time during which the Trump administration and its supporters are rewriting history and representing versions of the past that downplay or even erase the critical significance of the Black Liberation Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s—of which the Panthers were an integral part—it is all the more important to shed light on the movement’s complexities and give our students, faculty and the community one more opportunity to engage with aging Panther members in meaningful ways," says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, a professor of history and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. "This is a university campus, and it is a celebration, but also a reappraisal, with the help of key actors, of a complex struggle that has also problematic chapters. History is messy, but our students deserve better than what many in Washington have in store for them.”

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the departments of English, Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. For more information, contact Thomas Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about history? Show your support.

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice.

Traditional

White

Top image: Former Black Panther Party members Emory Douglas (left), Kathleen Cleaver (center) and Barbara Easley Cox (right). (Photos: Suzun Lucia Lamaina)

Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:06:01 +0000

Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up) Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/20/2026 - 08:06

Rachel Sauer

The world of campsite reservations is increasingly cutthroat, so why are so many campers not showing up? �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder economist Jon Hughes applies numerical modeling to understand campground no-shows

Throughout the United States, and especially here in the West, snagging a preferred public-land campsite has become a take-no-prisoners battle royale with little room for weakness or sleep or mercy.

If your friends seem especially haunted and jittery these days, it’s possibly because they’ve been up for hours, hitting refresh every 30 seconds on every computer, tablet and smartphone in the house, trying to reserve a summer campsite the millisecond it becomes available online—six months to the day in advance and at midnight for Colorado state parks and 8 a.m. MST for federal lands.

With so much summer enjoyment on the line, then, and reservations more precious than gold, it’s a central mystery of outdoor recreation why park managers and users report high summer campground vacancy rates due to no-shows.

Jon Hughes, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow, found through numerical modeling that that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases campsite no-shows.

“I think we’ve all probably had this experience,” says Jon Hughes, a �鶹��Ѱ�� associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow. “You show up and the campground is half empty, and you think, ‘How is this possible? It was so hard to get this reservation.’

“I think part of it is it’s hard to know what our schedule’s going to look like in six months, so we make these reservations and optimistically tell ourselves we’ll be able to go camping—even up to the last minute.”

Based on his experiences as an outdoor recreator seeing no-shows firsthand and as an economics researcher who has long studied transportation and climate issues, Hughes wondered: How do park pricing policies contribute to no-shows—and the associated inefficiencies—and can policy changes correct these inefficiencies while meeting park managers’ goals of adequate revenue and improved access?

In research recently published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Hughes aimed to answer these questions via numerical modeling, simulating pricing policies at a hypothetical but representative national park. He found, among other results, that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases no-shows, which on one hand is a positive outcome but doesn’t address the perennial issue of equitable access to public lands.

“One of the things park managers are always really worried about is equity,” Hughes says. “This is all of our land—this isn’t only for rich people. If you want to design a system where every site is used and sites go to people who most want to camp, you could just auction (reservations) off. In economic terms, that would be very efficient, but if you think your desire to camp is maybe positively correlated with income or wealth, it might create a system where certain folks are able to camp and others aren’t.”

The economics of no-shows

In part because of his own experiences trying to get a summertime campground reservation, and based on his previous research studying access to and use of public lands, Hughes began considering how to understand the economic impact of campground no-shows: “We have finite capacity (on these lands), so how we best use these resources I think is a really interesting question.”

He consulted with Montana State University Professor Will Rice, a former park ranger, whose research on management of public lands inspired Hughes to call him—a conversation that highlighted the growing problem of no-shows.

“I got off the phone with him and wrote down a simple, intermediate microeconomics model for how consumers would think about this decision (to cancel or no-show),” Hughes says. “There’s some desire to go camping, some understood utility you’d get from having a campground reservation and you pay some monetary fee to take that reservation, but then there’s some uncertainty.

“If you don’t go, you might have to pay a fee or you might have to pay with your time if you decide to cancel. If you can’t go, you think about, ‘How do I minimize the cost?’ That lends itself to a really simple economic model that generates some interesting predictions: If you make it more costly to cancel, people aren’t going to cancel and you’ll have more no-shows. If you charge a fee when people don’t show up, they’re less likely to no-show. The theory model predicts that raising (reservation) fees will discourage no-shows, but it actually leads to another effect where if you increase fees, that just makes it more expensive for everyone, whether they camp or no-show.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping. My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder economist Jon Hughes. (Photo: Dave Hoefler/Unsplash)

Through numerical modeling, Hughes found that cancellation fees can increase or decrease no-shows when campground capacity constraints are not binding, but they strictly increase no-shows when capacity constraints are binding. Further, he found that increasing trip prices strictly decreases no-shows and that increasing no-show fees strictly decreases no-shows.

Simulating a $40 increase in reservation fees or no-show fees, he found that higher reservation prices could increase park revenue by as much as 56% but reduce consumer surplus. However, a $40 no-show fee might modestly increase park revenue but increase consumer surplus by as much as 12%.

Further, he notes in the paper, a $40 increase in reservation price increases the mean income of reservation holders by $2,900, or 2%, while a $40 increase in no-show fee causes little change in income. This could mean that no-show fees wouldn’t push access to public lands further out of reach for those in less wealthy income brackets.

He also estimated outcomes under an optimal no-show fee of $150—equal to the marginal external cost of a no-show, or the lost consumer surplus of a user denied a reservation—which eliminates no-shows and increases consumer surplus by 14%. But even the more modest $40 fee captures nearly all of the benefit of the optimal fee, Hughes found.

