You can find protein everywhere. Animal meats are big sources of protein: chicken, turkey, beef, pork, and others. You can also get it from fish. White fish, like cod or halibut, is one of the most efficient natural sources of protein you can find. Not your thing? Dairy is another option. Yogurt, eggs, cheese, and good old fashioned cow’s milk can boost your protein intake. You can get protein from plants. Soybeans—edamame—and chickpeas are great sources. Protein is also in oats, lentils, beans, and quinoa.

But for some people, that’s not enough. Gymgoers and bodybuilders have long added protein powder to shakes and have snacked on dry, bad-tasting protein bars. But now, high protein is coming out of the gym and going mainstream.

There are two ways you see this in the grocery store. First, you see more of the traditional high-protein foods. Cottage cheese is a great example. Ten or twenty years ago, low-fat cottage cheese was almost a byword for unappetizing food. It’s the sort of thing people would eat on a diet—and not a day longer.

Not anymore. Refined recipes and better branding have made cottage cheese officially cool. A market research firm estimates that in the U.S., sales of cottage cheese are up fifty percent over just a few years ago. I eat it the old-fashioned way—with a spoon directly out of the tub. But others blend it with fruit, add it to smoothies, spread it on pita bread, and mix it in with scrambled eggs.

Other naturally high-protein foods are also becoming more popular. Sales of Greek yogurt, beef jerky, and chickpeas are also increasing these days. Even the humble glass of cow’s milk is coming back. In the U.S., fluid milk sales had declined every year for fifteen years—until the trend reversed in 2024. New ultra-filtered varieties offer higher percentages of protein, and are often easier to digest.

The other way you see the protein fad in the grocery store is with protein-enhanced products. Here, food manufacturers add protein to other foods that aren’t normally high in protein. Most big food companies like Nestle and ConAgra are adding business units, product lines, or special labels just for protein-enhanced products.

Nestle, for example, created a line of products called Vital Pursuit, many of which are protein-enhanced. A 360-calorie frozen pizza has 33 grams of protein. That’s about twice as much protein as its standard frozen pizza would have, for the same number of calories. Mars even makes a high-protein chocolate bar, with 20 grams of protein in 378 calories.

And startups are getting in on the action, too. Protein Pints is protein-enhanced ice cream; it has 10 grams per 160 calories. Feisty Soda says on its website that “soda just got a protein upgrade.” A can of its green apple & lime soda has 67 calories and 10 grams of protein.

You can also find protein-enhanced chips, waffles, and cookies. If you think you’re seeing the word “protein” everywhere, you’re not the only one. An analysis in the U.S. found that in 2024, food makers introduced 97 new products with the word “protein” in the title—that’s double the amount of the year before.

But nutrition experts advise being careful about these protein-enhanced foods. If your main source of protein is ice cream and waffles, then you’re getting your protein from highly processed sources. That comes with its own problems.

And besides, not every gram of protein is created equal. Natural sources of protein often have a more complete amino acid profile—meaning, they’re higher quality sources. And protein is not the only story in a person’s diet. A protein pizza doesn’t have many of the other micronutrients that a healthy meal has.

For most people, it’s probably better to get a moderate amount of protein, and to get it from higher quality sources. Exactly how much do you need, though? The World Health Organization says the minimum is 0.83 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. That’s pretty low. Bodybuilders, on the other hand, usually aim for between 1.6 and 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Most people who are aiming for general health can shoot for something in between those two ranges.

You can’t really get hurt by eating too much protein, but there’s no additional benefit from consuming more than you need, more than your body uses for maintaining or building muscle mass. And in case you’re wondering: no, you can’t stock up on protein. Unlike carbs and fat, your body has no way to store excess protein for later use.

If you’re trying to build muscle, it’s probably better to get as much protein as possible, within reason. Of course, some people do take things a little too far, like one character on season 3 of The White Lotus. He was so obsessed with protein shakes that he took a blender with him on vacation.

Jeff’s take

GLP-1 weight loss drugs are a big driver of this trend, too. One of the concerns that doctors have is that if people lose their appetite on GLP-1 drugs, then they won’t get enough protein—they won’t eat enough. So when you go on GLP-1s, they often advise you to switch to high protein sources and vegetables. And that’s part of the trend, too.

If I am allowed, I would like to ask for one thing to come from this for me personally. I would like to ask for better, higher-protein options in a convenience store. Two months back, I was on a long drive in the U.S. and—it’s a long story, but I was hungry, I was in a hurry, I was in a gas station—and there was just no healthy option.

And I read that food companies are experimenting with better varieties of pre-packaged snacks like, just grilled chicken breast in a plastic wrapper. This is what I want. I don’t need extra protein in my waffles. I don’t need a 378-calorie Mars bar with protein added. I don’t need that. But if I can have a healthier, higher protein snack in a gas station or convenience store, then I would be very, very happy.

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I’m reading a great book right now. It’s called A Bad Name. Actually, wait. It’s called The Story of a New Name. Hang on, that’s not right. You might know it as, The Story of a New Last Name.

Whatever you call it, it’s the second book in a series by Elena Ferrante. The Italian title—the original—can be translated directly as, “The Story of a New Last Name.” That’s about the same as the titles in French, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian. Of all the languages I looked at, only one translated it differently—Spanish, which is the version I’m reading. The Spanish title translates to, A Bad Name.

And the irony is, of all those languages, Spanish is most similar to Italian. That doesn’t seem to make sense—the closest language is the one with the most different title translation.

Movie and book titles can be confusing, as anyone who speaks a second language can tell you. And once in a while, you’ll see a case—like my Elena Ferrante book—that’s really confusing.

What’s going on here? To make sense of it all, we need to look at how the business works. Let’s start with books. The original publisher of a book sells the rights to foreign-language publishers. Sometimes those are subsidiaries of the original publisher. Other times, they’re entirely different companies. But it’s those local companies that hire a translator for the text, design the cover art, decide on a title, and implement plans for production, marketing and distribution.

So when a book lands in a new language, a new company takes over the whole production—including the title. That means there’s no central figure making sure that a book’s title is consistent across all the world’s languages. And in fact, the process is called “localization” because it’s about so much more than just translation.

And that makes sense. Because while publishing is a great vehicle for distributing the art of literature, it is, above all, a business. And the local publishers use their creative and business expertise to pick the title that will sell the best in their local markets.

