When the NFL and Apple Music announced Bad Bunny as the 2026 Super Bowl half-time show headliner, the choice surprised some. But to anyone tracking the data over the past few years, it was inevitable. In 2022, Bad Bunnys Un Verano Sin Ti redefined the market, driving Latin musics streaming growth to new heights. It later became the first Spanish-language album nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. The takeaway is simple: When you have accurate, real-time data, you dont guess where culture is going, you know. That kind of foresight is exactly what industries need now, especially as AI accelerates change at a pace that demands evidence, not instinct.
In real time, we’re watching AI fundamentally reshape the economics of music, and much of the industry is still arguing that maybe it shouldnt exist at all. The discourse surrounding AI and music is filled with necessary debates, from copyright infringement and artist compensation to vocal cloning and authenticity. These concerns are valid and must be addressed. But while the industry argues about whether AI should change music, our data shows it already is. Some of the resulting evolution has relevant precedent for reference. Some of it requires urgent action. Reliable information, detection, and measurement is required to make sense of it all.
Here to stay
Whether we like it or not, AI music is here to stay, and rather than fighting it, we should understand its benefits as a tool for artistseither to amplify existing production processes or to introduce new ways of designing music. Recent data from Luminates consumer research shows that 44% of U.S. music listeners say they’re uncomfortable with AI-created songs. But discomfort doesn’t predict behavior. The AI artist Xania Monet (created by Music Designer Telisha Jones) averaged 8 million weekly global on-demand audio streams in October, following her debut on multiple Billboard charts, including Hot Gospel Songs with Let Go, Let Go and Hot R&B Songs with How Was I Supposed to Know? Monets songs touch on emotional healing, life lessons, and heartbreak, pointing to the argument that music at its essence is how it makes you feel and not how its made. This conflicting tension between initial consumer attitudes and actual listening habits is not new.
Consider what happened with auto-tune. In 2009, Jay-Z released “D.O.A (Death of Auto-Tune),” declaring war on the technology. That same year, The Black Eyed Peas released “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling, both anchored by auto-tune production. Today, each of those Black Eyed Peas songs has hundreds of millions of streams in the U.S. Jay-Z’s protest anthem? Less than 40 million. The market spoke. Technological evolution won.
Infrastructure evolves
If AI continues to earn its place in music productionand all signs point to that inevitable realityit doesnt mean that artists or rights holders have to lose. This is where foresight becomes essential. The sampler wars of the late 1980s offer an instructive parallel. When Biz Markie was sued in 1991 for sampling Gilbert O’Sullivan, the industry faced an existential crisis. The outcome wasn’t suppression of the technology, it was the creation of an entire licensing and clearance infrastructure. Detection and attribution became the foundation of a functioning market.
That infrastructure has continued to evolve in the era of streaming and transmedia discovery. Millions are being spent on legacy music catalogs, and those high valuations are proving to be valid. At the midpoint of this year, Becoming Led Zeppelin was the most-viewed new music documentary in the U.S., and its high viewership drove a sustained 23% increase in streams for the bands catalog. Notably, the documentarys release drove Led Zeppelin to its highest-ever weekly total for global on-demand audio streams: 40.4 million in late February. But what happens if AI-generated music infringes on Led Zeppelins copyright during the creation process? I think we can all agree that no one should get away with stealing others creative IP for financial gain. The industry needs to move fast and policy needs to be implemented so that artists and rights holders continue to be paid fairly and rightfully as AIs presence in music expands.
At Luminate, our mission is to provide the entertainment industry with essential, objective, and trustworthy data. When it comes to AI, that mission has only become more critical. Our data shows not just what happened, but what’s happening now, and increasingly, what’s about to happen. That visibility is what enables stakeholders across the industry, everyone from labels and publishers to platforms and policymakers, to make informed decisions rather than reactive ones. AI-generated artists designed for scale and low-cost delivery will proliferate. Online and live performance environments will be filled with algorithmically-optimized content. The technology will become more sophisticated, more accessible, and harder to detect without proper infrastructure.
We all need to work with the same objective information to navigate these advancements.
