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SOCIAL CHEMISTRY

Decoding the patterns of human connection.

by Marissa King ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2020

A personable approach to one of the hot topics of our times.

A close look at the various structures of social networks.

King, a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, has spent some 15 years studying social relationships among a variety of networks. In a psychobabble-free manner, she presents the findings of numerous researchers in the field, and, using simple diagrams, she maps the structure of three common types of personal networks. She categorizes their organizers as Expansionists, Brokers, and Conveners, and anecdotes about well-known figures illustrate the basic elements of each network’s social structure and psychological differences. Expansionists have huge but relatively weak networks, spend time meeting lots of new people, and know how to work a room. A good example is Jim Cramer, the loud host of Mad Money , whom the author describes as “the epitome of brash overconfidence.” Networks organized by Brokers have a very different style, embodied here by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose musical collective Silk Road Ensemble is a network of talented people from very different social worlds. Conveners build dense networks with deep roots in which their friends are also each other’s friends. King’s choice to illustrate this is Vogue editor Anna Wintour, queen of the fashion industry. Celebrities abound in these pages, but the author takes care to clarify the benefits and drawbacks of each style and emphasizes that for any individual, the most appropriate style is one that matches their personal goals, career stage, and needs. Throughout, she blends the findings of numerous sociological and psychological research studies with thoughtful advice and relevant stories from her own life, which gives the book a comfortable balance and adds to its readability. Rather than providing quick tips on how to build a network, King gives readers the big picture, showing what social networks are and demonstrating their importance in one’s career and personal life.

Pub Date: June 9, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4380-2

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: March 15, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | PSYCHOLOGY | BUSINESS | SELF-HELP | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | ENTREPRENUERSHP | GENERAL BUSINESS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

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Look Inside

Social Chemistry

Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection

By Marissa King

By marissa king read by brittany pressley, category: business | self-improvement & inspiration, category: business | self-improvement & inspiration | audiobooks.

Jan 04, 2022 | ISBN 9781524743826 | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 --> | ISBN 9781524743826 --> Buy

Jan 05, 2021 | ISBN 9781524743819 | ISBN 9781524743819 --> Buy

Jan 05, 2021 | 494 Minutes | ISBN 9780593211038 --> Buy

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Jan 04, 2022 | ISBN 9781524743826

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Jan 05, 2021 | ISBN 9780593211038

494 Minutes

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About Social Chemistry

“One of the most interesting and useful books ever written on networking.”—Adam Grant Social Chemistry  will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding the contours   of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . .  Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it’s the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she illustrates, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking. Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King’s own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

One of  2021’s Most Highly Anticipated New Books— N ewsweek   One of The 20 Leadership Books to Read in 2020 — Adam Grant One of The Best New Wellness Books Hitting Shelves in January 2021 — Shape.com   A Top Business Book for January 2021 — Financial Times A Next Big Idea Club Nominee Social Chemistry  will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding the contours   of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . .  Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it’s the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking. Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King’s own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

Listen to a sample from Social Chemistry

About marissa king.

Marissa King is professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, where she developed and teaches a popular course entitled Managing Strategic Networks. Over the past fifteen years, King has studied how people’s social networks evolve, what they look… More about Marissa King

Product Details

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“It turns out, most of us are social nincompoops. We’re friends with whoever happens to be seated next to us at work or school. We go to happy hours to meet new people but end up talking to the three people we already know. We ghost our friends rather than face difficult conversations. And these seemingly small choices, taken together, have a huge impact on our life outcomes. . . King calls on us to be intentional not just with our individual relationships, but with our networks.” — The New York Times Book Review “The latest book on the always fascinating topic of networks and networking . . . A useful guide, updated with the latest research, including her own, to mapping, exploring, and developing your existing social links.” —Financial Times “The book is full of wisdom and entertaining anecdotes.” — The Economist “It’s frequently said that we’re living in a ‘connected world.’ But it turns out that the details of those connections matter, a lot. Social Chemistry is a fascinating look at the particulars of impactful networks. Whether you take naturally to networking or think yourself allergic to it, there is practical information here that can help you form more productive relationships, and make better use of those you already have.” —David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range and The Sports Gene “This is one of the most interesting and useful books ever written on networking. As a leading sociologist at Yale, Marissa King specializes in evidence-based insights on enriching our professional and personal connections. You’ll quickly recognize your own style—and some opportunities for growth and development.”— Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take , and host of the chart-topping TED podcast WorkLife “Marissa King skillfully brings to light how understanding the science of organizational behavior and networks yields benefits far beyond the workplace. Decoding social patterns can transform every corner of your life. By providing readers with prescriptive pathways towards greater connectivity and intention, Social Chemistry helps you to create new relationships and strengthen your existing ones.”— Eve Rodsky, New York Times  bestselling author of Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) “In an age of both hyper-connectedness and extreme loneliness, Marissa King definitively cracks the code on human connection: what brings us together, what keeps us together, and how we make each other come alive.” —Emma Seppälä, PhD, author of The Happiness Track and science director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University  “King’s wise, well-reasoned advice will be perfect for those aiming to climb the corporate ladder.” — Publishers Weekly “King gives readers the big picture, showing what social networks are and demonstrating their importance in one’s career and personal life. A personable approach to one of the hot topics of our times.” — Kirkus Reviews “Using recognizable celebrities and anecdotes from interviewed individuals as examples, King blends large-scale research with personal stories to illustrate her findings. Social Chemistry is a fascinating study for anyone curious about human interaction.” —Booklist

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Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection

Social Chemistry  will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding your social network pattern is essential to making the most of personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think….