Enjoying public lands

All of this, of course, leads to the question of how to collect no-show fees.

“Your doctor is going to charge you if don’t show up, your car mechanic will charge you if don’t show up, my barber will charge me if I don’t show up,” Hughes says. “Logistically, charging a no-show fee is one of the challenges in managing public lands. The only places where it’s currently possible are staffed campgrounds, because hosts are there seeing who hasn’t shown up, but oftentimes a host doesn’t want to cause problems.

“I think technology can save us here. Recreation.gov has implemented an app with the added benefit of your phone knowing where it is all the time, or there are some areas now where you use geofencing. If you want to do the Wave at Coyote Buttes in Arizona, you can get a permit a day or two before your trip, but you have to be within a certain geographic area to get it. It might be possible to do the same with no-shows: You reserved this site, you go, your phone knows if you were there. This is a problem that’s solvable with technology.”

These findings, which Hughes will present to a group of economists with the U.S. Department of the Interior next month, solve two problems, he says: how to best optimize the limited capacity of America’s public lands, which are increasingly in demand, and how to address a “negative externality.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping,” Hughes explains. “My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about economics? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Xue Guangjian/Pexels

What are the little red dots deep in space?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:28:58 +0000

What are the little red dots deep in space? Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/16/2026 - 08:28

Blake Puscher

University of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope

As the largest telescope in outer space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been able to view celestial objects that are too dim or distant for its predecessors to detect. As a result, it has helped astronomers look deeper into topics like galaxy formation. However, the JWST can see only so far, and at the edge of its vision some of the most interesting recent astronomical observations have been made, in the form of strange, seemingly impossible objects.

They are small, red-tinted spots of light and were descriptively named little red dots (LRDs). Information on them is limited, though they are known to be extremely dense and to have existed twelve to thirteen billion years ago (for context, the Big Bang was slightly less than fourteen billion years ago). What can be seen of them now are afterimages, because looking so far into space also means looking back in time; even light takes a while to make it between galaxies. There are several theories about what LRDs are, but none of them can completely reconcile the evidence with established astronomical principles.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder astrophysicist Erica Nelson and an international team of research colleagues found evidence that the little red dot dubbed Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other little red dots are as well.

Erica Nelson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the �鶹��Ѱ�� and one of the researchers who first discovered LRDs, recently published a study that focuses on a specific LRD dubbed Irony. The study was co-led by Francesco D’Eugenio at Cambridge University and included �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder PhD student Vanessa Brown as well as an international team of scientists. They found evidence that Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other LRDs are as well.

Little red dots

According to Nelson, there are two main interpretations of what little red dots are. “Either they are really massive galaxies, or they are growing supermassive black holes,” she says. The two can be difficult to distinguish because both are very luminous. Massive galaxies are luminous because they typically have more stars, but “contrary to what most people expect, supermassive black holes are incredibly luminous” too, Nelson continues, “especially when they’re growing.”

Either of these possibilities would have implications for our understanding of the history of the universe. If LRDs are massive galaxies, “it could mean that early galaxies grow much more rapidly than we think they should be able to,” Nelson explains. That could be because their stars formed in a different way than how scientists have observed stars to form previously.

If they are supermassive black holes, they could be a phase in the development of black holes long hypothesized by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor Mitch Begelman, though never observed. “For a long time, we have tried to understand how supermassive black holes can grow so fast,” Nelson says. If LRDs represent an early phase of supermassive black hole growth, it could help narrow down the possibilities for how they form, “which has been a mystery for a really, really long time.”

Regardless of what the answer is, if it falls into one of these interpretations, it will provide insight into a broader question: whether galaxies or supermassive black holes formed first. That matters because most large galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to have supermassive black holes at their centers. So, even if LRDs are black holes, that fact will have implications for galaxy formation.

The Irony is…

Irony is the name of the LRD with the deepest medium-resolution JWST spectroscopy to date. Spectroscopy is a way of determining what elements objects are made of, along with other characteristics like density and heat, based on the light coming from them. Irony is an incredibly bright object, giving off more light than other LRDs, so the researchers were able to get more details about it using spectroscopy. Upon examination, these details reveal several oddities.

Images of little red dots captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)

“One is that it was the first time we have detected forbidden iron lines in any distant object,” Nelson says. Spectroscopy uses lines in a spectrum to represent the types of light coming from an object, and this pattern of lines corresponds to iron. The reason they are considered forbidden is technical and not immediately relevant; their detection is significant because scientists do not expect to find iron in something as old as an LRD. “The universe began with just hydrogen and helium,” Nelson explains. “There was no carbon, no oxygen and no iron.”

Heavier elements like iron were produced in the cores of stars over several generations through nuclear fusion. When older generations of stars went supernova, they launched heavier elements than what they formed out of into space, to be picked up by newer generations of stars and fused into even heavier elements. “So, seeing a lot of iron at very early cosmic times means that there had to have been a lot of generations of star formation very rapidly,” Nelson says. Iron in particular is the heaviest element that a star can create during normal hydrogen fusion (the others are only made during supernovae), so it is strange to find iron in older objects.

Another oddity is the strength of Irony’s Balmer breaks, which are breaks in the spectrum of light coming from an object. “The thing we have started to find in some of these little red dots, and especially in Irony, is that the breaks are too strong and too smooth to be produced by stars,” Nelson explains. “No model we can generate produces a break like that, so we think, instead of the atmospheres of a bunch of old stars, it is actually this single atmosphere around a growing supermassive black hole.”