Almost everywhere you go, from the doctors office to the library to the car dealership, theres one ubiquitous design gem hidden in plain sight: the Bic Cristal.
This unsung hero of the writing desk has produced uncountable signatures and annotationsbut now its getting its moment in the spotlight through a collaboration with the Italian home goods brand Seletti.
The Bic Cristal is the worlds best-selling pen, boasting more than 120 billion sales since its release in 1950. For the tail end of the pens 75th anniversary, Bic teamed up with Seletti to produce a work of art inspired by the pen: a giant, 12:1 scale lamp.
The products massive scale translates particularly well for a lamp, with a clear case revealing a glowing, neon-like LED light inside. It can be positioned vertically or horizontally, and used as a floor lamp, pendant, or wall sconce. The lamp will be available in the pens classic blue, red, and black colorways when it debuts in the U.S. later this year for around $350.
[Photo: Bic]
Why the Bic Cristal makes a perfect lamp
The Bic Cristal is an adaptation of the first-ever ballpoint pen, invented in 1938 by a Hungarian journalist named László Biró (hence the pens common nickname, the Bic Biro). According to a breakdown written for the MoMA exhibition Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, which featured the Bic Crystal, Birós original pen was designed to allow ink to flow more consistently than older fountain pens, but it still had some issues with clogging and leaking.
After acquiring Birós patent, Bic founder Marcel Bich adjusted the design to include a smaller, 1-millimeter-wide ballpoint tip with a simple quirk: an air hole, which prevented a vacuum from forming inside the pen. This tiny tweak allows the pen’s ink to flow freely to the nub, and is what makes it such a reliable choice to this day.
Aesthetically, Bichs choice of a clear plastic for the pens body reveals how it works and renders it instantly recognizable. Paola Antonelli, MoMAs senior curator of architecture and design, said in the museums breakdown, It almost looks like it is within a crystal tube. It was such a beautiful use of plastic that almost made us think plastic could be precious.
[Photo: Bic]
Art director Stefano Seletti was similarly drawn to the Bic Cristals sleek, crystalline aesthetic as a potential lighting object for Seletti. Since the brand began dabbling in lighting several years ago, its embraced an out-of-the-box approach to its catalog, playing with everything from animal figures holding light bulbs to an anatomically correct rendition of a human heart.
The structure of the pen was absolutely perfect for this project: The transparent tubular body allows light to pass through, the ink cartridge could easily be transformed into the LED that provides the light, and the electrical components could be easily hidden by the colored plastic parts, Seletti says. His team partnered with Italian designer Mario Paroli, as well as with Bic, to bring the Bic Lamp to life. They used Bics archives and technical drawings to faithfully reproduce the pen at a 12-to-1 scale.
The final product is an ode to Bics simple-yet-functional design ethosand its the perfect kitsch addition to any space where writing gets done.
You sit down at your desk, ready to start the day. Before you can even open your first email, youve already typed in three different passwordseach more complex than the last. By lunchtime, youve repeated the ritual half a dozen times. Its frustrating, its slow, and its happening to millions of employees every single day.
This is password fatiguethe silent productivity killer and hidden security risk plaguing modern enterprises. Its more than an annoyance; its a costly vulnerability. Our global survey found that most users still rely on passwords as their primary authentication method. This should concern most organizations, because in an era defined by work-from-everywhere policies, apps, and mobile devices, businesses are still relying on a defense that hasnt meaningfully evolved since the 1960s.
Complexity Without Security
When it comes to password complexity, organizations are damned if they do and damned if they dont. They either abandon complexity altogetherlook at the Louvre, which used “Louvre” as the password to secure its surveillance systemor require increasingly complex strings of mixed cases, numbers, symbols, frequent changes, and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
While intended to strengthen security, complex password requirements can just as easily have the opposite effect. How many times has someone been locked out of their system for days because they forgot their recovery answer, or lost the phone that sends the authentication link needed to grant access? And in how many instances has that person decided to forsake those approved tools and upload sensitive data into a personal Google Driveeasier for them and their colleagues to access, but also easier for cybercriminals to exploit?