In the case of my book, the Spanish publisher, Lumen, decided to take a little more creative license with the title than, say, the Russian or Japanese publishers did. And they had every right to do that because they own the rights to the Spanish version of the book.

Movies work the same way. When a movie is released in a new country, and in a new language, the movie goes to a local distributor. The local distributor is the one who gets the movie into the theaters, creates the trailers, does subtitling and dubbing, and produces the posters and other marketing collateral.

So we know that with both books and movies, local companies are in charge of the titles in foreign languages. But how do they decide on a title? This is a big decision, and there are a few potential strategies.

The first is almost not a strategy at all, which is to just keep the English title. Titanic is a great example. It’s one word, it’s a proper noun, and it’s widely understood in other languages. Avatar, Skyfall, and Oppenheimer are all movie titles that were not translated at all.

But if you are going to translate, the safest option is to translate the title as literally as possible. Take the first book in the Elena Ferrante series. My Brilliant Friend is the English title, and it hews closely to the Italian. Every other language I looked at came very close to a direct translation. This is a good option for titles with simple words and universal concepts.

The Lion King, The Godfather, and Pirates of the Caribbean got literal, direct translations in multiple languages.

As in many parts of life, though, the safest option is not always the best. A lot of thought goes into the original title. How it sounds; how many words are required; how long those words are; how they look on a poster; if there’s rhyming, alliteration, or wordplay. Plus, many movie titles include a cultural understanding that would be lost in a direct translation.

Home Alone is a great example. In English, it’s two words of about the same length, and they blend together very easily: Home Alone. And in the English-speaking world, “home alone” is commonly understood to mean a child left at home without parents or any type of guardian. So the title is quick, snappy, and powerful. In just two short words, it captures the excitement and a little bit of danger that kids feel when their parents are away.

But in other languages, a direct translation of “home alone” sounds more like, “at home, by yourself.” I don’t know about you, but I’m not running to the theater to see that movie.

So the local distributors don’t just think about, “What would the original title be in our language?” They have to think about, “What would make people in our country pay to see this movie?” That’s why in France, the Home Alone title became something like, Mom—I missed the flight! and in China it was Little Devil Takes Charge at Home.

Interestingly, some “translations” of English movie titles are just different English words. This is common in France. The Hangover was released in France as, Very Bad Trip, just like that, in English. Pitch Perfect, which includes a play on words in English, was released in France with an alternate English title, The Hit Girls. So what would it take to get French viewers to the cinemas to see those movies? Just different English-language titles, I guess.

The final approach is the most difficult. This is to try to match the poetry of the title, but in a different way. And this is the most daring way to title a movie in another language. But it can really pay off when done well.

Here’s an example. In English, a common formulation for a story title is, “X and the Y.” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. James and the Giant Peach. Sex and the City. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This is a common pattern, especially for children’s stories, but it’s not that way in every language.

The Danish title of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory translates to, The Boy Who Drowned in the Chocolate Sauce. That doesn’t sound great in English. But—and I won’t try to pronounce it—in Danish, three words start with “d” and two of them start with “dr”, giving the title a rhythmic, almost musical sound. So they replace the, “X and the Y” pattern common in English with a title that includes alliteration in Danish—a different kind of artistry.

This more poetic approach is common when translating movies into languages with different alphabets. Chinese has many, many more characters than the Latin alphabet we use in English. You can fit a lot more information into less space. And in Chinese, a four-character title is considered elegant, balanced, and symmetrical. A lot of Chinese idioms are just four characters long.

So finding a good title that’s also four characters is like the holy grail of translating movie names in Chinese. One of the most-often-cited translations is of the movie, The Bridges of Madison County. In Chinese, the translation is like, The Lost Dream by the Covered Bridge. Not bad at all—but even better because they made it four characters.

Jeff’s take

Special thanks to ChatGPT for the assist on this one. There’s no way I would have been able to get the English equivalents from all these movies without ChatGPT. And I did spot check them from other sources, just to be safe.

Also—if you are a book lover, I highly recommend these books I mentioned at the beginning of the story. They’re called the Neapolitan Novels, in English—four books in total, starting with My Brilliant Friend. They are by the Italian writer Elena Ferrante, a pseudonym, by the way. And I love them. I’m in the middle of the second book now, in Spanish, and I can’t put it down—and big thanks to JR who turned me onto them. JR is the producer of Plain English. If you’re not a book lover, no worries. There’s a four-part series that you can binge on Max.

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Here’s a fact of life: Species go extinct.

You may already be familiar with the dire wolf. That’s the wolf from “Game of Thrones,” the books and the hugely popular TV series. The dire wolf is also in the “Dungeons & Dragons” video game and in the fantasy card game, “Magic: the Gathering.”

The dire wolf was a real animal, but it went extinct about ten thousand years ago, probably because of environmental change and competition for food. Humans had just started hunting, and humans hunted many of the same large animals that the dire wolf preyed on.

Now, though, a biotech startup in Texas says it has brought the dire wolf back from extinction, the first time a species has ever been revived. Colossal Biosciences, a private company, recently gave life to two wolf pups—Romulus and Remus, named after the twin founders of Rome in ancient mythology.

Romulus and Remus are about a year old. They have four legs, two eyes, a bright white fur coat, and they behave similar to wolves. Are they “dire wolves,” as the company says—and if not, what are they?

Let’s start with what Colossal did. The company set out to recreate the dire wolf, and they used two main ingredients. First, they carefully extracted DNA specimens from known dire wolf fossils. They took samples from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old bone fragment. DNA from fossils is often degraded, but there was enough genetic information in these samples to identify traits like body size, coat color, and jaw structure.

The next step was to find a close living cousin to fill in the gaps in DNA. That’s because the full dire wolf’s DNA was not available from the fossils. The closest living cousin was the gray wolf, the most common modern wolf species. Colossal would start with the gray wolf’s DNA, and modify it based on what they learned from the dire wolf DNA samples.

They made edits to just 14 genes. Here’s one example. They found a gene that controls size. They swapped out the gray wolf gene for the dire wolf gene, which would cause the animal to grow much larger. Another set of edits would control the color of the coat.

After they completed the gene editing, they had modern wolf cells with partially-modified DNA. The next step was to create a living, viable animal from these cells. To do that, they used a surrogate. They inserted the nucleus of the edited wolf cell into a domestic dog’s egg, creating an embryo. They implanted the embryo into a dog—the dog was now pregnant with wolf-like pups.

