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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Science & technology item listed in the contents as Well Informed: Bone broth's benefits and published under the headline Is bone broth good for you?.

The article treats bone broth as a useful case study in wellness marketing. The drink has become fashionable because it sounds both ancient and scientific: simmer bones and connective tissue for long enough, and the result contains protein, collagen, amino acids and other compounds associated with the body. That makes it easy to sell as a shortcut to weight loss, better skin, stronger bones, joint health and gut repair.

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The article argues that American corporate profits have become the strongest rebuttal to the gloom around the United States. Investors have spent weeks trying to price war in the Gulf, tariffs, erratic presidential threats and fears about American decline. Yet the earnings data tell a different story: big American companies are still producing striking profit growth, and Wall Street is treating that strength as more important than the political noise.

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A Brand Ages Out Of Its Moment

The article uses Allbirds’ strange reinvention to mark the end of an era in consumer goods. The wool-sneaker company became a symbol of Silicon Valley taste in the 2010s. In April 2026 it announced that it would rename itself NewBird AI and turn toward AI-computing infrastructure instead. Investors rewarded the pivot with a sharp jump in the share price, which says as much about the weakness of the old business as it does about excitement for the new one.

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Bluster Meets Markets

The article argues that America under Donald Trump can look more statist than it really is. The president talks as if prices, companies and capital flows should obey political command. Business leaders increasingly speak about industrial policy as a weapon in the contest with China. Yet markets have often proved harder to bend than the rhetoric suggests. Mortgage rates, petrol prices and share prices do not move simply because the White House wants them to.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Science & technology article listed in the contents as Grouse and chairlifts and published under the headline Last resorts.

The article turns a small Alpine conservation problem into a useful lesson about design. Black grouse have been flying into chair-lift cables at ski resorts for years, often fatally. Resorts tried to help by hanging warning markers from the cables. The trouble was that many of those markers were red, and new research suggests red is precisely the wrong signal for the birds.

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Clean power’s crisis dividend

The article argues that the new Gulf war has made clean energy look less like a climate preference and more like a security asset. The immediate temptation is to assume coal will be the main beneficiary of disrupted energy markets, especially in countries that have domestic coal but rely on imported liquefied natural gas. Coal is indeed getting a short-term lift. But The Economist’s sharper point is that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz strengthens the case for solar, wind and other renewables even more.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Business article listed in the contents as Trumpian psychedelics and published under the headline Altered state.

The article argues that Donald Trump’s sudden embrace of psychedelic medicines could accelerate a promising field, but in a way that exposes a deeper problem in American drug policy. Psychedelics may help treat depression, PTSD, addiction and anxiety. The issue is not whether the field deserves attention. It does. The issue is whether treatments should be pushed forward because the evidence is strong, or because they have caught the eye of the president and his circle.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 International article listed in the contents as Military innovation in Ukraine and published under the headline Battlefield formation.

The article argues that Ukraine’s war effort has become a live laboratory for military technology. Drones, unmanned ground vehicles and AI-assisted systems are no longer peripheral experiments. They are increasingly central to how Ukraine supplies troops, strikes Russian forces, protects soldiers from exposure and compensates for being outmatched in manpower and traditional firepower.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 Finance & economics Buttonwood column listed in the contents as Too-stablecoins and published under the subtitle Why the stablecoin market is fizzling.

The article argues that stablecoins have not yet become the financial revolution their boosters promised. They are meant to be the sober part of crypto: digital tokens pegged to the dollar and backed by safe assets such as Treasury bills. That design should, in theory, make them useful for payments, attractive as a store of value in unstable economies and helpful to America by increasing demand for government debt.

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This summary covers The Economist’s April 25th, 2026 China column listed in the contents as Chaguan: Tech transfer and published under the headline The world wants Chinese tech.

The article argues that the politics of technology transfer have flipped. For decades, Western governments and companies worried that China was forcing, coaxing or stealing foreign know-how. Now many of them face the opposite problem: China has become strong enough in electric vehicles, batteries, robotics and other advanced industries that outsiders want Chinese knowledge, factories and production methods to move abroad.