The tragedy is that added complexity doesnt guarantee safety. Cybercriminals have long since adapted to password advances with credential stuffing and brute-force attacks. But the most effective technique theyre using targets the weakest link in the password chain; not the password itself but the person who created it.
Why spend hours trying to pick a lock when the owner will unknowingly hand you the combination? There have been instances of cybercriminals creating look-alike login pages to collect passwords. The massive data breaches that hit MGM Resorts and Clorox were the result of cybercriminals masquerading as legitimate users, asking the IT help desk to reset their password and MFA. These threat actors didnt break inthey logged in.
The rise of AI has made the password problem even more urgent. Cybercriminals now use AI to guess passwords, craft flawless phishing emails, and even generate deepfake voices to trick help desk staff. Traditional passwords simply cant withstand this new generation of attacks.
According to the 2026 RSA ID IQ Report, 69% of organizations reported an identity-related breach in the last three years, a 27-percentage-point increase from last years survey. These arent abstract statisticsthey represent real financial losses, operational disruption, and reputational harm. And in many cases, they could have been prevented.
But how? Employees are burdened with increasingly unmanageable login rituals, yet organizations remain exposed to the very breaches these measures were meant to prevent. So, whats the answer?
The Passwordless Solution
The most viable way out of this cycle is passwordless authentication. When theres no password to steal, organizations significantly reduce their risks and streamline the login process by eliminating the need to remember, update, or constantly reenter a password string.
Passwords typically rely on “something you know” for users to gain access. Passwordless authentication replaces typing in a password with two or more other factors, including “something you have” like a mobile phone or hardware token, or “something you are,” like a face or fingerprint scan.
Typically, using those factors manifests in one of three ways, each with its own trade-offs:
Authenticator Apps & Push Notifications:
What it is: Instead of typing a password, the user enters their username and receives a secure notification on a trusted mobile app asking them to verify the login, often by matching a number.
Pros: Highly popular in business environments; relies on the smartphone the user already carries.
Cons: Requires the user to have a smartphone with data access; slightly slower than direct biometrics; susceptible to phishing and other attacks.
Magic Links:
What it is: Similar to the “forgot password” link Instagram or Slack might send you, the system emails a unique link or texts a code to log you in.
Pros: No hardware or setup is required; it works on any device with access to email.
Cons: While “password-free,” this is not truly “passwordless” in the security sense. It relies on the security of the email inbox (which is often protected only by a weak password) and is still susceptible to phishing and interception.
Platform Biometrics (Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello):
What it is: The user verifies their identity using a fingerprint scan or facial recognition built directly into their laptop or smartphone.
Pros: This offers the highest convenience and speed; users are already trained to unlock their phones this way.
Cons: It ties the credential to a specific device. If that device is lost or broken, account recovery mechanisms must be robust.
What to Look for in an Enterprise-Grade Passwordless Solution
If youre evaluating passwordless options for your company, ask yourself these two questions:
1. Is it comprehensive? If your solution only works for one environment or user group, then youll need to bolt on additional solutions to cover everyone and everything. For example, a solution might offer seamless biometric login for modern cloud apps like Office 365, but fail completely with legacy on-premises mainframes or VPNs, forcing users to fall back to passwords for critical internal systems. Your solution must work across every platform, deployment model, and environmentcloud, on-premises, edge, legacy, Microsoft, and macOS.
2. Is it truly secure? Phishing-resistance is a key trend in passwordless solutions, and its a critcal feature for eliminating one of the most frequent and highest-impact attack vectors. But phishing-resistance isnt enoughorganizations also need to be bypass resistant, malware resistant, fraud resistant, and outage resistant. If a cybercriminal can evade passwordless MFA by convincing your IT Help Desk to let them in, then the passwordless method itself isnt worth all that much.
Making the Transition
Shifting to a different paradigm doesnt happen overnight, but the payoff is immediate. Start with your most critical applications or highest-risk users and choose device-bound passkeys over synced alternatives that allow keys to roam between devices for stronger security.