After a 62-day gestation period, scientists performed a C-section birth and welcomed two white wolf-like creatures into the world—both male. A female, named Khaleesi, was born a few months later.

Romulus and Remus are developing the way the scientists expected. They’re growing bigger than gray wolves, on track to weight about 60 to 65 kilograms. They have thick, white fur—much different from gray wolves. They play, howl, and explore; like other wolves, they’re shy around humans. By all accounts, they are healthy and normal. They live in a 2,000-acre preserve in the United States. The specific location has not been disclosed.

The three wolves—two male and one female—have already formed a small pack. The female, Khaleesi, will reach reproductive age in about two years. At that point, the new wolves are expected to be able to reproduce.

So the question is: are they dire wolves? Colossal, the company that did the experiment, calls them by the same scientific name as the extinct dire wolf. But most independent scientists would not go that far.

They are not an exact DNA match for the extinct species. They are a new type of animal—they have DNA mostly from gray wolves, with modifications to match our best possible understanding of the extinct dire wolves. A lot of the dire wolf DNA is simply not available.

And remember how the gray wolf is the closest living cousin? That’s true—but they’re not as close as they seem. The two species diverged into different branches of the evolutionary tree millions of years ago. The gray wolf may be the closest living relative, but the two species are not close, genetically speaking. A dire wolf that lived 10,000 years ago would not have been able to breed with a gray wolf—and neither would it be able to breed with the animal that Colossal created.

So the dire wolf—the species that lived many thousands of years ago—that dire wolf is not back. But that didn’t stop Colossal from breathlessly championing a de-extinction. Many media outlets ran with the story, skipping over details about how dissimilar the new pups are from dire wolves from long ago.

The company, Colossal, is currently working on doing the same for other species. The dodo bird went extinct in the late 1600s. That was a bird on an island off the coast of Africa that did not fly. The wooly mammoth was an elephant-like animal, native to the Arctic tundra; it went extinct anywhere between four and ten thousand years ago.

Jeff’s take

Here are two perspectives for you; you can decide for yourself which one you like. Here’s one. Humans are bringing other species down. We, and our technological progress, are responsible for the extinction of many other species. So why would we not use our intelligence and our technology to do something good, to undo some of the harm humans have done?

Here’s another perspective. Often when humans attempt to interfere with biology, we do more harm than good. There are a million living species at risk of going extinct today—wouldn’t it be better to save those, than to promote a false undo button on previously-extinct species?

This perspective says that the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf is not a de-extinction at all. It’s just a synthetic animal that only looks like an extinct animal—or, more accurately, looks like what we think an extinct animal might have looked like. A rough copy, in other words—a copy to make us feel like we’re doing something good. Meanwhile, real, living animal species are threatened by habitat loss, invasive species, disease, and poaching.

The post Did scientists revive an extinct wolf or just create a look-alike? appeared first on Plain English.

I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I used to travel a lot for work. I’ve spent time in the lounges and food courts, the waiting areas, ticketing counters, and the lost-baggage offices. I rented a nap room in one airport, and I’ve killed plenty of time in airport bars. I’ve even been taken to the windowless area where immigration officers question you—that was in Toronto, after I had just gotten my work visa.

But there’s one part of the airport I’ve never been to: the airport chapel.

Every once in a while, when wandering the corridors of the airport, I hear an announcement about upcoming services in the chapel. And now and then, I see discreet signs pointing to the chapel. But like most travelers, I’ve never been inside. And truth be told, I’ve always wondered why airport chapels exist—and also, what they’re like inside.

Most airport chapels are interfaith spaces. That means, they’re not dedicated to just a single religion or a single faith. Instead, they can serve people of any religious faith. They have neutral décor, with simple furnishings. Some are large enough to accommodate a small crowd; others can fit just a few people.

The larger chapels have pews or rows of chairs and a simple altar. Many have copies of religious texts like the Bible, Quran, or Torah, often in multiple languages. Some have private or semi-private rooms nearby, where travelers can pray individually, meditate, or seek counseling from the on-site chaplain. The best chapels are soundproof and offer soft lighting, to provide a calm environment, a refuge from the chaos outside.

The first airport chapel opened at Boston’s Logan International Airport in 1951. At the time, air travel was just starting to become accessible to the mass market, and airports began to employ a lot of people. The chapel was specifically created for the employees. Boston was—and is—a heavily Catholic area. Airport employees work long shifts, and they often have to work at times that others go to church. So the chapel at Boston’s airport offered Catholic mass to employees who couldn’t make it to church.

The chapel was given a clever name—“Our Lady of the Airways”—and pretty soon, other airports started opening chapels too. New York’s Kennedy Airport opened dedicated Catholic, Jewish and Protestant chapels.

Today, many large airports have some type of prayer room. Over 140 airports have chapels, including 40 in the United States. The Dallas airport has one in every terminal. Both Washington, D.C.-area airports have dedicated Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, and interfaith chapels.

In Europe, large international hubs like Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, and Frankfurt have them. There are chapels in smaller European airports, too, from relatively secular Sweden to pious Italy.

Dedicated prayer rooms are the norm in the Islamic world; they’re sometimes even required by law. The largest airport in Saudi Arabia has a mosque in the airport. The airports in both Istanbul and Dubai have more than a dozen prayer rooms each.

It might seem surprising that airports—of all places—would have dedicated prayer rooms, especially as participation in organized religion is declining in much of the western world. But there are good reasons for airports to have these spaces.

First, as we mentioned, are the employees. Air travel is a 365-day-a-year industry. Even if there aren’t flights around the clock, people work in airports twenty-four hours a day. That means, many in the industry have to work on holy days and on holidays. Those who travel—like pilots and flight attendants—can find themselves stranded away from home on days that they’d normally attend religious services. The first airport chapel was for employees, and many airport employees still use them.

Second—travelers. Observant travelers often have no choice but to be in the airport during prayer times. Airport chapels provide a safe and quiet place for travelers to fulfill religious obligations. Many airport chapels are interfaith, allowing observers of any religion to use the space.

Most air travel is for business or leisure—like vacations. But some of the people you see in the terminal are there for other, more serious reasons—like funerals, family emergencies, and hospital visits. A chapel offers a place for travelers to process difficult emotions privately.

