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The End of the Postwar World Trump and Vance are sending a dark message to America’s allies. February 20, 2025, The Atlantic 🌟完整外刊原文，请扫码加V并备注“外刊”进学习群免费获取 For eight decades, America’s alliances with other democracies have been the bedrock of American foreign policy, trade policy, and cultural influence. American investments in allies’ security helped keep the peace in formerly unstable parts of the world, allowing democratic societies from Germany to Japan to prosper, by preventing predatory autocracies from destroying them. We prospered too. Thanks to its allies, the U.S. obtained unprecedented political and economic influence in Europe and Asia, and unprecedented power everywhere else. The Trump administration is now bringing the post–World War II era to an end. No one should be surprised: This was predictable, and indeed was predicted. Donald Trump has been a vocal opponent of what he considers to be the high cost of U.S. alliances, since 1987, when he bought full-page ads in three newspapers, claiming that “for decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.” In 2000, he wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” In his first term as president, Trump’s Cabinet members and advisers repeatedly restrained him from insulting allies or severing military and diplomatic links. Now he has surrounded himself with people who are prepared to enact and even encourage the radical changes he always wanted, cheered on by thousands of anonymous accounts on X. Of course America’s relations with allies are complex and multilayered, and in some form they will endure. But American allies, especially in Europe, need to face up to this new reality and make some dramatic changes. This shift began with what felt at first like ad hoc, perhaps unserious attacks on the sovereignty of Denmark, Canada, and Panama. Events over the past week or so have provided further clarification. At a major multinational security conference in Munich last weekend, I sat in a room full of defense ministers, four-star generals and security analysts—people who procure ammunition for Ukrainian missile defense, or who worry about Russian ships cutting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. All of them were expecting Vice President J. D. Vance to address these kinds of concerns. Instead, Vance told a series of misleading stories designed to demonstrate that European democracies aren’t democratic. Vance, a prominent member of the political movement that launched the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, had to know what he was doing: flipping the narrative, turning arguments upside down in the manner of a Russian propagandist. But the content of his speech, which cherry-picked stories designed to portray the U.K., Germany, Romania, and other democracies as enemies of free expression, was less important than the fact that he gave a speech that wasn’t about the very real Russian threat to the continent at all: He was telling the Europeans present that he wasn’t interested in discussing their security. They got the message.

The End of the Postwar World Trump and Vance are sending a dark message to America’s allies. February 20, 2025, The Atlantic 🌟完整外刊原文，请扫码加V并备注“外刊”进学习群免费获取 For eight decades, America’s alliances with other democracies have been the bedrock of American foreign policy, trade policy, and cultural influence. American investments in allies’ security helped keep the peace in formerly unstable parts of the world, allowing democratic societies from Germany to Japan to prosper, by preventing predatory autocracies from destroying them. We prospered too. Thanks to its allies, the U.S. obtained unprecedented political and economic influence in Europe and Asia, and unprecedented power everywhere else. The Trump administration is now bringing the post–World War II era to an end. No one should be surprised: This was predictable, and indeed was predicted. Donald Trump has been a vocal opponent of what he considers to be the high cost of U.S. alliances, since 1987, when he bought full-page ads in three newspapers, claiming that “for decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.” In 2000, he wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” In his first term as president, Trump’s Cabinet members and advisers repeatedly restrained him from insulting allies or severing military and diplomatic links. Now he has surrounded himself with people who are prepared to enact and even encourage the radical changes he always wanted, cheered on by thousands of anonymous accounts on X. Of course America’s relations with allies are complex and multilayered, and in some form they will endure. But American allies, especially in Europe, need to face up to this new reality and make some dramatic changes. This shift began with what felt at first like ad hoc, perhaps unserious attacks on the sovereignty of Denmark, Canada, and Panama. Events over the past week or so have provided further clarification. At a major multinational security conference in Munich last weekend, I sat in a room full of defense ministers, four-star generals and security analysts—people who procure ammunition for Ukrainian missile defense, or who worry about Russian ships cutting fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea. All of them were expecting Vice President J. D. Vance to address these kinds of concerns. Instead, Vance told a series of misleading stories designed to demonstrate that European democracies aren’t democratic. Vance, a prominent member of the political movement that launched the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, had to know what he was doing: flipping the narrative, turning arguments upside down in the manner of a Russian propagandist. But the content of his speech, which cherry-picked stories designed to portray the U.K., Germany, Romania, and other democracies as enemies of free expression, was less important than the fact that he gave a speech that wasn’t about the very real Russian threat to the continent at all: He was telling the Europeans present that he wasn’t interested in discussing their security. They got the message.