Build rigorous enrollment processes with identity verification and liveness detection, which validates that the biometric source is a live person. In addition, protect your help desk with bilateral verification: this process confirms the caller’s identity via a device prompt and proves the agents legitimacy by displaying their verified status on the callers screen.
Plan for secure recovery when devices are lost by establishing high-assurance fallbacks, like pre-registered backup keys or biometric re-verification, instead of passwords. Look for solutions that automatically provide device-bound passkeys when users register the app. Lastly, measure the percentage of passwordless authentications over time against any suspected account compromises to ensure your actions are having a positive impact.
By eliminating the daily drain of password fatigue while closing one of the biggest doors to cybercriminals, enterprises can finally reclaim both productivity and peace of mind.
The 2026 national park pass features a portrait of Donald Trumps face, and the Department of the Interior (DOI) has threatened to penalize anyone who tries to cover it up. Now, park lovers are inventing their own clever work-arounds to remove the presidents visage from their passes.
For over two decades, the annual America the Beautiful park pass design has featured photography of nature, animals, and scenery across the United States. But when the DOI revealed the 2026 pass in November, something was glaringly different. Rather than a cascading waterfall or towering redwoods, the pass included a portrait of George Washington, framed side by side with Trumps mug-shot-inspired headshot.
The response to the pass design was swift. Many cardholders took to the internet to show themselves covering Trumps face with stickers as a form of protest. But mere weeks later, per an internal email obtained by SFGate, the DOI updated its Void if Altered policy in a transparent effort to discourage pass holders from covering Trumps face.
Whereas the policy previously stated that passes could be voided only if the signature section of the card was altered, it now overtly flags stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass. According to a policy document shared with The Washington Post, staff who come across altered passes are instructed to ask that stickers or coverings be removed. If that’s not possible, they’re permitted to either charge the guest with the regular entrance fee or give them the option to buy a brand-new pass.
While the Trump administration is acting quickly to redesign the National Park Service in Trumps literal image, national parkgoers are quicker. In the days since the pass policy was altered in early January, multiple designers have stepped up with clever work-arounds that conceal the presidents glowering face without running afoul of the restrictions. The simplest solution is a card sleeve that covers Trump’s face most of the time, but can be easily removed when the card is shown at park entrances.
[Photo: Dirt Roads Project]
How small designers are fighting back against the DOI
Katie Weber and her husband, Chris, started their Michigan-based apparel brand Dirt Roads Project in March 2025. The company, Weber says, was her way to make a difference after feeling overwhelmed by everything happening in our country.” So part of each purchase gives back to the preservation of parks and nature, including through collaborations with nonprofits like the Michigan Animal Rescue League, Alliance for the Great Lakes, and Reef Relief.
When Weber saw the park pass design for 2026, she immediately decided to create something that would cover Trumps face.
I was incredibly frustrated and wanted to be able to bring the parks front and center instead of showing someone who is honestly trying to dismantle our parks, Weber says. That night, I started going through all of our photography from past hiking trips, chose a handful that I loved, and created the design.
Her final selections, which run for just $6 each, feature photos taken at eight prominent national parks, including Zion in Utah, Haleakal in Maui, and Yosemite in California. After they launched for preorder around Thanksgiving, Weber says, interest in the stickers has been growing rapidly.
Weber specifically engineered the stickers to avoid covering any pertinent information on the cards, including the signature section, holographic strip, and barcode. But in the wake of the DOIs new sticker ban, she adapted the design to guarantee that users wont be penalized. Instead of adding the sticker directly to their passes, customers can now purchase a $2 plastic card sleeve from Dirt Roads Project to keep their cards completely unaltered while still obscuring the presidents face.
After the DOIs new regulations emerged, Weber says Dirt Roads Project has seen “skyrocketing” demand, bringing in over $6,000 from the stickers alone in the first weeks of January. To me, that shows that this small form of protest is being seen, and that people’s frustration is being heard, she says.