Finally, you don’t have to be religious to use an interfaith chapel—there’s nobody at the door checking your membership card. Chapels offer space to meditate and find a moment of peace and comfort. Some people find that a moment of quiet reflection helps them feel grounded during an otherwise anxious time. This time can be especially comforting for those who are afraid of flying.

Where there are airport chapels, there are—sometimes—airport chaplains. An airport chaplain might be from any religious faith. The chaplain provides comfort to passengers who need it—whether because of grief, anxiety, illness, or traumatic events.

And chaplains can provide emotional assistance to passengers who are making difficult, life-altering journeys. Many people get on an airplane for the first time when they immigrate to another country, report for duty in the military, or travel for a serious medical procedure. Imagine taking a plane for the first time—and also having to think about major life changes and deal with an immigration bureaucracy. Chaplains can provide important emotional help to people going through these changes.

Airport chaplains also help in times of crisis. When someone dies on a flight, the airport chaplain is often the first person to make contact with the family. And, if the worst happens, the chaplains can provide comfort to survivors. A helicopter recently collided with an airplane near an airport in Washington, D.C. Sixty-seven people died. The chaplain organized a space that was safe, quiet, and away from the news media, where family members and friends could grieve and wait for information. Chaplains also provided comfort and counseling to the first responders.

In some cases, airport chaplains may be called in to help de-escalate emotional situations, as an alternative to getting police involved.

Jeff’s take

For some people, an airport might be the least romantic place in the world. But some couples met in an airport—or maybe they got engaged in an airport. So where better to get married than in the airport chapel? Yes, it’s true some couples do get married in the airport chapel.

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The Netflix drama Adolescence dropped in March 2025. It’s a four-part series that examines the case of a teenage boy accused of killing a classmate. The boy, Jamie Miller, is arrested at dawn in the first moments of the series. Over four episodes, the Miller family grapples with the dark realities of online bullying, the male-dominated online manosphere, and the pressures on teenagers and their parents in the 21st century.

I won’t give you any spoilers today, because I’m not going to talk much about the story. Don’t get me wrong. The story is great. But what I want to talk about today is the cinematography—and the one creative choice that makes Adolescence so powerful.

But before we do that, I want you to think about your favorite movie or series. Most movies have dozens of scenes, and a typical scene runs two to three minutes. In an action film or a fast-paced comedy, it might be even shorter.

Although a scene usually takes place in just one location, there are often multiple cameras capturing that scene from different angles. For example, in a conversation between two characters, one camera might be trained on the first speaker, while another camera captures the second character from a different angle.

Depending on the complexity, a typical scene might involve several cameras to capture all the action from different perspectives. Cameras might be mounted on drones, cranes, tripods—or even carried on an operator’s shoulder.

A movie or an episode is a collection of scenes. There are usually between 40 and 60 scenes in a feature-length film. When filming is done, the producers begin the editing process and stitch the scenes together. If the final product is too long, they may cut some scenes out.

That’s how it normally works—but that’s not how they did it in Adolescence.

Each of the four hourlong episodes of Adolescence was filmed in a single, continuous scene—just one take filmed on just one camera.

That means there was no stopping and starting, no multiple camera angles, and no jumping forward or back in time. There were no invisible edits, no stitching clips together, no cutting-room floor.

This was an artistic choice by Jack Thorne (the writer) and Philip Barantini (the director). Viewers get a heightened sense of realism and emotional intensity, as if we were living the moment alongside the characters—without interruption.

This approach required meticulous planning and rehearsal. For one thing, the script needed to accommodate this approach. In episode four, the family drives to a hardware store. The camera follows them in the car for the entire trip, so something needs to be happening during that trip. So the writers inserted dialogue here that establishes the family’s background story, and the way Jamie’s parents were before they had kids.

Episode 3 was an interrogation scene—Jamie is in a room speaking with a court-appointed psychologist. This would be perfect for two cameras, but it was a real challenge to capture both characters with just the one camera.

The writers had to include some movement in that scene so the camera would have a reason to move around a little. When Jamie takes a sip of water, bites into his sandwich, or stands up suddenly—these were all reasons to get the single camera moving and keep the tension high.

The approach also complicated location scouting. Where were they going to shoot all this? They wanted the at-home scenes to be in a real house, but the police station scenes had to be shot at a movie studio. So to make the first episode work, they needed to find a house close enough to a movie studio so the drive wouldn’t be too long. Remember—there’s no skipping time, so the camera follows the characters as they move from one place to another.

There was also the question of the camera—I mean the actual camera. Each episode was one take, and one camera. And that camera had to do a lot of things. It followed actors in tight spaces—up a narrow stairway, in the car, down corridors, in an elevator. It also soared above the unnamed town on a drone.

The producers decided to use a camera on a gimbal, sometimes called a camera stabilizer. This is a device that keeps the camera steady, and the shot smooth, even if an operator is moving around. The camera operator holds the gimbal with both hands out front. This is usually no problem in a short scene, but an operator would have difficulty holding the camera for a full hour. The gimbal allowed one camera operator to pass the camera to another, without the viewer noticing.

Something else about the equipment: there’s a drone scene in Episode 4, which captures the Millers’ town from above. The stabilizer allowed the crew to click the camera onto a drone without disrupting the shot.

Rehearsal was essential—if someone messed up, they had to restart the entire episode. A mistake in minute two wasn’t so bad. But a mistake in minute 40? That meant 40 minutes wasted.

A few things did go wrong. In one take, all the lights went out because the iPad controlling the lights crashed. They had to start over. In another, the camera operator walked into a wall accidentally.

One especially tricky thing was managing crowds in Episode 2, which took place at Jamie’s school. All the kids were real students from the public school where the episode was filmed, playing themselves on camera. The teachers, on the other hand, were played by assistant directors. When the camera wasn’t on them, they doubled as crowd control—guiding everyone to the right place at the right time.

Jeff’s take

A couple notes on the actors. Stephen Graham plays Jamie’s father. He’s a well-known British actor and his performance captured a wide range of emotions—starting with defiance, support for his son, then confusion, and then grief.

Ashley Walters played the detective. He had been thinking of giving up acting altogether, but this role helped change his mind. Erin Doherty plays the child psychologist and I thought she was excellent.

Owen Cooper plays Jamie. He was just 13 years old when this was filmed. He is trained as an actor, but this was his on-screen debut. And he was really, really good.

The post Creative cinematography adds to the power of Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ appeared first on Plain English.