These features suggest that Irony is a supermassive black hole rather than a massive galaxy. Other LRDs may not be the same as Irony, but making this determination about Irony strengthens the argument that some LRDs are supermassive black holes.

Black hole sun

All of this raises a question: What does it mean for Irony and potentially other LRDs to be black holes if LRDs do not fit cleanly into the category of either galaxies or black holes? “The kind of supermassive black holes that these things might be, and that a subset of them likely are, is nothing like any supermassive black holes we’ve seen before,” Nelson answers. They could be a new class of object, called black hole stars or quasi-stars that have been hypothesized by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professors Mitch Begelman and Jason Dexter, that in some ways look like incredibly large stars but function differently.

“Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion like our sun and all other stars are, they’re being powered by the energy that is radiated when matter falls into the supermassive black hole,” Nelson explains. This energy comes from the gravitational potential of the objects. Similar to how charging a battery allows it to release energy later, moving an object into a place like the edge of a cliff “charges” it with energy that will be released when it falls. This gravitational potential would be especially strong because of how much gravity black holes of this size exert.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us."

Another telling detail is the mention of an atmosphere around the supermassive black hole, which is not part of the common image of a black hole. “Normally,” Nelson says, “you have the supermassive black hole, and then an accretion disk around it.” The accretion disk is the glowing ring and halo that has appeared in many depictions of black holes in popular culture. “The new theory of these black hole stars is that there is almost spherical accretion.” However, this is a more theoretical aspect of the research, and there are different opinions about the structure that this type of black hole would have.

More research is planned to help resolve these ambiguities, and several JWST proposals for next year are designed to help. Two major points that Nelson identifies are collecting data on more LRDs to understand the variations that exist between them and collecting new data to see if previously observed LRDs have changed since they were first documented.

“Maybe some of them are massive galaxies, maybe some of them are black hole stars, maybe some of them are something else entirely,” she says. “It also helps to have information at different times because things as compact as black holes should show variation on very short timescales, so that will tell us a lot about the nature of the object.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics,” Nelson continues, “because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us. It’s also a strange time, because a lot of funding has been cut from astrophysics in particular. But with support, it could be a golden era in astrophysics. A lot of new discoveries will be made with James Webb. We really are just at the beginning of the data that we’re getting.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about astrophysical and planetary sciences? Show your support.

University of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Traditional

White

Scholar highlights the Venezuela-Cuba connection

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:37:58 +0000

Scholar highlights the Venezuela-Cuba connection Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/15/2026 - 16:37

Bradley Worrell

The two countries have developed deep ties over the past two decades, but it’s unclear what impact recent U.S. actions against Venezuela will have on Havana’s government, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Latin America researcher Jen Triplett says

The United States military raid that snatched Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from the presidential palace on Jan. 3 likely rattled the Cuban government in Havana as much as it did the Venezuelan regime in Caracas.

That’s because the two Latin American governments have become deeply intertwined during the past 25 years, says Jen Triplett, a �鶹��Ѱ�� political and cultural sociologist whose research is heavily focused on Cuba in the 10-year period following the Jan. 1, 1959, revolution led by Fidel Castro. She also has studied Venezuelan history from 1999 to 2013, when former President Hugo Chavez ran the country as a socialist.

“I study how leaders leveraged ideological projects to bolster their consolidation of political, military and economic power. Usually, we think of consolidation in terms of politics, economy and military, but ideology—especially when a transitionary government is motivated by it—is another important factor,” Triplett explains.

Jen Triplett, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant professor of sociology, notes that the governments of Venezuela and Cuba have become deeply intertwined over the past 25 years.

While many people in the U.S. tend to think about Cuba in connection with the Cold War and its relationship with the Soviet Union, Triplett says Cuban politics in the 1960s and 1970s was equally focused on what was happening in Latin America. Its relationship with Venezuela during those years was largely fraught, she adds.

The Castro-Chavez partnership years

“Cuba didn’t have much to do with Venezuela until Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998,” she says. “Once it became apparent that Chavez had socialist ambitions—nationalizing the oil industry and redistributing wealth—that caught Castro’s eye.”

By the early 2000s, the two men had forged a bond that was both personal and political. That alliance was pragmatic as well as ideological, Triplett says.

Venezuela, rich in oil, could provide Cuba with the energy resources it needs. In return, Cuba could provide Venezuela with something of value it had: human capital.

“Chavez wanted to focus on giving impoverished Venezuelans what they’d been missing—basic needs and resources—by investing in public education and health infrastructure,” Triplett says. “Cuban doctors allowed him to establish the Barrio Adentro program, bringing health care into urban slums for people who historically lacked access to primary care.”

For Chavez, the relationship was a way to deliver on promises for social justice, while for Castro it was a means to sustain Cuba’s economy and extend its influence in the region, she says. For a time, the two leaders envisioned their relationship could help inspire a wave of socialist-leaning leaders in Latin America that could reshape hemispheric relations and challenge U.S. dominance in the region, she adds.

Maduro’s struggle and Cuba’s deepening role

After Chavez died in March 2013, he was succeeded by his vice president and chosen successor, Maduro. Officially, the Venezuelan-Cuban alliance continued, but the dynamics of the relationship changed, as Maduro lacked Chavez’s charisma and legitimacy, Triplett says.

“Chavez had multiple sources of authority—traditional, rational-legal and charismatic,” she explains. “Maduro is a poor imitation. From day one, people recognized this.”

Lower oil prices and economic mismanagement exacerbated problems, Triplett says. As Venezuela’s economy spiraled downward, reports surfaced that Cuban military and intelligence personnel were actively supporting Maduro—a claim underscored by the recent U.S. raid to capture Maduro, which killed more than 30 Cuban operatives.