Yale professor Marissa King argues that anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics that put “networking” in a completely new light. Conventional wisdom says it’s the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven otherwise. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships have the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are only three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to harness their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections have profound effects on health and happiness. The compiled findings from 70 previous studies found that loneliness increases the likelihood of early death by 26 percent—an effect equivalent to obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Rich stories of expansionists like Vernon Jordan, conveners like Anna Wintour, and brokers like Yo Yo Ma and personal experiences from King’s own network make this a warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

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Social Chemistry: A Book Review

This is an entry in my Review of Books About Friendship Series .

There are good nuggets in Social Chemistry: Decoding The Patterns of Human Connection by Marissa King, but this book is more of a business or academic book than the sweeping history or Malcolm Gladwell-esque kind of storytelling I was hoping for. There are many anecdotes about real people, but I can’t say I was too into enough of them.

King provides A LOT of research in this book where she divides social roles into “expansionists,” “brokers,” and “conveners.” Each type gets a chapter. I found myself recognizing my patterns in one, then the other, then the other. She calls our strongest tendency our “social signature.”

Here’s a nice summary from King herself:

“ Expansionists favor weak ties, have vast interaction spaces, and expend most of their social effort meeting new people. They also have an easier time ending relationships, because their investments don’t have a lot of reciprocal obligations.” Brokers have strong ties, but the strength of their network comes from their weak ties. Their interaction spaces typically revolve around social worlds. Brokers spend a good deal of time maintaining weak ties. Without continued investment, the weak ties they do have easily disappear. Conveners prefer strong ties and devote most of their effort to maintenance. They don’t spend a lot of time exploring multiple social worlds but tend to have deep roots in a few.”

I’m still on my search for my favorite friendship book of all time because I don’t love any are this heavy in citing research. In fairness to King, this book is really more about networking.

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What connects us to everyone: talking to marissa king.

• Dialogue Diary

How might thinking purposefully about one’s social network differ from “networking” in the vernacular sense? How might structural inequality around social capital prove just as damaging as structural inequality around financial capital? When I want to ask such questions, I pose them to Marissa King . This present conversation focuses on King’s book Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection . King is a professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management. Over the past 15 years, she has studied how people’s social networks evolve, what they look like, and why that matters. Her most recent line of work analyzes how to effectively harness networks to treat opioid-use disorders, and to address our national loneliness epidemic. King’s research has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post , Bloomberg Businessweek , The Atlantic , and on National Public Radio.

ANDY FITCH: Social Chemistry ’s opening chapter states that “The strength and quality of your social connections and their arrangement profoundly affect your experience of the world, your emotions, and your personal and professional success.” So in terms of the stakes at play here, could you first flesh out this dynamic, two-way proposition that social structures both shape the life prospects we perceive, and fuel our personal capacities for finding fulfillment?

MARISSA KING: You can think about our networks as tracing the interactions we have on a day-to-day basis, from bumping into our neighbor on a walk to more enduring relationships with closest friends and family. All of those social interactions impact us on a variety of levels — from the most micro impressions (in the sense that these interactions truly do get under our skin), to the longer-term trajectories of our life and our health and our happiness. Most immediately, the type of interactions in which we find ourselves, and the quality of those interactions, affect all sorts of biomarkers of stress, for instance. And in the longer term, social interactions impact our sense of mental health, well-being, and overall loneliness.

Beyond their effect on our personal lives, our networks determine the arc of our professional lives. Our interactions impact the information we receive, and how we see the world. Again that has a significant influence on much longer-term trajectories. Networks shape how innovative or creative someone is, how likely they are to get a job, how likely they are to die on their own.

To start parsing then how thinking purposefully about one’s social networks differs from “networking” in the vernacular sense, could we take a familiar instrumentalist formulation (“People who use… personal contacts to find their next job spend less time searching and end up in higher-paying and more prestigious occupations”), and compare it to Social Chemistry ’s more nuanced calculus (“But knowing more people… particularly… people… very similar to you… doesn’t create more value… it simply creates more work”)? Which most basic orientational pivots can redirect us from fetishizing the first point, to productively reflecting on the second point?

That gets at the heart of why I wrote this book. Like so many people, I had that first idea of networking when I began my career. People told me again and again that you need to get out there, and attend all of the professional mixers. You need to “network.” But now I know, from decades of studying how networks actually work, that this was misguided information. This emphasis on how many people you meet primarily comes from a misunderstanding of social relations.