At the end of a long question-and-answer session, in a mid-sized American city, a 94-year-old man announced that he would retire at the end of the year. The people in the room gave him a round of applause.

But this was no ordinary retirement announcement. The man on stage was Warren Buffett, widely regarded as one of the most skilled investors ever to live. And the crowd? They were 40,000 people who had come to Omaha, Nebraska, to hear his investing wisdom at the Berkshire Hathaway Corporation’s annual meeting. And they knew that they were witnessing history. A remarkable chapter in the history of business was about to close.

Berkshire Hathaway Corporation traces its roots to the late 1800s. It made cotton textiles, mostly for clothing and industrial use. In 1962, an outside investor in his thirties started buying shares in the company. He believed it was undervalued and mismanaged—and three years later, he took full control.

That investor was Warren Buffett. But soon after taking over, he realized that Berkshire Hathaway, as a textile manufacturer, had no future. He said he felt like the dog who finally caught the car—and didn’t know what to do next. Making textiles—fabric or cloth—in the United States was no longer competitive, not with cheaper labor available overseas. And the business was a money pit, requiring constant investment for little return. So Buffett closed the textile mills and turned Berkshire Hathaway into a holding company.

And he would remain CEO of that holding company for six decades. Berkshire would be the vehicle he used to amass one of the world’s greatest fortunes—and to make his many followers and acolytes rich too.

A holding company is exactly what it sounds like: a large company that owns, or “holds,” other businesses or shares in them. As a holding company, Berkshire didn’t make anything itself. Instead, Berkshire became the vehicle that Buffett used to invest in other companies.

He followed a value investing approach. He didn’t chase hot and rising stocks; he didn’t follow the latest trends. No, he focused on buying good companies at a fair price. Buffett once said he’d rather buy a good company at a fair price, than a fair company at a good price. He was a voracious reader—not just of financial statements, but also company reports and newspapers. He said knowledge builds up over the years just like compound interest.

He looked for businesses with predictable earnings, strong brands, and capable management. He also took a long-term approach. Many investment managers have to return money to their investors after five or ten years. But Buffett said his favorite holding period was “forever.” He wanted to buy good businesses that would pay off over the long run.

Some of his best investments were in steady companies in boring industries. One of his best investments was in Coca-Cola, which he has owned since 1988. Other good investments have been American Express, the insurance company GEICO, and the BNSF railway. He has had a few misses over the years. He admitted he overpaid for Kraft Heinz, and he said he regretted investing in the airline industry.

Buffett often went against the crowd. He’s not a big investor in technology, saying he doesn’t understand it well enough. And whenever the crowd is moving in one direction, Buffett asks if the other direction might not be a better long-term move. One of his favorite quotes goes like this: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

It all added up to a legendary investing career. Since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price has grown at about 19 percent per year, compared to about 10 percent for the market overall during that time period. Many investors struggle to beat the market consistently, year-in and year-out. Buffett not only did that, but his company nearly doubled market returns over a sixty-year period.

And Berkshire didn’t just make Warren Buffett rich. It’s a public company, so it has public stockholders. Buffett was working for them. A $1,000 investment in Berkshire in 1965 would be worth over $30 million today. A lot of people can call themselves millionaires because they owned shares in Buffett’s company.

You can imagine, then, that people would want to hear what such a successful investor has to say. And Warren Buffett was never stingy with his wisdom. Although Berkshire Hathaway is just a holding company, it is publicly traded, so it has to release an annual report and hold an annual meeting. One of the most-anticipated parts of the annual report is Buffett’s letter to shareholders.

He writes the letter himself, and in it, he describes his view of the market and his thinking for the year to come. His tone is simple and honest, and the letter includes personal reflections, humor, storytelling, and wisdom. The letters are studied in business schools for their investment lessons and commentary on the economy.

Most company annual meetings are a formality, but Berkshire’s annual meeting is a massive annual investing conference. It’s been called “Woodstock for Capitalists.” People from around the world go to Omaha, Nebraska, Berkshire’s headquarters, to listen to the panel discussions and get a glimpse of Omaha’s most famous resident.

And it was at that annual meeting in 2025 that Buffett announced his retirement. He said he would step down as CEO at the end of the year. The crowd of spectators was shocked: very few people knew Buffett’s retirement announcement was coming.

The company will get a new CEO in 2026, but the world of investing will never be the same. Warren Buffett is the world’s most famous investor—because of his success, yes, but also for his personality.

Jeff’s take

Warren Buffett’s personal fortune is worth about $166 billion today—that makes him the fifth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, which estimates these things. Most of the names at the top of those ‘richest person’ lists are company founders—Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. Warren Buffett is the only investor at the top of that list.

So what’s going to happen to his $166 billion fortune when he dies? He’s going to give it all away. He doesn’t believe in inherited wealth. He said his kids will get enough money so they can do anything—but not nothing.

The post How Warren Buffett became one of the world’s most famous investors appeared first on Plain English.

If you keep track of international finance or economics, you have probably heard the name Mark Carney.

In 2008, he was appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada—Canada’s central bank. He was responsible for monetary policy, managing government debt, and, critically, the stability of Canada’s financial system.

And he took over at the beginning of a major financial crisis, when banks around the world failed and economies slid into a deep recession. Canada was able to avoid the worst of the pain; it got off easier than the U.S. and many countries in Europe, and Carney was widely praised for his steady leadership.

He was held in such high esteem that in 2013, he was appointed to the very same job, only this time at the Bank of England—the central bank of the United Kingdom, a much larger economy. That made him the first non-British citizen to lead the U.K.’s central bank, and the only person ever to head the central banks of two different countries.

The U.K. job turned out to be a tougher job than even he expected. That’s because he was in office during the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union, called Brexit. Before the vote, he argued against Brexit. But after the vote, he helped stabilize the British economy during its messy divorce from the EU. Brexit negatively impacted the British economy, but it was far less bad than it might have been.

So Mark Carney led one central bank through the financial crisis, and then another through Brexit. That made him a bit of a star in the world of international finance. Many Canadians were proud that one of their own had done so well on the global stage. After his time at the Bank of England, he worked for a United Nations agency on climate finance.

But in early 2025, Mark Carney went back to Canada, became prime minister, and then led his Liberal party to a shocking comeback in an election his party was all but certain to lose. How did that happen?