Other small businesses are similarly using their art to fight back. Mitchell Bowen is a graphic designer who runs a poster company called Recollection Project, pulling inspiration from 1930s illustrations to create posters of national parks and other travel destinations. He designed
My grandmother never realized she was practicing a die with zero philosophy. She liked to give generous presents to her children and grandchildren on birthdays, gift-giving occasionsand whenever the mood struck her. I once asked her why she kept her loved ones so well-supplied in gifts, and she remarked, Why should you be glad Im dead?
In other words, she didnt see the point in holding onto the money that would come to her family anyway when she died. By spending her money on us while she was still alive, she enjoyed our delight in her generosity. She saw that as a better use of her money than letting it grow until it became our emotionally uncomfortable inheritance.
In many ways, Grandma embodied the die with zero financial planning philosophy popularized by Bill Perkins. This philosophy encourages people to enjoy their money while they liveideally spending their final dollar just before kicking the bucketbecause theres no point in being the wealthiest person in the cemetery.
Considering the complexities of traditional financial planningnot to mention your understandable worries about running out of money in retirementthe die with zero philosophy may sound like a great way to live with low-grade anxiety during your golden years. But theres a way to balance your impulse to save for the future with the joy of enjoying your money right now.
The problem with traditional planning
Every day without fail, youll find a brand new think piece about how painfully underfunded the average American retirement account is. That’s why financial medias prevailing message about retirement planning is only slightly less hyperbolic than, For the love of all that is holy, put some money in a 401(k) NOW before its too late!!!
Unfortunately, this hyperfocus on building wealth makes it seem like even the largest of nest eggs is one unwary purchase away from leaving you destitute. The majority of retirees have built the life they want, but almost half are afraid to spend their money so they can live that life.
While this is not a problem that every retiree will face (see the depressing statistics about the size of the average American retirement account), its still a common issue for anyone who has internalized the accumulate! retirement planning message for decades.
Enter the die with zero financial philosophy.
What is Die with Zero?
Although hedge fund manager Bill Perkins coined the term (and wrote the eponymous book Die With Zero), the concept is hardly a new one. With the possible exception of some pharaohs and oligarchs, we all know we cant take it with us when we go.
Instead, Perkins suggests that our highest goal should be to maximize positive life experiences using the three limited resources we are all afforded: health, time, and money.
Of course, our levels of health, time, and money are not in perfect balance throughout our lives, which is why Perkins recommends using each of these resources when we have them.
When youre young, healthy, and have plenty of time, you can spend it enjoying low-cost but high-effort experiences, like backpacking through Europe. Once youre older, time-crunched, and wealthierbut still enjoying good healthyou can spend money to enjoy luxurious experiences that are lower-effort, like taking a cruise through the Greek Isles. And anytime your health is declining, you can spend time and money to help improve your health.
Die with zero financial planning
Die with zero is an appealing philosophy in part because its not just about money, retirement, or financial planning. Its a framework for optimizing your life. Much of the die with zero model is about changing your view of money, health, and time throughout your life.
However, the die with zero philosophy includes a blueprint for financial planning. Specifically, Perkins recommends the following rules for handling your finances so that you can die with zero:
Plan for different seasons of your life: Described by Perkins as time-bucketing, this strategy separates your life into 5- to 10-year chunks. For each time-bucket, you set experience goals you want to meet that will change as your time, health, and wealth change.
Spend with intention: Rather than accumulate wealth that youre afraid to spend, joyfully spend your money on memorable experiences that will make your life more meaningful.
Give money away to children and charities when its the most impactful: This is an echo of my grandmothers attitude. Rather than leaving a financial legacy to beloved family or charities when you diewhen they may no longer need the moneygive it away when the money can do the most good and while youre alive to see the benefit.
Recognize when youve hit your wealth peak: So much of retirement planning is about accumulation, which means it can be tough to know when youve reached enough. And then it can be even harder to feel comfortable spending down your nest egg. This philosophy suggests that you figure out when youre done growing your wealth so you can let go of the drive to keep growing.
Balancing prudence with pleasure
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die may be an excellent motto for soldiers heading off to war, but its a little harder to justify as a responsible life maxim when youre impulsively charging once-in-a-lifetime trips to Bali on your high-interest credit card.