“It’s not surprising,” Triplett says. “Cuba’s meager resources include people power. Loyal Cuban military personnel would support efforts to create similar governments elsewhere.”

In 2002, Chavez survived a coup attempt by his own generals. Given Maduro’s precarious position, it’s perhaps not surprising he believed he could trust Cuban military personnel over his own military, Triplett says.

“Maduro’s paranoia likely intensified because he never commanded the same authority as Chavez,” she adds.

For Hugo Chavez, the relationship with Cuba was a way to deliver on promises for social justice, while for Fidel Castro it was a means to sustain Cuba’s economy and extend its influence in the region, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Jen Triplett. (Photo: Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela on a billboard in Cuba; Wikimedia Commons)

What comes next for Venezuela?

U.S. intervention in Venezuela—with attacks on reported drug boats departing Venezuela and the capture and extradition of Maduro to the United States—raises questions about the durability of the Cuban-Venezuelan alliance, Triplett says. Still, the removal of Maduro does not necessarily constitute regime change, she adds.

“Replacing him with his vice president, who is steeped in Chavismo, isn’t a real shift,” she says. “Cuba, meanwhile, is on high alert, wondering if they are next. If Venezuela’s new president were to play ball with the U.S., Cuba could lose petrodollars and a valuable lifeline. Whether that happens, I can’t say, but it could be an easy concession by Venezuela.”

Predicting what the future holds for Venezuela and Cuba is hazy at best, Triplett says.

“Both countries share high discontent and outward migration. People are exhausted—too tired to overthrow their governments,” she says. “Cuba’s opposition is even less organized than Venezuela’s. The key difference is foreign intervention. Without it, Maduro would still be in power.”

Prior to Chavez, Venezuela did have a functioning democracy, so Triplett says it’s possible to envision that under the right conditions it could return.

“Neither Venezuelans nor Cubans are monolithic, but Venezuelans largely want democracy—and they remember having it. That’s something that’s been largely absent from U.S. conversations,” she adds, noting America has a long history of military involvement in the affairs of Latin American countries.

Triplett is a member of the Venezuelan studies section of Latin American Studies Association, which recently issued a statement chastising the Maduro government for not honoring the results of the country’s 2024 presidential elections and for cracking down on political dissent. That statement also condemned the U.S. government’s capture of Maduro in a military operation as a violation of international law because it does not appear to be designed to restore democracy to the country but instead seems to be part of efforts to control the country’s resources.

Humanitarian crisis deepens in Cuba

Meanwhile, the conditions in Cuba are disheartening, says Triplett, who has visited the country regularly since 2012, most recently spending four weeks there last summer.

“This last trip was palpably different—an unprecedented struggle for daily survival,” she says. “Blackouts are routine. Outside of Havana, electricity is rarer than outages. Running water is unreliable, forcing residents to pay privately for water trucks, and mosquito-borne illnesses have surged. Meanwhile, Cuba has lost about quarter of its population in four years, mostly working-age people, creating a demographic crisis.”

Triplett soberingly describes Cuba’s near-term outlook as enduring a “polycrisis” that includes economic collapse, political dissent and unmet basic needs, largely because the government has not invested in its infrastructure since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“People are disillusioned with the government,” she says. “Some had hoped the passing of the Castro brothers would change things, but it hasn’t. Endogenous regime change seems unlikely—too few people, too exhausted and too much repression. Fixing the situation would require massive resources and political will that the government lacks.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Top image: iStock

Modesty is not a solo sport

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:21:49 +0000

Modesty is not a solo sport Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/14/2026 - 11:21

Clay Bonnyman Evans

If it doesn’t include social interaction, norms and a desire not to offend, it’s not modesty, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder philosopher Derick Hughes argues

When it comes to definition, “modesty” doesn’t seem all that modest.

Consider that Webster’s Dictionary offers nine definitions of the word, with a profusion of meanings. Modesty can denote everything from modesty in dress and appearance to the estimation or presentation of one’s abilities, the size of a house, reserve and prudishness.

Derick Hughes, a lecturer in philosophy at the �鶹��Ѱ�� who specializes in moral psychology and ethics, says the concept of modesty is less concrete than perceived virtues.

Derick Hughes, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder lecturer in philosophy, argues that the concept of modesty is less concrete than perceived virtues.

“No one really thinks that compassion, honesty or generosity are elusive traits. We don’t find them puzzling in any way,” he says. “But modesty and humility are much more elusive. There are so many ways to describe and interpret them, which makes them valuable.”

In his paper, “Modesty’s Inoﬀensive Self-Presentation,” published in the journal Philosophical Psychology, Hughes offers an interpersonal view of modesty “that requires an emotional disposition sensitive to causing others offense based upon one’s self-presentation.”

Following the lead of the 19th- and early-20th-century psychologist and philosopher William James, Hughes makes the case that self-contained modesty isn’t really modesty at all. It requires social interaction.

“Modesty cannot be purely internal and private,” he says. “It has to be something more deeply social and emotional. … There has to be a shared sense that some content, action or behavior could provoke offense” to another person.

For example, a person may minimize his or her talents, but if it’s not expressed somehow to at least one other person, that’s not quite modesty. “Inoffensive self-presentation,” whether in dress, behavior, estimation of one’s talents or something else, is about gauging how others will receive and perceive one’s actions.

Modesty depends on norms and therefore can vary widely within different cultures, religions, families, friendships and situations, Hughes argues.