We all have networks. Regardless of whether you can picture what your network looks like, you have a network. And I hope this book can help people start seeing more clearly the threads connecting their current set of relationships, and how these arrangements shape their whole life. Certainly there are instrumental aspects to all of this. If you try to find a new job, studies of networks do show better or worse ways of going about that. But I’d also emphasize more experiential components. Arguably, at the end of the day, our relationships mean more to us than any other part of our lives. That’s a big reason why so many people resist the idea of strategically analyzing these networks of relationships. Still I hope to show that, regardless of what you wish to achieve, you likely can find extraordinary strength in your existing set of relationships. And by better understanding those relationships, you can help yourself — but also help others.

So we might think of “networking” as somehow calculating or dirty. I mean, even when people describe me as someone who studies networking, even after decades, I still kind of cringe [ Laughter ] at this word. But I see real beauty in networks, and in how the sum of their parts amounts to so much more than just a set of individuals.

Yeah, for those of us who can’t help considering it somehow crass to proactively reflect on or cultivate one’s networks, could you outline how crucial it remains both for our species, and for civilizational thriving, to perpetually build and fortify social capital in these ways?

Sure. First, at a fundamental level, terrific research by Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino, and Maryam Kouchaki found exactly that — for many of us, proactively cultivating one’s network feels immoral. To overcome this resistance, you need to get people past this very instrumentalist notion of angling for a new job lead or sales lead. That instrumentalist approach truly does evoke a sense of moral repulsion in a lot of people. They literally feel the need to wash away their sins. And this makes perfect sense if you think about it. Again, our social relationships remain in many ways the most sacred part of our lives, for good reason.

These researchers found that the easiest way to overcome this repulsion involves directing people to focus not on what they can get out of a relationship, but what they can give. That breeds empathy, and taking on others’ perspectives is one of our most powerful ways to overcome this moral aversion. For instance, particularly right now, with so many people starved for social connection and a sense of belonging, even just a conversation, even just being present with someone, can be such a gift. And then beyond these individual interactions, our whole society likewise needs a deeper sense of social connection, which really only comes through networks.

By contrast, if you think about times when we don’t actively cultivate or reinvigorate our social relationships, what happens? Most basically, many of our relationships break down, while others close in on themselves. When left unmanaged these relationships tend to produce dense clusters of like-minded people, stuck in various echo chambers. At a societal level, for example, we start seeing the kinds of intense polarization currently harming our own society, in which people can’t even have a basic conversation about many of today’s most pressing issues. We also see vast epidemics of loneliness, and the proliferation of diseases of despair like addiction and suicide.

Social Chemistry outlines three basic network structures. But before we sketch those structures, could you clarify why we shouldn’t think of them as rigid categorical types of social bonds or personal-character formations, so much as aspects of human relationality that each of us recombines in kaleidoscopic ways, at every stage of our evolving lives, as distinct challenges and opportunities arise — and often even varying from one moment to the next (as we’ve all experienced, say, when “loosening up” after awkward introductions at a party)?

About three decades ago, social scientists really began to map human networks in a concerted way. More recently, an incredible increase in the amount of available data has allowed us to consider more systematically what individual networks look like. I find it especially interesting that, whether we look at the data from 30 years ago, or at today’s social networks, we see these repeated patterns, coming from the fundamental fact that all humans, no matter where or at what stage in life, face a certain set of constraints. We all have some finite amount of time to allocate either to maintaining existing relationships, or to creating new ones. Those choices impact what our network signature looks like. We can only be in so many different places over a given period of time — so locations and physical spaces also play a big part in shaping our network. And because of these constraints, and the ways that our network evolves over our lives, social scientists can characterize three basic types: with conveners’ dense networks producing trust and reciprocity, with brokers’ network structures reaching a wider range of social circles (stimulating creativity and innovation), and with expansionists building extraordinarily large networks that provide power and influence.

But also, like you said, our networks aren’t fixed. They arise in part from whatever life stage we’ve reached. They tend to grow largest around age 25. Various life choices also have a huge impact on what our network signature looks like — both macro-level choices about whether to have children or which city we settle in, and less obvious choices like whether we live on a cul-de-sac or where we sit in an office. All of these decisions, whether made by you or made for you, factor into your network and its constant flux. And one of the most exciting pieces about understanding how networks operate is learning where you can actively reshape your network to help support whatever present needs you have.

In terms now of these three basic types, could we start with expansionists? And can I admit my own instinctive suspicion of these individuals with their frequent, long, loud, confident self-assertion? Why should I not think of expansionists as simply superficial or driven by pointless compulsion? What allows expansionists to thrive, and why do we all (again as a society, as a species) need expansionists?

Expansionists thrive by meeting new people and connecting on a moment-to-moment basis. They get personally excited about this opportunity to meet new people. But they also play an essential role in society, particularly when it comes to creating large-scale social change. Here we can start from the now familiar concept of six degrees of separation. For the whole world to truly connect in these terms, we need expansionists, through their constant interactions, to accelerate the diffusion of new ideas and information.