80 years after 1945, Japan finds its memories of WWII fading * Japan faces a challenge as the numbers of living war veterans and atomic bomb survivors dwindle, raising concerns about preserving wartime memories. * PM Ishiba expressed "remorse for the war," emphasising the need to learn from history and commit to peace, while Emperor Naruhito hoped such horrors would never be repeated. * Despite its apologies, Japan's political shift to the right and seeming discomfort with its own history stir unease among neighbouring countries over its wartime atonement. August 15, 2025, The Strait Times 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 As Japan marks 80 years since its surrender in World War II on Aug 15, 1945, the country’s collective memory of its role in the global conflagration – and the catastrophic defeat it suffered – is fading fast. The voices of living veterans, such as 95-year-old Hideo Shimizu, and atomic bomb survivors like 86-year-old Michiko Yagi, are fast disappearing. How Japan will remember its imperial past and the war’s influence on the nation’s psyche is now becoming a pressing concern. Ms Yagi, a hibakusha who experienced the devastation of her native Nagasaki on Aug 9, 1945, counts her family – her mother and four siblings – fortunate to have survived the blast, although they endured prolonged bouts of debilitating diarrhoea in its aftermath. Hibakusha is the term used to refer to survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Historically, Japan certainly has made mistakes, and those mistakes are our burden to bear as wartime aggressors,” Ms Yagi told The Straits Times. “It is our responsibility to remember, to convey our experiences, to fight for peace and to lobby for a world without nuclear weapons,” she said, expressing her deepest wish for Nagasaki to remain the last city on earth to suffer the horrors of an atomic bomb. “The youngest hibakusha is now 80, and soon there will not be many of us left. Looking at the perilous state of the world today, I honestly feel really scared.” Ms Yagi is one of just 99,130 remaining hibakusha, whose average age now stands at 86 years, according to official figures released on March 31. For the first time, their numbers have dipped below 100,000. The atomic bomb was a weapon of unprecedented destructive power that obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Emperor Hirohito, in a nationwide radio broadcast announcing Japan’s surrender at noon on Aug 15, 1945, starkly described it as “a new and most cruel bomb”, acknowledging that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”. In the present day, a year-long series of war memorial events culminated in the Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead on Aug 15, although the surrender documents were formally signed only on Sept 2, 1945. At the annual ceremony, where a minute’s silence was observed at 12pm, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was the first leader in 13 years to express “remorse for the war” in his memorial speech. “We must never repeat the horrors of war. We must never again err on the path we take,” Mr Ishiba said. “We must now deeply engrave in our hearts the remorse and lessons of that war.” He added: “No matter how much time passes, we will continue to pass on the painful memories of war and our resolute pledge to never wage war again across generations and continue to take action towards lasting peace.”