Canada has two big political parties—the Liberals on the left and the Conservatives on the right. There are also smaller parties, the New Democrat Party, and the regional Bloc Québécois, which advocates for French-speaking Quebec.

The Liberals are the most successful party in Canada’s history. They have been in power for 65 of the last 100 years. But in early 2025, they were in trouble. The party was coming to the end of its third consecutive term in power—and it showed.

The public was growing tired of Liberal governance. The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was deeply unpopular. Voters were frustrated with the cost of housing, high and rising taxes, and a slowing economy. Many thought Trudeau was too worried about social issues, and some were irritated by his preachy demeanor.

This approach seemed to be working. The Conservatives started the year with an almost-30-point polling lead. They were on course to win a national election for the first time since 2011; the Liberals were facing a near-death experience.

But then two things happened. First, Justin Trudeau resigned as prime minister. That meant that he, the unpopular incumbent, would not lead his party into the next election. The second thing that happened is that Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, and started taunting America’s northern neighbor, saying Canada should become America’s fifty-first state.

Mark Carney spotted his opportunity. He wasn’t even living in Canada, but he left his job in London and moved to Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He ran for the leadership of the Liberal party, leveraging his reputation for competence and steady leadership. He won, filling the vacuum left by Trudeau’s resignation. That made him prime minister even though he wasn’t a member of Canada’s parliament.

He called an election for April 28, and the official campaign lasted just 36 days. He pivoted the Liberal party away from some of the more unpopular Trudeau-era policies, like a carbon tax. And he rallied Canada behind an anti-American and anti-Trump message. He said Canada should keep its “elbows up.” That’s a reference to a physical posture in ice hockey, Canada’s national sport. When you have your elbows up, you’re ready to defend yourself.

He hammered the point home on the campaign trail: “America wants our land, our resources, our water.” He convinced Canadians that he was the right person to defend Canada’s national sovereignty and negotiate with and against Trump on matters of trade and national security.

He said, more in sadness than in anger, “The 80-year period when the United States embraced…global economic leadership…is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.” He said that Canada needs to get over the “American betrayal,” adding, “This is Canada and we decide what happens here.”

Pierre Poilievre was caught off guard. He had carefully honed his attack lines on Justin Trudeau, only to lose his easy opponent at the last minute. His Trumpian rhetoric, once a strength, became a liability amid Trump’s tariffs and fifty-first state taunts.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Poilievre tried to soften his tone, but it was too little and too late. He never could bring himself to fully denounce Trump. He presided over a last-minute collapse in support and even lost his own seat in Parliament.

In the end, the Liberals won the election, though they fell just short of a majority. That means they will need to work with smaller parties to pass legislation, as they have in their two most recent terms.

Jeff’s take

A couple more biographical details about Mark Carney. He was born in a town called Fort Smith, Canada. It’s in the Northwest Territories. He’s the first PM to be born in the territories—Canada’s vast, sparsely populated north.

If you’re by your computer, I want you to look at Fort Smith, Canada, on a map. That is way, way north. The population of the town is about 2,000. But even that doesn’t do justiceto how small the place is—the nearest large town is several hours drive away.

His parents were both teachers. He grew up in Edmonton, which is the capital of the province of Alberta. As a kid, he wanted to be an ice hockey player. He has degrees from Harvard and Oxford. I mentioned he’s the only person to lead the central banks of two countries. He’s also the only person to head a central bank and then be elected as head of a government. He’s just 60 years old and had never held any elective office before becoming prime minister.

He openly admits that he needs to work on his French—usually that would be a liability in Quebec, but the Liberals did pretty well in the French-speaking province this year.

The post Mark Carney led Canada’s Liberal party to an improbable comeback appeared first on Plain English.

You probably know that the pope is both the administrative and spiritual head of the Catholic Church. But that level of centralized leadership is rare — Catholicism is the only major religion with a single, global spiritual leader. Some smaller religious groups have recognized figureheads. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury leads the Anglican Communion, which includes the Church of England.

But the other major world religions —Islam, Hinduism, Protestant Christianity, Buddhism — these are not led by a single individual. Instead, they are made up of various traditions, schools, or denominations, each with their own leadership structures.

But wait a minute—you might be asking—what about the Dalai Lama?

Buddhism has three primary schools. Theravāda is practiced mainly in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Laos, and Cambodia. Mahāyāna is most common in East Asia, including China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Vajrayāna, or Tibetan Buddhism, is practiced primarily in Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal and northern India—areas where Tibetan culture is strong.

The Dalai Lama—the name can be roughly translated as, “Ocean of Wisdom”—the Dalai Lama is the leader of just one of these schools—Tibetan Buddhism. The other schools don’t have a single figurehead.

There are about 500 million Buddhists worldwide, but only about 18 to 20 million of them practice Tibetan Buddhism.

So why is the Dalai Lama so famous, if he leads only a fraction of the world’s Buddhists? To answer that question, we need a geography lesson and a history lesson.

Tibet is a region in central Asia, north of the Himalayan mountains. It has some of the most striking and extreme geography in the world. It’s the highest and largest plateau on the planet, at about 4,500 meters above sea level—higher than many mountain ranges. There, you can find snow-covered peaks, glaciers, alpine lakes, and wide-open plains.

Tibet is part of China today. If you picture a map, it’s in the southwest part of China—just north of Nepal and bordering India.

That’s the geography lesson. The history lesson goes like this. Since about the 1400s, Buddhists living in Tibet followed a spiritual leader called the Dalai Lama. In the mid-1600s, the Dalai Lama took on both spiritual and political duties. Tibet was ruled as a Buddhist theocracy, with the Dalai Lama as both the spiritual leader and the head of state.

This Buddhist theocracy lasted until 1951, when China took control of the region by force. The Chinese government, then as now, placed strict controls on religious practices, limited the activities of Buddhist monasteries, and did not allow open recognition of the Dalai Lama’s authority.

At the time of the takeover, many Tibetan Buddhists refused to live under Chinese rule: they would have had to give up much of their culture and religion. So they fled to live in exile in neighboring countries like India. The Dalai Lama was among those who left. He was just 23 years old at the time.

So let’s return to our question. Why is the Dalai Lama famous, if he only represents a small fraction of the world’s Buddhists? It’s because he represents the Tibetan Buddhist cause. He’s a symbol of the Tibetan people’s struggle for religious freedom. He has spent decades promoting peace, compassion, and nonviolence—values that transcend religion.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and has met with world leaders, spoken at universities, and written best-selling books. For many people, especially outside Asia, the Dalai Lama is the most recognizable Buddhist figure in the world.

