What do Trump, Johnson, Wilders and Milei all have in common? No, it’s not politics, it’s an eccentric and recognisable coiffure. Do these examples allow us to draw a theory between politics and hair or is it just a happy coincidence? If there is a connection, why might it exist?

In this week’s episode, we discuss populist hairstyles. We talk about the relationship between populism and hairstyles, data on hair and physical condition, the connection between shoes and personalities, signalling, Donald Trump’s hair, and Jordan presents a typology for populism. Finally, we share the people from history we most admire who have a distinctive hairstyle.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- The Guardian: ‘Populism is all about hair’ https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/dec/03/populism-is-all-about-hair-what-rightwing-leaders-are-trying-to-tell-us-with-their-wild-coiffures 
- Hair Analysis in Health Assessment https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009898113000405 
-Cue masking and cultural signals https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/121656045/Cue_masking_and_cultural_signals_Testing_contextspecific_preferences_for_balding_leaders.pdf 
- Politico: ‘Boris Johnson’s hair shows he’s too posh to fail’ https://www.politico.eu/article/how-boris-johnsons-hair-defined-britain/ 

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com

Populist Hair

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Welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. Occasionally coherent musings of Aleph Insights. We hope you like listening to them as much as we like recording them.

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