80 years after 1945, Japan finds its memories of WWII fading * Japan faces a challenge as the numbers of living war veterans and atomic bomb survivors dwindle, raising concerns about preserving wartime memories. * PM Ishiba expressed "remorse for the war," emphasising the need to learn from history and commit to peace, while Emperor Naruhito hoped such horrors would never be repeated. * Despite its apologies, Japan's political shift to the right and seeming discomfort with its own history stir unease among neighbouring countries over its wartime atonement. August 15, 2025, The Strait Times 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 As Japan marks 80 years since its surrender in World War II on Aug 15, 1945, the country’s collective memory of its role in the global conflagration – and the catastrophic defeat it suffered – is fading fast. The voices of living veterans, such as 95-year-old Hideo Shimizu, and atomic bomb survivors like 86-year-old Michiko Yagi, are fast disappearing. How Japan will remember its imperial past and the war’s influence on the nation’s psyche is now becoming a pressing concern. Ms Yagi, a hibakusha who experienced the devastation of her native Nagasaki on Aug 9, 1945, counts her family – her mother and four siblings – fortunate to have survived the blast, although they endured prolonged bouts of debilitating diarrhoea in its aftermath. Hibakusha is the term used to refer to survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Historically, Japan certainly has made mistakes, and those mistakes are our burden to bear as wartime aggressors,” Ms Yagi told The Straits Times. “It is our responsibility to remember, to convey our experiences, to fight for peace and to lobby for a world without nuclear weapons,” she said, expressing her deepest wish for Nagasaki to remain the last city on earth to suffer the horrors of an atomic bomb. “The youngest hibakusha is now 80, and soon there will not be many of us left. Looking at the perilous state of the world today, I honestly feel really scared.” Ms Yagi is one of just 99,130 remaining hibakusha, whose average age now stands at 86 years, according to official figures released on March 31. For the first time, their numbers have dipped below 100,000. The atomic bomb was a weapon of unprecedented destructive power that obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Emperor Hirohito, in a nationwide radio broadcast announcing Japan’s surrender at noon on Aug 15, 1945, starkly described it as “a new and most cruel bomb”, acknowledging that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”. In the present day, a year-long series of war memorial events culminated in the Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead on Aug 15, although the surrender documents were formally signed only on Sept 2, 1945. At the annual ceremony, where a minute’s silence was observed at 12pm, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was the first leader in 13 years to express “remorse for the war” in his memorial speech. “We must never repeat the horrors of war. We must never again err on the path we take,” Mr Ishiba said. “We must now deeply engrave in our hearts the remorse and lessons of that war.” He added: “No matter how much time passes, we will continue to pass on the painful memories of war and our resolute pledge to never wage war again across generations and continue to take action towards lasting peace.”

I ditched the gym and you can too – here are six ways to get fit without it Whether you enjoy ‘rucking’, walking, running or making your own sandbags, life after winding up your monthly membership can be your healthiest and happiest ever June 15, 2025, The Guardian 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 After almost two decades of regular gym-going, I’ve finally cancelled my membership. The reasons for this are many and varied – I’m trying to save money, gym music is terrible these days, everyone seems to have forgotten how to share the equipment – but the main one is, I think it may actually make me fitter. Working for Men’s Fitness magazine for almost 10 years, I got to try out every trend, workout style and fitness event I wanted, and I noticed something interesting: quite frequently, the people with the fewest resources were in the best shape. I’m not including Hollywood actors in this, but otherwise, it’s often true: powerlifters working out in unheated concrete sheds get the strongest, runners who stay off treadmills get the fastest, and people exercising in basements have a focus rarely seen in palatial upmarket gyms. Browsing through photos from when my own gym membership was (briefly) paused during Covid lockdowns, I look … if not quite like Jason Statham, then at least his off-brand office-party equivalent. I might not have had the best cardio of my life – even social distancing couldn’t convince me to run more than three miles (5km) at a time – but I was certainly lean. Some of the correlation and causation here might be muddled, obviously – Covid also prevented me from getting to my favourite cake shop – but let’s not worry about that right now. So what’s the plan? Well, as a 46-year-old father with a lot to do, I’m focusing on fitting workouts into my life wherever is feasible, combining cardio, strength and mobility as much as possible, and buying as little kit as I can. Here’s what I’m up to. Running, fast and slow Over recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that VO2 max, a measure of your body’s ability to use oxygen during intense exercise, is a key indicator of health and lifespan: to the extent that it’s probably one of the main things worth focusing on for longevity. Unfortunately, building up a good VO2 max takes a little bit longer than getting strong – but there are things you can do to speed the whole process along. One is the so-called “Norwegian protocol”: working out at a high intensity for four minutes, then at a lower intensity for three minutes, then repeating – four times altogether. With a warmup on top, you’re done in little more than 30 minutes – and if you do that once a week, any other running workouts can be more ponderous or plodding. Recently, I’ve been a regular at my local Parkrun, which is always delightful – there are plenty of people far faster than me to keep me motivated, but nobody bats an eye if you put an audiobook on and turn in a 40-minute three miles. The final thing I’m doing run-wise is hill “sprints” – a bit of a misnomer, as my nearest hummock is angled so steeply that I can barely get up it faster than a jog. This is actually a good thing; with a couple of hamstring pings in my past, my actual sprinting days are probably over, but the hilly variety still force you to work hard, generate power with each stride, and recruit dozens of muscle fibres with every step.