For example, wearing flip-flops, shorts and no shirt to a job interview violates norms and could cause offense (not to mention the candidate being dismissed as unfit), as could boasting about one’s wealth in the presence of people of more—ahem—modest means, or a boxer standing over a vanquished foe and yelling about his feat.

Or consider worship ceremonies. In some traditions, silence is the norm, whereas in others, exuberant shouting, clapping and singing is expected.

Hughes observes that even seemingly similar circumstances can influence what’s perceived as modest.

“When you talk about two people sharing the same goal or directly competing to win a competition, that seems to be a case where you would temper your attitude and responses toward the other person,” he says.

Modesty is in the eye of the beholder

“No one really thinks that compassion, honesty or generosity are elusive traits. We don’t find them puzzling in any way. But modesty and humility are much more elusive. There are so many ways to describe and interpret them."

On the other hand, when not in an adversarial or competitive situation, “there is more room to poke and prod other people to keep at it, to do better. If I’m a successful author, and I know you are writing a book, I might not hold back because I want to cultivate your interest or keep [you] pursuing your goal,” Hughes says.

And modesty is often in the eye of the beholder. Russian mathematician Gregori Perelman declined the $1 million Clay Millennium Prize in 2010 and has kept himself in virtual seclusion ever since. He explained that “if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed,” noted that mathematics depends on collaboration, and declared, “I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.”

While many perceived his refusal as modesty, some thought he was engaged in “arrogant humility” and was “being braggadocious by declining participation,” Hughes says.

Norms are critical to perceptions of modesty, he notes. For example, one study found that Canadians consider concealing one’s positive contributions to society to be dishonest, whereas Chinese people did not. “Chinese adults rated deception in such situations positively while rating truth-telling in the same situations negatively,” according to the study. “These cross-cultural differences appear to reflect differential emphases on the virtue of modesty in the two cultures.”

Immodesty even can be considered virtuous in some situations. For example, women violated norms of modesty when some began driving in Saudi Arabia in contravention of societal rules and expectations. That societal “immodesty” ultimately led to women being extended the right to drive.

Though generally thought of as a virtue, modesty may not be so virtuous in the face of “problematic norms,” Hughes says.

To be truly modest, modesty requires social interaction, the acceptance of norms and “a disposition to avoid offending others,” Hughes argues.

That definition, he concludes, can account for “the variety of modesty norms concerning one’s merits and achievements, personal objects and traditional modesty norms in dress and self-presentation.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about philosophy? Show your support.

If it doesn’t include social interaction, norms and a desire not to offend, it’s not modesty, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder philosopher Derick Hughes argues.

Traditional

White

Top sculpture: "Modesty" by Giosuè Argenti (1866)

Scholar considers limits on God and freedom for humans

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:50:59 +0000

Scholar considers limits on God and freedom for humans Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/07/2026 - 09:50

Clay Bonnyman Evans

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine offers ‘limited foreknowledge’ to solve the paradox of human free will and an all-knowing deity

For many believers, squaring belief in a traditional “omni” deity—a god that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent—with the notion that human beings possess free will poses a quandary.

Here’s how �鶹��Ѱ�� philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine describes the paradox:

“If there is an omniscient being, such as God, who infallibly knows the truth-values of all propositions, including propositions about future human actions, then no human action can be performed freely. No human action is free, since any human action is subject to the implications of this eternal and infallible knowledge of God. Such knowledge implies that an agent cannot do otherwise than what God knows she will do.”

Nathan Huffine, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder philosophy PhD student, argues that belief in both divine foreknowledge and free will are necessary to address the classic theological “problem of evil,” also known as the “problem of suffering."

Huffine argues that belief in both divine foreknowledge and free will are necessary to address the classic theological “problem of evil,” also known as the “problem of suffering”—if a deity is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, why is there suffering and evil?

“If one believes there is a god, one also ought to posit that humans have libertarian free will”—individuals are free to make, and therefore must take responsibility for, all their choices—“in order to deal with the problem of evil,” Huffine says.

But in his recent paper, “Limits on God, Freedom for Humans,” published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Huffine defends the foreknowledge-freedom problem from assertions that it’s merely a game—an intellectual bauble or “pseudo-problem” —and considers two potential solutions to the conundrum, settling on one as most viable.

“It’s an interesting subject because the ideas of God and free will are important to me, and to many other people in their daily lives,” Huffine says.

He first considers what’s commonly referred to as “the eternity solution,” which posits that an atemporal deity—one that exists “outside” of time and space—would be always and eternally aware of everything that is, was and will be. Or as he describes it, “all times are equally real.”

Huffine describes a hypothetical situation in which a woman, Ellie, skips work to go to the beach. While there, a bottle washes onshore, bearing a message predicting that she will skip work and go to the beach that day.

“Suppose Ellie does have the ability to choose otherwise, and that the prophetic statement … has existed since 102 BC. … Also suppose that Ellie actually goes to work … never visiting the beach,” he writes. “Given this, the prophetic object (the bottle) from 102 BC would be wrong, and consequently, God would be wrong.”

But if a deity is inerrant and infallible, such a “conclusion is absurd,” Huffine writes. Because under eternalism, there is no time at which the bottle and message did not exist, “Therefore, there is no moment in Ellie’s life where she can act otherwise.”

Limited foreknowledge

Huffine finds the next potential solution, that of “limited foreknowledge,” more viable and persuasive.

First, he argues, one must assume an omni-deity cannot “do the metaphysically impossible”—the classic example is that a deity cannot create a stone that is too heavy for it to lift; or, as Aquinas argued, God cannot make a circle a square.