To give one concrete example of how this happens, I’ve been working recently with the New Haven health system, trying to help them make sure that vaccine resistance doesn’t impede our ability to really begin healing from COVID. Among frontline health-care workers, you might assume a quick uptake of the vaccine, but we actually see some resistance. And in that kind of situation, where you hope to catalyze widespread behavioral transformation, you look for expansionists. Even though many of us might feel skeptical in certain ways about someone we see as a “networker,” expansionists still have a lot of visibility, and a lot of influence. Whether or not we like these expansionists, many of us look up to them. For a broader social transformation to take hold, expansionists often need to get on board.

If I had to extract one sentence from your book, summing up all the social complexity surrounding expansionists, I would pick: “As cumulative advantage sets in, there becomes increasing opportunity for divergence between the underlying human characteristic that sets off popularity… likability… and popularity itself.” What broader societal dynamics do you see stemming from this paradoxical divergence of popularity and likability?

That disconnect happens pretty early on. At first for young children, a very strong connection exists between likability and status or popularity. But over time, and in many different domains, when people start reaching a position of high status, they also start feeling less empathetic. Their ability to see someone else’s perspective starts diminishing. Their ability to really connect with compassion diminishes. But just because of how status dynamics work (with someone who is visible tending to become more and more visible), a separation arises — with the people perceived as most popular, and having the most influence, often not liked much, and often coming across as disconnected from those around them.

People with high status self-report as being one of the loneliest groups in society. We’ve all heard accounts of celebrities, for example, bemoaning their desperate loneliness. We might respond with an eye roll, but something serious is happening here.

Social Chemistry gives the example of Shep Gordon, who maintains pretty well this balance between being popular while still being likable. As an agent or talent manager, Shep Gordon pulled all of these stage stunts, right? He had an intuitive sense that if you create visibility, then the dynamics of popularity can take off. In one of my favorite examples, for his first client Alice Cooper, Shep staged a promotional truck (bearing a big and revealing Alice Cooper photo) breaking down in Piccadilly Circus. This caused a significant real-life traffic jam, which got them a lot of free press, and really served as the launching point for Alice Cooper’s career.

Shep Gordon managed many, many famous people: everyone from Blondie to Pink Floyd. Shep became one of the most famous unfamous people in Hollywood — with the celebrity circuit certainly knowing his name. But at the same time, when faced with a life-threatening illness, he ended up in the hospital with only his assistant sitting beside him. That made him reflect on how, even as you get more visible, you grow less able to connect with the people around you. That points to hugely negative implications for expansionists themselves, but also to a broader lack of connection and understanding — again with many of us adopting the behavior of expansionists, and doing so from an early age. Just think of looking at pre-teenage kids and wondering: Why are you wearing that?

By contrast to expansionists, conveners establish dense, resilient networks producing a sense of security, certainty, and emotional fulfillment. Convening networks provide both species and group advantage through redundant communication systems conducive to sharing complex information, and to singling out “cheaters” or “freeloaders.” Convening networks also can prove constrictive, however, with homogeneity both a cause and an effect of convening formations. So why do we all (and some of us especially) both need, and need to remain slightly wary of, convening networks’ centripetal power?

Convening networks, in which your friends are also friends with each other, provide a lot of trust and reputational benefits. They create a great sense of belonging. Studies of our species development, and of what we’ve needed for society to evolve, suggest that, to get past a certain size, human groups had to gossip with one another. We needed to know whom we could trust, and who might violate norms. Convening networks do a good job providing these information benefits, allowing social circles to thrive without fear of somebody not having your back, or actively undermining the group.

Those particular benefits appeal especially to people who feel, for instance, a strong need for certainty. They dislike change. They don’t want to adjust plans at the last minute. Frank Flynn from Stanford has called this the “need for closure.” This predisposition leads some people to thrive best in convening networks. But also, in general, when we don’t actively manage our networks, they tend to take on this convening form.

People who have worked at the same company or lived in the same place for a long time tend to develop convening networks — in part just because, probabilistically, if you’re friends with Alan and you’re friends with Anna, the likelihood of Anna and Alan meeting at some point goes up. But also, psychologically, a friend of a friend tends to become our friend. When this doesn’t happen, certain social ties might start to dissolve from psychological strain.

A different downside arrives though when these tight networks start becoming echo chambers. We can’t get fresh information if we always talk to the same people. We don’t get new ideas, or new perspectives. And particularly if you take that isolated forum or echo chamber, and then add various power dynamics, you often get something that operates like a high-school clique. This group might ostracize certain kinds of members, and keep other people out altogether. That can have negative impacts both on these individuals and on society.

Yeah, Social Chemistry declares that “We gravitate toward people… similar to us, but we are most likely to benefit from difference.” So what are some proactive, constructive, creative ways for societies, for particular organizations, for purposeful individuals to prompt convening to take place not just around the immediate comforts of self-sameness?

In many ways, we seek out these structures because they seem safe. When we interact with people who look like us and talk like us, they feel familiar. Though in terms of benefits that can arise through more diversity, one great study looked at a broader range of possible points of similarity. So if you tell two people in an experiment that they have similar fingerprints, they’ll like each other more. But if you tell them they have something extraordinarily rare in common (that they don’t just have similar fingerprints, but both have special “type E” fingerprints), then they feel a much stronger bond.