He will turn 90 years old in July 2025. He was enthroned in February of 1940, when he was just four years old—in other words, he has been recognized as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism for 85 years.

For many of those years, he traveled internationally and maintained a high public profile. But recently, he has stopped traveling outside northern India, where he has lived since 1960. Who will assume the mantle when he dies?

Unlike Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists do not get a new leader immediately. Tibetan Buddhists believe that a Dalai Lama chooses to be reborn in the body of a new child, to continue his spiritual work. The child is already alive when the older leader is dying.

After the Dalai Lama dies, then, the spirit is alive in a new body. The job for the living is to figure out who the child is. Soon after a Dalai Lama dies, senior Buddhist monks begin the process of looking for the child who is the next incarnation. And this can take several years. In that time, the monks look for signs and visions. When they find a potential child, they give him tests to see if he can remember things from his past life.

When the monks agree that they have found the child who is the reincarnation, the child is officially recognized as the Dalai Lama, usually around age two or three. He begins years of training in Buddhist teaching and philosophy, and is given full political and spiritual authority as he matures.

The next transition will be the most difficult one yet. For the first time in 600 years, the Dalai Lama will die in exile—he will die outside of Tibet, the centuries-old spiritual and cultural home of Tibetan Buddhists.

And China has made no secret that it wants a role in naming the next Dalai Lama, the better to help it further bring Tibetan Buddhism under government control. The current Dalai Lama is considering his options. He says he might name the next Dalai Lama while he is still alive—this is called an “emanation,” like a pre-reincarnation. He said he might choose a boy, a girl, or an adult. He may also opt not to reincarnate at all.

Jeff’s take

A few more points for you. The first Dalai Lama was born in the year 1391. The first two were not given the title during their lifetimes. The first person to be given the title Dalai Lama—Ocean of Wisdom—was the third. The first two were given the specific title after their deaths. So this is a six-hundred-year religious tradition.

The current Dalai Lama is the fourteenth. Anyone under the age of 85 today would not have lived in a world with any other Dalai Lama.

The post The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists in exile appeared first on Plain English.

Congratulations, LinkedIn, on your work anniversary! This month, May 2025, the social network for business turns 22 years old. That makes it a year older than Facebook.

When it was created, LinkedIn was all about career and business connections. Users could connect with colleagues and business contacts, showcase their professional skills, and search for new jobs—all on one platform. It was kind of like a digital version of your resume and your Rolodex.

Over time, it added a newsfeed and new features that allowed users to share text and video posts. But most of the posts were buttoned-up announcements like career updates and highly generic industry news and workplace advice. The typical post was a person announcing a new job, posting a motivational quote, or congratulating contacts on a work anniversary—something nobody ever does in the real world.

LinkedIn has been part of Microsoft since 2016. For most of its history, before and after the acquisition, LinkedIn was simply a convenient place to find people with whom you might share a professional connection—either you’ve met before, or you might meet and talk one-on-one in the future. You could message someone on LinkedIn if you didn’t have that person’s phone number. It was also useful to connect with people who have changed jobs and, therefore, e-mail addresses.

Sure, there was a content feed in LinkedIn. But it was pretty boring.

Things started to change around the pandemic. Office workers missed the in-person interactions and connections with colleagues. So they turned to LinkedIn and began sharing more personal stories—talking more authentically about their work, and even posting about things completely unrelated to business.

Users posted about overcoming illnesses, managing stress, and balancing work and family. They also started posting business-related (or business-adjacent) content in a much more authentic voice. They talked about lessons learned starting a business, advice others had given them, and mistakes they made along the way.

A well-curated LinkedIn presence can bring a lot of benefits to a user. LinkedIn posts can be good conversation starters. If you’ll be meeting someone for the first time, you can browse his or her LinkedIn profile and use a recent post to start a conversation. If you apply for a job, a LinkedIn presence can help you put more quality content in front of a recruiter. Many recruiters use LinkedIn daily, and most people’s profiles are just “congratulations” posts. But a history of thoughtful LinkedIn posts can catch a recruiter’s eye in a way that even the best resume can’t.

A good LinkedIn history can build a user’s credibility. Some people are frequently invited to contribute to industry publications or to speak on stage at conferences. That’s great if you can get it. But for the rest of us, LinkedIn is a place where we can share expertise and build credibility—with no gatekeepers. If you’re in sales, for example, you can post about your product or your industry. That can give potential clients comfort that you really know what you’re talking about.

Some people have found another good use for LinkedIn. There are now LinkedIn influencers. It’s much easier to build an audience and a following on LinkedIn than on other crowded social networks like Instagram and TikTok. For example, there are tens of thousands of TikTok accounts with a million or more followers; on LinkedIn, there are fewer than 100.

The site has helped its users post and gather a following. For most of its history, LinkedIn showed users content from their network. But three years ago, it changed its algorithm to show users more content related to their interests. They also started to prioritize video and they created tools that let users see post analytics.

Users who post a casual mix of personal and professional content have been surprised by how easily their posts spread. And the quality of interaction is better, too. LinkedIn posts tend to get substantive comments.

Everyone on LinkedIn uses their real name, and their professional reputation is associated with their account. Unlike Instagram or X, LinkedIn doesn’t let users create anonymous duplicate accounts. So even people with followings in the tens or hundreds of thousands say that they rarely, if ever, get negative comments.

I saw several interviews with influencers who all said the same thing. They said that when they saw a negative comment on a post, they reached out personally and privately to the commenter. The most common explanation is that there was a misunderstanding. Negative commenters often apologize, and either edit or delete comments that caused offense. That’s something you don’t see on Elon Musk’s X!

Another reason for the civility is that LinkedIn is not beholden to views and time on the site in the way other networks are. YouTube, X, Instagram, Facebook—they all make the vast majority of their money from advertising. That means they prioritize content that keeps people on the site, viewing the ads. And one thing that keeps people on the site, viewing ads is controversy.

LinkedIn is different. Yes, it has ads—but it also has something the others don’t: a subscription-based revenue stream that’s not tied to advertising. LinkedIn makes money with a premium membership for job-seekers and recruiters. It also has a product called Sales Navigator, which helps professionals in sales and business development find prospects.