But if one defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be ideally conceived,” Huffine writes, then “one cannot ideally conceive of any being that is capable of performing metaphysically impossible feats.”

And if it is metaphysically impossible—contradictory—to square human free will with a deity that is already is aware of every future event, then something has to give, Huffine concludes.

“Therefore, God does not know the truth-value of all propositions but only those propositions it is possible for God to know without threatening human freedom,” he writes. If that’s true, he acknowledges, then “Jesus’ prophecies had the potential to be wrong.”

Huffine acknowledges that his thesis includes complicated, debatable metaphysical arguments, such as whether a deity limited is truly omniscient or omnipotent, given that metaphysics and logic can appear to trump its abilities.

“But you have to explore all these crazy pretzels,” he says. He cites the field of quantum mechanics: “We have to try to make sense of it, and whatever the data says, we have to try to square it with macro-reality.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about philosophy? Show your support.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine offers ‘limited foreknowledge’ to solve the paradox of human free will and an all-knowing deity.

Traditional

White

Why a boy and his tiger still matter

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 18:44:15 +0000

Why a boy and his tiger still matter Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/18/2025 - 11:44

Bradley Worrell

Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson’s beloved comic strip, ended three decades ago this month, yet its magic endures, says William Kuskin, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder English professor and expert on comics and graphic novels

When teaching his popular course on comic books and graphic novels, William Kuskin’s classroom represents a microcosm of the university, where engineering majors sit alongside business students and aspiring writers.

In that mix, the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which debuted in November 1985, sparks an enthusiasm across students—even though the comic strip ended its syndicated run in December 1995, before most of those students were born, says Kuskin, a �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of English professor and department chair.

“Students will march down at the end of class and gush about Calvin and Hobbes,” he says. “It’s not just nostalgia; there’s an ongoing love for it in this generation.”

William Kuskin, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder department chair and professor of English, teaches a course on comics and graphic novels that draws students from disciplines across the university.

That love often comes with a personal twist.

“A lot of dads and kids sat around reading comics together,” Kuskin explains. “Students tell me this course brings them closer to their dads. There’s a comic culture out there that spans generations.”

While no new Calvin and Hobbes comic strips have been produced since 1995, author Bill Watterson authorized the publication of 18 books between 1987 and 2005 that reprinted comic strips from various years. In honor of the publication of the three-volume The Complete Calvin and Hobbes in 2005, re-runs of comic strip were made available to newspapers from Sept. 4, 2005, to Dec. 31, 2005.

Kuskin says the beloved comic strip is not just a relic of the bygone newspaper era—it’s a shared language of humor and imagination between generations.

Describing Calvin and Hobbes to a newcomer

How does one describe what Calvin and Hobbes is about to the uninitiated?

Kuskin says the task is not as easy as it sounds, because the comic transcends its characters. On one level, it’s about Calvin, a mischievous 6-year-old boy who enjoys undertaking adventures with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who seemingly comes to life with biting humor when alone with Calvin. Beyond that, Kuskin says, it’s about the endless possibility of childhood, served up with doses of humor, philosophy and whimsy.

He identifies two endearing qualities that he says gives the comic strip its remarkable staying power. The first is its balance of cynicism and sentimentality.

“Calvin and Hobbes critiques the world but ends with love and warmth,” he says. “As cruel as the outside world is, they still have time for a hug. Our world needs that—maybe now more than ever.”

Kuskin says Watterson’s work reminds its audience that skepticism doesn’t have to cancel tenderness. He notes that Calvin’s sharp observations about consumerism or dreary school regimen coexist with moments of pure joy—snowball fights, sled rides and bedtime musings.

Calvin and Hobbes invites readers to slow down, to imagine, to laugh—and perhaps to question what really matters, Kuskin says.

“Our culture promotes avarice and excess over happiness and personal expression,” he says, quoting Watterson: ‘To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.’”

Kuskin says the second appeal of Calvin and Hobbes results from the comic strip’s role as a portal to the imagination.

“Hobbes himself is a gateway,” he says of Calvin’s stuffed tiger. “He’s both real and imaginary. That ambiguity invites readers to participate in the magic.”

The Exploring Calvin and Hobbes exhibit will be open to the public through Dec. 31 at the Fenimore Art Museum in New York City. (Screengrab: Fenimore Art Museum)

From cardboard-box “transmogrifiers” to intergalactic daydreams, Kuskin says the comic strip celebrates childhood imagination. Hobbes—neither fully stuffed nor fully alive—embodies that space where fantasy and reality blur, Kuskin says.

Comics as high art

Kuskin says the recent Calvin and Hobbes exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum in New York underscores the comic strip’s artistic stature, which he sees as part of a broader movement to elevate comics.

“Comics have a fundamental tension,” he explains. “They don’t belong comfortably to any one discipline. They’re literature, but they’re also visual art. And they’re tied to franchise culture.”

That tension creates a spectrum—from mass-market superhero films to avant-garde graphic novels. Watterson, like Art Spiegelman (author of Maus), staked out the high-art end of that spectrum, resisting the strong pull of merchandising, Kuskin says.

“He stood by his principles. He made his art. It’s beautiful and lasting,” he adds. “There are many ways to make comics, but Watterson’s way—purity of vision, resistance to exploitation—defines a kind of artistic practice that’s very beautiful.”

Art over commerce: Watterson’s high road

Unlike many cartoonists who embraced merchandising, Watterson famously resisted commercialization. Thus, no Hobbes plush toys and no animated specials. Kuskin sees that as a principled stand.