For one takeaway, instead of trying to get people to see their common points of similarity (socio-demographic characteristics, or pretty obvious likes and dislikes), you can push them to move beyond just surface-level characteristics. They receive the benefit of comparability, but they also build trust more rapidly. They also often have fun making these deeper connections. When I’ve done this with groups and teams, people come up with all kinds of connections in a short amount of time, around something they wouldn’t otherwise have thought of — exotic pets, for example.

Brokers of course exemplify these benefits that come about when cultures, perspectives, and ideas commingle and recombine in novel, innovative, productive ways. As adaptable code-switchers, brokers can bring together various parties — in part by strategically tailoring their message to multiple audiences. Brokers face prospects though of coming across as aloof, incoherent, suspect. What might non-brokers doubt, or sometimes fail to appreciate, about how brokers operate?

Well if convening networks have a tendency to evolve into echo chambers, brokers straddle different social worlds — often to everybody’s benefit. Innovation, we know, mostly comes through recombination. A broker, for instance, might work with the firm’s engineering department, and also its sales department, and also play tennis on the weekend. By straddling different groups who normally might not talk to each other, this broker is well-positioned to be creative. Operating in this idea-import and -export business generates innovations benefitting the broker, but also whole organizations or communities or society.

One downside, as you mentioned, comes from people often treating brokers with suspicion. Brokers are big targets for reputation assassination. This makes their position difficult to maintain. Without self-reflection, or without recognizing the potential dangers, brokers can get themselves in a really uncomfortable position.

Somebody will see this broker as too agentic, as somehow Machiavellian. So while this brokerage position, particularly at mid-career, can become quite beneficial from a professional standpoint, women, for instance, face a backlash for being a broker. Stereotypes tell us that women should be compassionate, rather than agentic. A lot of great research shows this pressure on working women to come across as communal and empathetic. And empathetic brokers in fact don’t see these same reputational penalties. A trusted broker faces fewer drawbacks as well. But too often, if they fail to go out of their way to display empathy and to connect people (rather than keeping them apart), brokers face significant reputational penalties.

Brokers, particularly arbitraging brokers, can prove adept at benefiting from this intermediary role. But why and how might an institution seek to incentivize cooperative, rather than arbitraging, brokers?

Good question. Brokers are basically people who find themselves in a certain position, filling a hole between two different groups in society. So imagine I’m brokering between groups. I fit somewhere between the engineering department and the sales department. I know what’s happening in both, and I see the same new ideas starting to develop in each. Should I keep those two groups apart, and profit from their ideas by trying to unify these myself, as an arbitraging broker? Or should I bring the relevant parties together so that they can cooperate, without necessarily needing me as the go-between?

Research shows that the returns to the individual actually look better when keeping those two departments apart. But a broader organization really should want to bring these departments together. So by thinking about how to incentivize intergroup innovation or cooperation, we can shift how these relationships get structured, in order to unleash more creativity benefitting everyone — not just the individual broker.

Again, for just one extracted sentence summing up so much species paradox and civilizational/institutional folly, could you here unpack the striking formulation that: “Power makes it more difficult to identify brokerage opportunities, but simultaneously increases people’s willingness to broker”?

Sure. We do see this particularly negative effect when it comes to network perception. Gaining power in an organization corresponds to increased analytical thinking, and increased disconnect from what’s actually happening on the ground. People in power tend not to identify clearly the best opportunities for effective brokering. But people in power also feel empowered to act. So Helen and Anna’s boss might try to introduce them, and get them working together. But Helen and Anna might already have a much better way of working together. If you think about your own job, this probably happens all the time. People in charge tend to be pretty disconnected from those strong interpersonal relationships. That’s part of what makes people in power feel so lonely, and also makes them such terrible brokers.

So again, which incentive structures have you come across that best help to make those in power less detached in this way?

We actually don’t have many good examples. If I could answer that question I’d be writing that book [ Laughter ]. Humility helps. So does understanding biases. Powerful people are more likely to rely on stereotypes and biases when making decisions. We really do need to recognize just how common network biases are. We tend to think the popular people are more popular than they really are. We overestimate the likelihood that two people we know are themselves friends. Starting to understand and to check some of these common biases can help a lot.

But we also need, and thankfully have, many possible ways to encourage people in power to think like true brokers. Organizations might design networks allowing people who wouldn’t normally come together to come together. Or we know that brokers often arise because they’ve had unusual career paths. So designing systematic programs that allow brokers to develop, and that allow brokers to become leaders, can provide an effective way of accomplishing these organizational goals — rather than trying to go in and manipulate local-level social structure.

To take one quick step back now, to what you said about constrictive gender stereotypes, and particularly for readers who might see many of these behavioral traits we’ve discussed as primarily shaped by class and social norms, rather than by relational structures in some more personalized sense, how would you describe the role that external factors, and that internal traumas (with childhood poverty, say, providing clear examples of both), play in determining which of our dispositional tendencies get activated through which kinds of networks?