I ditched the gym and you can too – here are six ways to get fit without it Whether you enjoy ‘rucking’, walking, running or making your own sandbags, life after winding up your monthly membership can be your healthiest and happiest ever June 15, 2025, The Guardian 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 After almost two decades of regular gym-going, I’ve finally cancelled my membership. The reasons for this are many and varied – I’m trying to save money, gym music is terrible these days, everyone seems to have forgotten how to share the equipment – but the main one is, I think it may actually make me fitter. Working for Men’s Fitness magazine for almost 10 years, I got to try out every trend, workout style and fitness event I wanted, and I noticed something interesting: quite frequently, the people with the fewest resources were in the best shape. I’m not including Hollywood actors in this, but otherwise, it’s often true: powerlifters working out in unheated concrete sheds get the strongest, runners who stay off treadmills get the fastest, and people exercising in basements have a focus rarely seen in palatial upmarket gyms. Browsing through photos from when my own gym membership was (briefly) paused during Covid lockdowns, I look … if not quite like Jason Statham, then at least his off-brand office-party equivalent. I might not have had the best cardio of my life – even social distancing couldn’t convince me to run more than three miles (5km) at a time – but I was certainly lean. Some of the correlation and causation here might be muddled, obviously – Covid also prevented me from getting to my favourite cake shop – but let’s not worry about that right now. So what’s the plan? Well, as a 46-year-old father with a lot to do, I’m focusing on fitting workouts into my life wherever is feasible, combining cardio, strength and mobility as much as possible, and buying as little kit as I can. Here’s what I’m up to. Running, fast and slow Over recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that VO2 max, a measure of your body’s ability to use oxygen during intense exercise, is a key indicator of health and lifespan: to the extent that it’s probably one of the main things worth focusing on for longevity. Unfortunately, building up a good VO2 max takes a little bit longer than getting strong – but there are things you can do to speed the whole process along. One is the so-called “Norwegian protocol”: working out at a high intensity for four minutes, then at a lower intensity for three minutes, then repeating – four times altogether. With a warmup on top, you’re done in little more than 30 minutes – and if you do that once a week, any other running workouts can be more ponderous or plodding. Recently, I’ve been a regular at my local Parkrun, which is always delightful – there are plenty of people far faster than me to keep me motivated, but nobody bats an eye if you put an audiobook on and turn in a 40-minute three miles. The final thing I’m doing run-wise is hill “sprints” – a bit of a misnomer, as my nearest hummock is angled so steeply that I can barely get up it faster than a jog. This is actually a good thing; with a couple of hamstring pings in my past, my actual sprinting days are probably over, but the hilly variety still force you to work hard, generate power with each stride, and recruit dozens of muscle fibres with every step.

Why Britain’s police hardly solve any crimes Crime has become more complex. The police have not kept up July 24, 2025, The Economist 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 When Stan Gilmour started out as a “regular street bobby” in 1993, he remembers picking up “multiple burglaries a day”. It was nearly all “traditional crime” back then: “you know, the whodunnit, broken window, property gone, search for the suspect”. There were no mobile phones or CCTV cameras, which meant lots of knocking on doors and learning to “manage the crime scene” to yield clues. Mr Gilmour didn’t know it, but he had started close to the crime peak. In 1995 an estimated 20m crimes were committed in England and Wales, an all-time high. That figure then fell for almost three decades, reaching a low of less than 5m in 2023 (see chart 1). Many politicians claimed credit for this “crime drop”, which happened across the rich world, and was driven by a fall in burglary and vehicle theft. Researchers later concluded that the main cause was better security technology. There was a catch. As the number of crimes plummeted, so too did the proportion that were solved. In 2015 around one in six recorded crimes resulted in a charge or a summons. Last year it was only around one in 20 (see chart 2). To the law-abiding citizen this shift amounts to a blessing and a curse. You are much less likely to become a victim of crime, and much less likely to see justice if you do. Politicians often frame this solely as a supply-side problem. Britain’s police experienced steep cuts between 2010 and 2018; seasoned officers were paid to leave. The public associates ineffectiveness with the absence of visible “bobbies on the beat”. Yet a better explanation is that crime has become harder to solve. And as the caseload has changed and technology has evolved, the police have not kept up. The crimes on which Mr Gilmour cut his teeth were voluminous, but straightforward. A car hot-wired for joyriding; a house robbed and the loot sold locally. The perpetrators of such offences tended to be “not all that sophisticated”, says Mike Hough, an academic who established the national crime survey. Today cases are more vexing. The number of reported sexual offences, for example, has more than tripled in the past two decades, to almost 200,000 (see chart 3). Strangely, that is (mostly) a good thing: more victims are coming forward. Yet the charge rate is just 4.2%. Investigations are long and difficult and the police are still often poor at handling victims. The rate of victims dropping out of investigations has soared.