“Watterson fought hard for artistic control,” he says. “He framed his work as art, connecting back to early innovators like George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo). Comics often straddle art and commerce—Watterson pushed toward high art.”

That decision was not without cost. While Peanuts became a multimedia empire—complete with beloved TV specials—Calvin and Hobbes remained confined to the printed page. That purity may be why the strip feels timeless rather than dated, Kuskin says.

“Would the world have been better for a few more Hobbes stuffed animals snuggled in at night?” he muses. “Watterson thought not. He believed the work should speak for itself.”

The cultural company Calvin and Hobbes keeps

Will �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students still be talking about Calvin and Hobbes in another 10 years?

“Calvin and Hobbes critiques the world but ends with love and warmth,” he says. “As cruel as the outside world is, they still have time for a hug. Our world needs that—maybe now more than ever.”

Kuskin doesn’t hesitate in his response: “Absolutely. Parents and grandparents will keep sharing it. And it’s entered that rare cultural space—like Spider-Man, Batman or even Marilyn Monroe. It’s iconic.”

That “iconic space” includes other comic strips that transcended their medium: Peanuts, Krazy Kat and Little Nemo. Like them, Kuskin says, Calvin and Hobbes combines accessibility with depth—simple enough for children but layered enough to be appreciated by adults.

“The best comics have always transcended age,” he says. “They’re not just for kids. They explore fantasy, philosophy—even avant-garde art.”

And while Calvin and Hobbes often gets mentioned in the same breath as Peanuts, Kuskin says featuring cute kids and animals is not a prerequisite for a comic strip having enduring appeal.

“Will Dilbert ever go away? I can’t imagine—it nails corporate life,” he says.

Endings as beginnings

For Kuskin, Watterson’s final comic strip—with Calvin and Hobbes sledding into a snowy landscape—is a farewell, but also a reminder that imagination is infinite.

“It’s about endings as beginnings,” he explains. “The snow becomes a metaphor for possibility. Watterson’s goodbye is a clean start—not an end.”

The dialogue is simple: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, old buddy … let’s go exploring.” But Kuskin says its resonance in the comic panels is profound: the blank whiteness of snow mirrors the blank page—a canvas for imagination.

“The snow looks like snow because we invent it as snow in our imagination,” he says. “That’s the genius of Watterson—he makes us co-creators.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about English? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Top image: Rachel Schmidt/Encyclopedia Britannica

Research charts the pathway from thought to emotion

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:00:35 +0000

Research charts the pathway from thought to emotion Rachel Sauer Mon, 12/15/2025 - 15:00

Alexandra Phelps

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and research colleagues seek to understand the connection between executive functioning and mood problems

You’ve just missed your test. Thoughts about how you missed it keep circling around in your head and won’t stop. These thoughts begin to disrupt your everyday life by changing the way you approach tasks. You can’t shake the blame you’re putting on yourself for missing this test, and now your mood has dropped.

This pattern is just one of the pathways that Roselinde Kaiser, a �鶹��Ѱ�� associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and research colleagues Quynh Nguyen and Hannah Snyder at Brandeis University tested in research recently published in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping.

In this study, led by graduate student Nguyen, researchers aimed to understand the pathway between executive functioning (EF) and mood problems, and found that poor EF creates risk for developing depression and mood problems. EF is an umbrella term that refers to an individual’s ability to pursue goals and adapt to change. The discovery that this pathway is what links EF and mood problems is significant because it creates a foundation for researchers and mental health professionals to develop interventions that can help treat people.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and her research colleagues aim to understand the pathway between executive functioning and mood problems.

Nguyen, Kaiser and Snyder’s data show that problems in EF can contribute to mood problems through a chain reaction: problems in EF predict dependent stress, which predicts repetitive negative thinking (RNT) and then lower mood. Dependent stressors are stressors that are generated by, at least partially, an individual’s behaviors. The stress that stems from these dependent stressors leads to RNT, which functions like a “washing machine, where the same negative self-oriented thoughts circle in your mind over and over again,” Kaiser says.

Kaiser, who is the director of the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Center for Healthy Mind and Mood, and who leads the Research on Affective Disorders and Development (RADD) Lab, first became interested in psychology when she was an adolescent and had questions about human suffering. Her research centers around finding ways to support people during periods of suffering, boost individuals’ resilience, foster their recovery or even stop their suffering.

Kaiser, who received a combined PhD in clinical psychology and neuroscience from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 2013, is drawn to clinical psychology as “a corner of psychology that seems to be poised for the highest impact for the most people,” she says. Through her research she seeks to understand the mechanisms that cause mood problems and that could be potential targets for clinical prevention, especially among younger populations.

“My jam is working with adolescents and young adults, in part because it is this really potent period of risk, and it's also a period in which if we do deliver effective interventions, we can have a lifelong impact.”

Executive functioning and mood problems

Kaiser and her Brandeis colleagues began their recently published research from the previously established connection between EF and mood problems. “We know that EF is associated with mood problems,” Kaiser notes. “We see that within a number of different studies within our research group. How does that happen for individual people?”

EF is an essential part of being able to complete tasks. “College students are a really interesting sub-population because they are navigating a lot of stressors on their own, for the first time. The demands on EF are especially high for college students because they transitioned from—usually—living with adults and caregivers who help them with things like getting them to school on time, homework, laundry, getting their car checked out at the mechanic, grocery shopping, all of the kinds of things that we need to do on the daily, and that we need EF to do all of those things.”