Right, our networks do in many ways get shaped by socio-demographic characteristics, especially race and class. The type of high school you attend probably has the biggest impact on what your network looks like. If and where you went to college has a similar effect. Personality matters too, but not nearly as much as we might think. For instance, extroversion would seem the most obvious predictor for expansionists, but expansionists actually don’t show much variance in this regard.

Race and class also have extraordinary implications for networks because of how these networks get shaped by the spaces we spend our time in. So here again structural inequality plays a big role. And if we don’t understand how networks operate, we also might miss how these networks tend to reinforce structural inequality. People who start with strong networks tend to have networks that get stronger and stronger. They benefit from cumulative advantage. So here again, unless we develop proactive interventions, allowing people without social capital to develop it, we as a society will never approach anything like true equality.

David Pedulla and Devah Pager did great research looking at how using networks to get a job varied by race. They found that utilizing a network to search for a job helped anyone. But African American job seekers had to network twice as hard to get this same outcome — again pointing to how even helpful networks can reinforce inequality. So when we think about how companies, for instance, can recruit a diverse range of hires at all levels, they might need to establish internships and programs allowing prospective employees to develop networks within the firm, and then give these employees additional opportunities to develop relationships that otherwise might not happen. We can’t just expect this all to work itself out on its own. Structural inequality around social capital can be just as severe and long-lasting as structural inequality around financial capital.

Then for comparing and contextualizing the merits of each network structure, how would you delineate some basic tradeoffs between the cognitive/emotional/time investments required for building and for making the most of expansionist or convening or brokering networks? And here could you give some examples of certain life opportunities and challenges calling for certain specific network structures?

We have a natural human tendency, when faced with a moment of uncertainty or turmoil, for our networks to become more convening — particularly for people without access to adequate resources. If you consider a large-scale natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina (or again in my own research during COVID), in times of crisis, most of us turn inward, which makes perfect sense. We need more social support.

But when you face these types of crises, you also need new information. Let’s say you have to look for a new job during COVID, or for new housing after Katrina. To get the most helpful information here, you need a much more expansive network, with connections to brokerage. That’s how you’ll get the necessary information. So our natural tendencies can in many ways backfire, and hold us back in certain challenging situations.

Again, any institutional interventions that have proved consistently effective here?

Some really interesting research done by Ned Smith, Tanya Menon, and Leigh Thompson found that the way out of this actually involves reaffirming one’s sense of self, and one’s sense of identity. From that place of reaffirming your own values, you feel more comfortable in many ways, and can overcome this common tendency to imagine your network as smaller than it actually is — and to focus inward, on only your closest connections. Again, this all boils down to having some sense of control. And one of the best ways to develop a sense of control, particularly during a time of uncertainty, is to reaffirm your own values and beliefs.

Maybe we should flesh out one idea you just brought up — of our networks being bigger and more enduring than we think they are.

Right, we certainly underestimate the size and strength of our network. If you even just try to imagine everyone you’ve bumped into over the past few years, you can’t keep track. And then if you begin thinking about not just the people you’re connected to, but the people they’re connected to, you really can start to sense what connects us basically to everyone across the globe.

But you also can sense the extraordinary power in your own existing network — particularly when you then start including the people you haven’t seen in two years or three years, or maybe five or 10 years. And what I find most amazing here is that the trust in those relationships doesn’t diminish over time. So when we consider the best ways to cultivate our networks, we often don’t need to prioritize meeting new people as much as we think. We should tap the value that already exists in our network.

And should we close here on Social Chemistry ’s intriguing point that people on the other side also want to talk to us, and often just feel awkward about reaching out (like we do)?

Yes! It’s so true that the biggest point of resistance people have to reaching out to old friends and acquaintances and contacts comes from worrying it will feel awkward to get back in touch. So many of us ask ourselves: “What would we talk about?” But again and again, every time I’ve asked somebody to do this, the result is remarkable for everyone involved.

I mean, just imagine yourself on the receiving end, especially during this current moment. We all know how reaffirming and positive it feels to get an email or phone call from somebody we know and like, just reaching out with no particular agenda, just wanting to say hello. Now more than ever, so many of us feel starved for social interaction and social connection. So again, reaching out with no specific agenda is actually one of the most positive things we can do for each other right now. There is power in this simple act of connecting.

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Blogging on business, social chemistry: a book review by bob morris.

How the basic elements of social structure and their psychological tendencies shape our lives

According to Marissa King, “Social scientists have spent the last four decades studying the antecedents and consequences of social network structure. How your network is shaped (consciously or unconsciously has enormous implications for a wide variety of personal and professional outcomes. The strength and quality of your social connections and their arrangement profoiundly affect your experie3nce of the world, your emotion, and your personal and professional success.”

She wrote this book in order to explain how the basic elements of social structure — and the psychological tendencies that accompany them — shape our lives. “Decades of research has shown that the myopic focus on network size is misguided. The quality (not quantity) of your social connection is a strong predictor  of your social connections is a strong predictor of your cognitive functioning, work resilience, and work engagement. In addition, the structure of your contacts — whether you are an expansionist, broker, the convener — helps explain everything from your pay to the quality of your ideas.”