Why Britain’s police hardly solve any crimes Crime has become more complex. The police have not kept up July 24, 2025, The Economist 🌟完整外刊原文，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群免费获取 When Stan Gilmour started out as a “regular street bobby” in 1993, he remembers picking up “multiple burglaries a day”. It was nearly all “traditional crime” back then: “you know, the whodunnit, broken window, property gone, search for the suspect”. There were no mobile phones or CCTV cameras, which meant lots of knocking on doors and learning to “manage the crime scene” to yield clues. Mr Gilmour didn’t know it, but he had started close to the crime peak. In 1995 an estimated 20m crimes were committed in England and Wales, an all-time high. That figure then fell for almost three decades, reaching a low of less than 5m in 2023 (see chart 1). Many politicians claimed credit for this “crime drop”, which happened across the rich world, and was driven by a fall in burglary and vehicle theft. Researchers later concluded that the main cause was better security technology. There was a catch. As the number of crimes plummeted, so too did the proportion that were solved. In 2015 around one in six recorded crimes resulted in a charge or a summons. Last year it was only around one in 20 (see chart 2). To the law-abiding citizen this shift amounts to a blessing and a curse. You are much less likely to become a victim of crime, and much less likely to see justice if you do. Politicians often frame this solely as a supply-side problem. Britain’s police experienced steep cuts between 2010 and 2018; seasoned officers were paid to leave. The public associates ineffectiveness with the absence of visible “bobbies on the beat”. Yet a better explanation is that crime has become harder to solve. And as the caseload has changed and technology has evolved, the police have not kept up. The crimes on which Mr Gilmour cut his teeth were voluminous, but straightforward. A car hot-wired for joyriding; a house robbed and the loot sold locally. The perpetrators of such offences tended to be “not all that sophisticated”, says Mike Hough, an academic who established the national crime survey. Today cases are more vexing. The number of reported sexual offences, for example, has more than tripled in the past two decades, to almost 200,000 (see chart 3). Strangely, that is (mostly) a good thing: more victims are coming forward. Yet the charge rate is just 4.2%. Investigations are long and difficult and the police are still often poor at handling victims. The rate of victims dropping out of investigations has soared.

The kids aren’t all right. Are phones really to blame? In ‘The Anxious Generation,’ Jonathan Haidt argues that the move from ‘play-based childhood’ to ‘phone-based childhood’ has had disastrous effects Mar 22, 2024, The Washington Post 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 If you follow the always abundant literature of What’s Wrong With Today’s Kids, then you’re already familiar with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. A professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, he’s most widely known for his 2018 bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which he and co-author Greg Lukianoff excoriated the new campus culture of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and tied the emotional fragility they believed underlay those developments to soaring rates of depression and anxiety in college students. In the years since, Haidt has been a frequent research and sometime writing collaborator of Jean Twenge, the prolific and controversial psychologist whose Atlantic cover story in 2017, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” set the tone for their work. Along the way, Haidt has picked up a cadre of haters (the “kids are alright” crowd, he calls them) who have accused him of cherry-picking examples, retrofitting tired old arguments about “kids today,” and stoking “moral panic” about new technology to puff himself up and keep Gen Z down. His new book, “The Anxious Generation,” is not going to make his life any easier. Mar 22, 2024, The Washington Postxus work and beefs it up, arguing that young people today — specifically those belonging to Gen Z — are damaged products of a massive shift in the culture of childhood. Born in the late 1990s to fearful and overprotective parents, they were raised, unlike the baby boomers and Generation X, with almost constant adult supervision. They became the first-ever cohort of tweens and teens to go through adolescence under the thrall of smartphones, forming their identities in the largely unregulated, ill-understood universe of social media. The toxic combination of “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world” (Haidt’s italics) made them super-anxio