Balancing higher-level academics and more extensive everyday tasks can become even more challenging if EF becomes negatively impacted. “If you look at the age of onset distribution,” she says, “what you’ll see is that more than 50% of the people who experience depression in their lifetime will say it started before the age of 23.”

The researchers’ study took place over a six-week period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through online surveys every two weeks, their participant pool of 154 Brandeis University undergraduate students logged their answers to questions that focused on the pathways the researchers were looking at. Participants’ ages ranged between 18-23, a span intentionally chosen because Kaiser and her colleagues were interested in understanding neurocognitive mechanisms of risk that are targets for intervention.

“We know that EF is associated with mood problems. We see that within a number of different studies within our research group. How does that happen for individual people?” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Roselinde Kaiser.

Their research aimed to determine which, if either, of the pathways they designed based on the previously determined connection between EF and mood would provide a structure of how EF leads to mood problems.

In the first pathway, the scientists predicted that executive dysfunction has an indirect effect, or a mediation path, on depression. The concept is that executive dysfunction causes stress generation, which in turn causes RNT. That results in an individual's mood sinking, leading to depression. Kaiser and her colleagues hypothesized that poorer EF would prospectively predict higher RNT levels, and RNT in turn would predict higher depression levels.

In the second model, Kaiser and her colleagues substituted a dependent stressor for perceived uncontrollability of stressors. Perceived uncontrollability means that an individual believes that they lack the ability to change a stressful situation. This pathway looked at proving that if someone struggles with EF, then they have trouble keeping their actions and thoughts directed toward goals. This then causes an individual to feel that they have less control over stressors, in turn causing RNT and their mood to sink. For model two, the researchers hypothesized that poorer EF would predict lower perceived control over stress, and higher levels of RNT would subsequently predict higher depression levels.

“One of the reasons we’re interested in breaking down these pathways is it gives us better insight and more ideas into how we can help people by delivering effective clinical interventions, preventions or preventative programs,” Kaiser explains. “It’s hard to change executive functionability, but we can help buffer people against the dependent stressors by giving them skills and tools so that those types of stressors are less likely to happen.

“From where I sit as a clinical psychologist as well as a neuroscientist, that’s a good reason that we want to understand who is at risk, and how that risk happens.”

Kaiser and her colleagues found through the data they collected that the first pathway was supported but the second was not. There were a number of factors that could have resulted in the second pathway not being supported.

“One totally reasonable explanation is that we were just wrong—that it is not a pathway that is consistently observed among people with EF,” she says. Another possible explanation could be “that the era in which we were measuring these variables—during the COVID pandemic—everyone kind of had heightened uncontrollability in their world. What that might mean is that because everyone was generally feeling like the world was out of control, we weren’t able to pick up on just the people who are more likely to perceive stress as uncontrollable even in the absence of a global pandemic"

She adds that a third reason could be “the timing is just different if you perceive control or not. Maybe … uncontrollable perceptions happen on a slower time scale (their research was measured every two weeks) meaning that it may take longer for perceived uncontrollability to build up and then push your mood around. Or the opposite, it could happen more quickly. (Overall), we don’t know if any of those things could be true, and it certainly merits more exploration.”

“My jam is working with adolescents and young adults, in part because it is this really potent period of risk, and it's also a period in which if we do deliver effective interventions, we can have a lifelong impact.”

Getting mood snapshots

Neuroimaging, neurocognitive testing (computer testing, psychophysical testing, interviewing and self-reporting are all methods that can be used to collect information from participants. However, since Kaiser, Nguyen and Snyder completed their project, there have been wide strides in the development of new data-collection methods. Kaiser and her research groups are now implementing these new methods alongside others to further their research.

“Each of these modalities has pros and cons in terms of what they can tell us about the underlying constructs that we’re interested in measuring,” Kaiser says. “EF, for example, we can measure that through a neurological assessment or a computer-based assessment. I can also tap into that by asking people about their abilities out in the world; but there are key differences in what we’re getting at.”

These different kinds of assessments are that they give complementing information, but do not duplicate what researchers receive from the surveys. “More recent research from my research group and also my collaborators and colleagues indicates that we’re getting two complementary sources of evidence, but it’s not the same evidence. So, the kind of information from computer-based testing or from the brain is not necessarily the same information we get when we ask people.” These two sources of evidence are only weakly related. Since Kaiser and her colleagues completed the project, they have developed a way to collect information without having participants fill out surveys.

“What we’ve been working with are mobile applications that perform something called digital phenotyping, which effectively means using the information your phone is already collecting about you to understand your actions out in the real world and to get little snapshots on your mood and your stress level in daily life,” Kaiser says, adding, “They can see things like numbers of calls, screen time and other factors that allow them to better understand the individuals.”

Now, researching alongside various experts and students on a number of different projects, Kaiser says she hopes to “make these interventions accessible to everyone at the touch of a finger on their smartphone in the real world. We want people to be able to access this information when they need it.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about psychology and neuroscience? Show your support.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Roselinde Kaiser and research colleagues seek to understand the connection between executive functioning and mood problems.

Traditional

White

News

Research sheds light on unintended consequences of money laundering regulations

Related Articles

Film addresses the dark side of aging

Related Articles

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Related Articles

Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up)

Related Articles

What are the little red dots deep in space?

Related Articles

Scholar highlights the Venezuela-Cuba connection

Related Articles

Modesty is not a solo sport

Related Articles

Scholar considers limits on God and freedom for humans

Related Articles

Why a boy and his tiger still matter

Related Articles

Research charts the pathway from thought to emotion

Related Articles