What we have here are scientific research-driven insights that King has uncovered or accumulated and now shares with as many people as possible. (Check out her “Notes,” Pages 281-338.) For example, there are a few patterns of human connection that have much greater potential value than do others. Social networks, for example: yours “can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles that decrease in emotional in tensity as you move outward. Decades of research by [Robin] Dunbar and his colleagues have unveiled a pattern: the size of our social circles expands in roughly multiples of three.” They also suggest that 150 should be the average size of a social group.

King focuses much of her attention on three “dimensions” or “interaction spaces” in which human connections are made. The challenge is to determine which social chemistry is most appropriate for you. She introduces three distinct types or operation model in Chapter 2 and then devotes a separate chapter to each. Briefly,  Expansionists prefer a vast network with weak connections and concentrate on adding new relationships. Brokers have some strong connections but the strength of their network comes from weak ones. and they concentrate them. As for Conveners,  they prefer having few but strong connections on which they concentrate. “The beauty of networks, including your own social signature, is that their properties are greater than the sum of their parts.”

I agree with Simon SInek about the importance of WHY.  As is also true of so many other initiatives, you get about as much out of making human connections. Which relationships will be of greatest interest and value?  Other than time and effort, and perhaps some funds, what else do you offer? What do you hope to accomplish? Long ago, a thief named Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. “That’s where the money is.” Hence the importance of belonging to trade and professional associations — as well as other networks of social connection — whose members can be helpful.

Thank you, Marissa King, for providing an abundance if valuable information, insights, and counsel that can help almost any person in almost any organization to “decode” and then derive benefit from the available patterns of connection. Shared and separate struggles during the emergence of the coronavirus throughout the world continue to illustrate the compelling relevance and timeless truth of what she affirms in her concluding paragraph:

“In combination, brokers, expansionists, and conveners make the world small. They strike a beautiful balance between order and randomness. That is how brains and ecosystems and ant colonies work. Despite the differences in personality and preferences of brokers, expansionists, and conveners, they can contribute to creating a brilliant, vibrant social order.”

In terms of accelerating both personal growth and professional development, this book could well prove to be one of the most valuable that many people ever read. Bravo!

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Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.

Credit... Alex Merto

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By Tracy Dennis-Tiwary

Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary is a professor of psychology and neuroscience, director of the Emotion Regulation Lab at Hunter College.

• Published March 26, 2024 Updated March 27, 2024
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THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness , by Jonathan Haidt

Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.

That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION : How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness | By Jonathan Haidt | Penguin Press | 385 pp. | $30

Inside the World of Gen Z

The generation of people born between 1997 and 2012 is changing fashion, culture, politics, the workplace and more..

For many Gen-Zers without much disposable income, Facebook isn’t a place to socialize online — it’s where they can get deals on items  they wouldn’t normally be able to afford.

Dating apps are struggling to live up to investors’ expectations . Blame the members of Generation Z, who are often not willing to shell out for paid subscriptions.

Young people tend to lean more liberal on issues pertaining to relationship norms. But when it comes to dating, the idea that men should pay in heterosexual courtships  still prevails among Gen Z-ers .

We asked Gen Z-ers to tell us about their living situations and the challenges of keeping a roof over their heads. Here’s what they said .

What is it like to be part of the group that has been called the most diverse generation in U.S. history? Here is what 900 Gen Z-ers had to say .

Young people coming of age around the world are finding community in all sorts of places. Our “Where We Are” series takes you to some of them .

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Trump is selling ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles for $59.99 as he faces mounting legal bills

Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, released a video on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday urging supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad.

FILE - President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Trump is now selling Bibles as he runs to return to the White House. The presumptive Republican nominee released a video on his Truth Social platform Tuesday urging his supporters to purchase the “God Bless The USA Bible.” (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is now selling Bibles as he runs to return to the White House.

Trump, who became the presumptive Republican nominee earlier this month, released a video on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday urging his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” which is inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad. Trump takes the stage to the song at each of his rallies and has appeared with Greenwood at events.

“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible,” Trump wrote, directing his supporters to a website selling the book for $59.99.

The effort comes as Trump has faced a serious money crunch amid mounting legal bills while he fights four criminal indictments along with a series of civil charges. Trump was given a reprieve Monday when a New York appeals court agreed to hold off on collecting the more than $454 million he owes following a civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175 million within 10 days. Trump has already posted a $92 million bond in connection with defamation cases brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll , who accused Trump of sexual assault.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in the video posted on Truth Social. “I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible. We must make America pray again.”

Billing itself as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” the new venture’s website calls it “Easy-to-read” with “large print” and a “slim design” that “invites you to explore God’s Word anywhere, any time.”

Besides a King James Version translation, it includes copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as a handwritten chorus of the famous Greenwood song.

The Bible is just the latest commercial venture that Trump has pursued while campaigning.

Last month, he debuted a new line of Trump-branded sneakers , including $399 gold “Never Surrender High-Tops,” at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia. The venture behind the shoes, 45Footwear, also sells other Trump-branded footwear, cologne and perfume.