The kids aren’t all right. Are phones really to blame? In ‘The Anxious Generation,’ Jonathan Haidt argues that the move from ‘play-based childhood’ to ‘phone-based childhood’ has had disastrous effects Mar 22, 2024, The Washington Post 🌟外刊原文库持续更新中，请加V: HLSHW666 进学习群获取 If you follow the always abundant literature of What’s Wrong With Today’s Kids, then you’re already familiar with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. A professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, he’s most widely known for his 2018 bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which he and co-author Greg Lukianoff excoriated the new campus culture of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and tied the emotional fragility they believed underlay those developments to soaring rates of depression and anxiety in college students. In the years since, Haidt has been a frequent research and sometime writing collaborator of Jean Twenge, the prolific and controversial psychologist whose Atlantic cover story in 2017, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” set the tone for their work. Along the way, Haidt has picked up a cadre of haters (the “kids are alright” crowd, he calls them) who have accused him of cherry-picking examples, retrofitting tired old arguments about “kids today,” and stoking “moral panic” about new technology to puff himself up and keep Gen Z down. His new book, “The Anxious Generation,” is not going to make his life any easier. Mar 22, 2024, The Washington Postxus work and beefs it up, arguing that young people today — specifically those belonging to Gen Z — are damaged products of a massive shift in the culture of childhood. Born in the late 1990s to fearful and overprotective parents, they were raised, unlike the baby boomers and Generation X, with almost constant adult supervision. They became the first-ever cohort of tweens and teens to go through adolescence under the thrall of smartphones, forming their identities in the largely unregulated, ill-understood universe of social media. The toxic combination of “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world” (Haidt’s italics) made them super-anxio

想进外刊学习群的同学，请加我微信HLSHW666，群内分享完整版文章，和所有我讲过的外刊原文 Which is the happiest country? Does the World Happiness Report nail it? Mar 27, 2024, Vox We know that America is really unhappy. And Finland is the happiest country. Right? Well, that’s what it says in the World Happiness Report, a wide-ranging survey on global happiness levels released last week. But before you pack your bags and move to Northern Europe, you might want a sneak peek at how the experts figure out who’s happy and who’s not. Believe it or not, it typically comes down to one question. The pollsters use something called the Cantril Ladder. They ask: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?” Before you read any further, think for a second about how you would answer the question. Would you say your life is … a five? A seven? A nine? When I first did this exercise, I said my life is a seven out of 10. But behind this answer was a more complicated truth. I’d initially thought about rating my life a six. Yet there was a voice tugging at me, from my years of reporting on people living in extreme poverty. Compared to their lives, I figured mine was probably pretty easy. So I bumped up my rating. Did you implicitly find yourself doing something similar? Comparing yourself to others — either positively or negatively? A new paper from researchers in Scandinavia and the US suggests that’s actually very common — and it may be a flaw in the question itself. By showing a picture of a ladder and saying to imagine some people “at the top” and others “at the bottom,” the question may be influencing respondents to consider not so much their actual happiness as their status.

想进外刊学习群的同学，请加我微信HLSHW666，群内分享完整版文章，和所有我讲过的外刊原文 Which is the happiest country? Does the World Happiness Report nail it? Mar 27, 2024, Vox We know that America is really unhappy. And Finland is the happiest country. Right? Well, that’s what it says in the World Happiness Report, a wide-ranging survey on global happiness levels released last week. But before you pack your bags and move to Northern Europe, you might want a sneak peek at how the experts figure out who’s happy and who’s not. Believe it or not, it typically comes down to one question. The pollsters use something called the Cantril Ladder. They ask: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?” Before you read any further, think for a second about how you would answer the question. Would you say your life is … a five? A seven? A nine? When I first did this exercise, I said my life is a seven out of 10. But behind this answer was a more complicated truth. I’d initially thought about rating my life a six. Yet there was a voice tugging at me, from my years of reporting on people living in extreme poverty. Compared to their lives, I figured mine was probably pretty easy. So I bumped up my rating. Did you implicitly find yourself doing something similar? Comparing yourself to others — either positively or negatively? A new paper from researchers in Scandinavia and the US suggests that’s actually very common — and it may be a flaw in the question itself. By showing a picture of a ladder and saying to imagine some people “at the top” and others “at the bottom,” the question may be influencing respondents to consider not so much their actual happiness as their status.