And the advertising LinkedIn does have tends to be business-to-business advertising. All that means that LinkedIn doesn’t win by stoking the type of viral controversies that are so common on other platforms.

Jeff’s take

Who are the people with some of the biggest LinkedIn followings?

Number one: Bill Gates. Here’s what he shared recently. “Geothermal energy is heating up—literally.” He also posted about “digital public infrastructure” and said he was inspired by a polio survivor. That’s Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He has a new book out; I didn’t see a single promotional post for his new book.

Next, Richard Branson. He founded the Virgin group. I remember them for their mobile phones, their radio network in the U.K., record stores—stuff like that. Here’s what he has posted recently. Two inspirational quotes, a photo of himself on a red carpet, a video of himself jumping into ice-cold water at 5:33 a.m. A bit of a different vibe.

Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s a guru in entrepreneurship. 5.7 million followers. A lot of inspirational quotes and short videos.

Adam Grant. Organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He posted about a study on highly sensitive kids, advice for running meetings, and an idea for what to do instead of a gratitude journal.

So there you go. That’s a sample of what’s trending on LinkedIn these days.

The post How LinkedIn became a place to share, not just network appeared first on Plain English.

And the duty to choose falls on the College of Cardinals.

The College of Cardinals is a body of senior Catholic clergy who advise the pope and, in the event of a vacancy, elect his successor. Cardinals serve as the pope’s closest advisors on matters of faith, doctrine, Church governance, and global issues. They represent the Church at international events and they meet with world leaders. There’s no fixed number of cardinals; this year, 2025, there are 252 of them, from many different countries. Each cardinal is appointed by a pope and serves for life.

And then, about every ten to fifteen years, the College of Cardinals must perform its most solemn duty: election of a new pope.

Not all cardinals can vote on a new pope. To participate in the election of a new pope, a cardinal must be under the age of 80 when the vacancy happens. The cardinals who are eligible are called the cardinal electors. Vatican policy says there should be just 120 of them, but the Conclave of 2025 will have a few more.

When a pope dies, the Church observes an official mourning period of at least nine days. Then, all the cardinals travel to the Vatican for a meeting called “General Congregations.” In the General Congregations, the cardinals set the stage for the coming papal election. They discuss the state of the Church, the challenges ahead, and the qualities needed in the next pope. In these meetings, the cardinals get to know each other better, and they start to form thoughts about who would make a good leader.

The election process is called the Conclave. On day one of the Conclave, the cardinal electors celebrate a special mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. It’s called the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff, and its purpose is to ask for guidance in choosing the next pope. It sets a prayerful and solemn tone for what’s to come.

In the Conclave, all cardinal-electors—the cardinals under the age of 80—proceed to the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. “Conclave” means “with key” in Latin, and during the Conclave, the cardinals are locked inside the chapel to ensure secrecy. They have no contact with the outside world, and the outside world has no contact with them. Only a small number of support staff have access to the cardinals during the Conclave—cooks and doctors, for example.

Once inside, the cardinals vote. And they begin voting relatively quickly. The first ballot is often taken the same day that the Conclave begins.

So how do the cardinals know who to vote for? Any baptized male is eligible to be pope, but for the last 600 years, the cardinals have chosen one of their own. They make their first choice based on their knowledge of each other and from what they learned during the General Congregations.

Remember, the General Congregations are the pre-meetings, in which cardinals speak about the state of the Church and the challenges it faces in the future. This is where individual cardinals can make their views known. And the cardinal electors begin to think about who would make a suitable leader.

Inside the Conclave, though, there are no nominations and there are no speeches. There’s no campaigning for the job. Cardinals vote in silence and in prayer. Every cardinal writes one name on a piece of paper. They place their secret ballots into a silver urn and proclaim “before God” that they have voted their conscience. When all votes have been submitted, the results are read out inside the chapel, and the cardinals know who received votes, and how many.

To become pope, a cardinal needs a two-thirds majority of the votes. Most often, no cardinal receives a two-thirds majority on the first ballot.

After the first ballot is complete, and after the results have been read out, the ballot papers are burned in a special stove in the chapel. If no cardinal has received two-thirds of the votes, a special chemical is added to the fire to turn the smoke black.

Outside, cameras trained on the Sistine Chapel capture a plume of black smoke, and Catholics around the world know no pope was elected in the first round.

The process repeats, with up to four ballots per day, two in the mornings and two in the afternoons, until someone reaches the required number of votes. In between the ballots, cardinals may have private conversations. Cardinals who have received votes may choose to step aside, to encourage their colleagues not to vote for them. But explicit campaigning is prohibited.

Each time a ballot concludes, the ballot papers are burned. And each time no cardinal receives a two-thirds majority, the smoke is black.

When a cardinal finally does reach that two-thirds majority, the Dean of the College of Cardinals asks him, in Latin, “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?” If he responds “I accept,” then he is the pope. The Dean then asks, again in Latin, “By what name shall you be called?”

The new pope chooses his papal name at that moment. The final ballots are then burned—and this time the smoke is white. The bells of St. Peter’s Basilica ring. And the world knows a new pope has been elected.

The new pope is taken into a special room in the chapel to change into his papal vestments, the ceremonial clothing of a pope. The Cardinal Protodeacon—a senior official—goes to the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and announces, “We have a pope!” He announces the birth name, and the chosen papal name, of the Church’s new leader.

Minutes later, the new pope greets the faithful gathered outside. He gives his first blessing as pope, called “to the city and the world.”

Jeff’s take

There’s a saying in Italian, “he who enters the Conclave a pope, comes out a cardinal.” “He who enters the Conclave a pope, comes out a cardinal.”

That means the front-runner—the one who seems most likely to win at first—rarely ends up as pope. That’s what multiple ballots can do; it’s common for someone to build momentum and build support throughout the Conclave. But of course we can’t study in detail, since the ballot papers are secret, and the cardinals are sworn to secrecy.

In the Middle Ages, the election of a new pope could take weeks or even months. Different factions battled one another for supremacy. More recently, it has taken just a few days. One modern pope was elected on the first ballot. That was Pope Pius XII in 1939. This was the eve of World War II; storm clouds were gathering in Europe, and the cardinals may have wanted to choose a new leader decisively.

The more typical situation is that a new pope is chosen within a few days. Pope Francis was elected on the fifth ballot; Pope Benedit XVI on the fourth; Pope John Paul II on the eighth ballot.

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