Trump has also dabbled in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, and last year reported earning between $100,000 and $1 million from a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him in cartoon-like images, including as an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero.

Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments, and a civil lawsuit. You can track all of the cases here .

He has also released books featuring photos of his time in office and letters written to him through the years.

The Bible’s website states the product “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”

“GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates,” it says.

Instead, it says, “GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure, has a similar arrangement with 45Footwear, which also says it uses Trump’s “name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

A Trump spokesperson and God Bless the USA Bible did not immediately respond to questions about how much Trump was paid for the licensing deal or stands to make from each book sale.

Trump remains deeply popular with white evangelical Christians , who are among his most ardent supporters, even though the thrice-married former reality TV star has a long history of behavior that often seemed at odds with teachings espoused by Christ in the Gospels.

When he was running in 2016, Trump raised eyebrows when he cited “Two Corinthians” at Liberty University, instead of the standard “Second Corinthians.”

When asked to share his favorite Bible verse in an interview with Bloomberg Politics in 2015, he demurred.

“I wouldn’t want to get into it. Because to me, that’s very personal,” he said. “The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”

When he was president, law enforcement officers aggressively removed racial justice protesters from a park near the White House, allowing Trump to walk to nearby St. John’s Church, where he stood alone and raised a Bible. The scene was condemned at the time by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Before he ran for office, Trump famously hawked everything from frozen steaks to vodka to a venture named Trump University, which was later sued for fraud .

Chemistry teacher 'Shabaz Says' warns his millions of followers about the realities of social media

• social media
• Thursday 28 March 2024 at 12:43pm

Granada Reports reporter Siham Ali sits down with Shabaz Ali about his rise on social media and the message behind his first book 'I'm Rich, You're Poor'.

A chemistry teacher is warning young people about the realities of social media - after amassing millions of followers himself.

Shabaz Ali, 30, from Blackburn , gained a combined following of over three million across Instagram and TikTok, after he went viral for his "I'm Rich, You're Poor" series.

In the videos, Shabaz pokes fun at the lifestyles of rich influencers and their social media posts.

He said: "It started from me speaking to pupils about the cost of living crisis really, and watching people struggle seeing people have so much."

His students would aspire to be like the influencers they saw online, both in terms of wealth and lifestyle.

Shabaz said: "It wasn't just money... it went so much beyond that.

"It went to what they eat, what they wear, what they look like, how they travel, how they love... everything is constantly bombarded with you're not doing well enough."

His rise on social media was boosted by a viral video where he commentated over a video in which a woman was restocking her ice cube trays to an "absurd" amount of ice cubes.

He said: " It was an absurd amount of ice! More than you ever need. It was me watching this going 'surely you can’t have a job if you can do this all day.'"

Now, Shabaz has written a book, in which he talks about how social media can set unrealistic expectations for people of all ages.

He said: "I'm not saying that inherently having money or being attractive, or being healthy is bad. I'm just saying remember how it makes other people feel.

"And one of the lines in the book is that you know, I don't want to single, poor and ugly for the rest of my life. I would like to elevate myself beyond that, I do want to be in a relationship.

"I just think there's a fine line between having something and telling people how much you have."

"Find a community online, find a bunch of people that are similar to you and have fun. The biggest thing is once you know how social media can make you feel and you reflect on it, don't let it make you feel that way, reduce the impact it has on you."

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To know...

Journal of Materials Chemistry C

Cross-linking strategies for efficient and highly stable perovskite solar cells.

* Corresponding authors

a Strait Institute of Flexible Electronics (SIFE, Future Technologies), Fujian Normal University and Strait Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (SLoFE), Fuzhou, Fujian 350117, China E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

Over the past few years, revolutionary progress has been made in perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with the power conversion efficiency (PCE) skyrocketing from the initial 3.8% to 26.0%. However, stability issues are still holding back their commercialization process despite tremendous efforts being devoted to the research on perovskite composition regulation, additive or surface engineering, and the exploration of interfacial or charge transport materials. Recently, the cross-linking strategies involving cross-linkable organic molecules have come to the fore due to their great potential in synchronously enhancing the intrinsic, processing, thermal, and mechanical stabilities of perovskites. Hence, in this review, the recent advances in cross-linking methods utilized in PSCs are systematically summarized, including the influencing factors on device stability, the definition and mechanisms of cross-linking strategies, and the development of various functional cross-linking molecules, among which the key elaborations consist of the molecular design and related efficacy for cross-linking strategies as well as their contributions to device performance. Finally, future perspectives and directions for cross-linking strategies are provided, which are expected to gather further research momentum in exploiting more efficient and durable cross-linking approaches to realize efficient, highly stable PSCs.

• This article is part of the themed collection: Journal of Materials Chemistry C Recent Review Articles

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X. Wang, Z. Ding, X. Huang, X. Liu, Y. Wang, Y. Wang and W. Huang, J. Mater. Chem. C , 2024,  12 , 351 DOI: 10.1039/D3TC03183G

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