Which is why its a good idea to fold the philosophy of the die with zero movement into traditional financial planning.
Focus on growing your nest egg, especially when you have the benefit of compound interest over time. But make sure you also invest some of your resourcestime, health, and moneyinto making memories.
Plan ahead for potential health problems in old age, which may mean earmarking money for future medical expenses. But also let yourself be generous with money to your loved ones when they need it.
Continue to make smart and frugal financial decisions in retirement. Butkeep meeting the experience goals you set for yourself, too, so that you continue to have new adventures to look forward to.
Treating your finances with intentionality is the best way to enjoy yourself and your moneynow and in retirement.
There are few things in the digital world as annoying as spam emails. They flood our inbox after our email address is sold by a data broker, shared with third parties from a site weve willingly given it to, or obtained through a data breach. Its natural to want to get off these lists as fast as possible, but if theres one thing you should rarely ever do with one of these spammy emails, it’s click the unsubscribe link found in it. Heres why, and what to do instead.
The problem with ‘unsubscribe’ email links
With few exceptions (see below), you should avoid clicking on unsubscribe links in most emails you receive. This is especially true if the link is in an email that is clearly spam, one from some business or website you have never given your information to.
This is because these unsubscribe links usually take you to a web page via a URL embedded in the unsubscribe text that identifies your email address, either in plain text or via an alphanumeric code. The moment this unique URL loads, the spammer at the other end knows that you were the one to click it; they now know that the email address they blasted does, in fact, have a real person at the other end.
If the email is from a spammer, there is a high chance that they will notand never intended todelete your email address from their database. In this case, clicking on that unsubscribe link reveals to the spammer that the email address theyve sent the message to is being read by a human. This confirmation usually only makes your email address a target for even more spam emails. This is the best-case scenario.
But theres a worst-case scenario as well. Scam emails often imitate genuine organizationssuch as your bank or a subscription service provider. These emails typically claim that you can opt out of what appear to be marketing messages by clicking the unsubscribe link. However, when you do, the link directs you to a malicious website that appears legitimate and asks you to log in or provide other personal information to verify that you are the account owner who wants to unsubscribe. The scammers then use the information you enter on their fake site to hack into your real account or commit other types of identity theft with the data youve given them.
Heres what to do instead
It should be noted that if you are 100% certain an email is from the organization it purports to be (such as Netflix, Apple, or Chase Bank, for example), its pretty safe to click on the emails unsubscribe link. Large companies tend to honor unsubscribe requests because they would face significant public backlash (and potential legal troubles) if they didnt.
But if you are even remotely uncertain, or the email is clearly from a spammy site you never signed up for in the first place, it’s probably best to avoid clicking on that tempting unsubscribe link.
Instead, if you want to stop receiving emails from the sender, you can block the offending email address. When you block an email address, any emails from that address will usually be sent directly to your spam or junk mail folder, so you should never see a message from the senders email address in your inbox again.
How to block an email address
The best way to block an email address depends on the email service provider you have.
If you use Gmail on the web, you can click the More button in the Gmail menu bar of the offending email and then select Block [sender]. Future messages from that email address will be sent right to the spam folder. If youre using a mobile device, you can find Googles instructions for blocking an email address here.
If you use Apples iCloudor the built-in iPhone Mail appyou have several options for blocking an email address. If youre on an iPhone, the quickest way to block a sender is to swipe on the email message in the Mail apps inbox to reveal its More button. Tap that button and then tap Block Contact to block the sender of the email.
This will cause a banner to appear above the email stating that the sender is blocked. However, emails from a blocked sender will still stay in your inbox until you set the Mail app to automatically move messages from a blocked sender to the Trash folder. Do this by opening the iPhones Settings app, tapping Mail, tapping Blocked Sender Options, and then selecting Move To Trash.
Other major email providers, such as Outlook.com (owned by Microsoft) and Yahoo Mail, offer ways to block email addresses. See instructions here for Outlook and here for Yahoo Mail.
Protect your email address without needing to unsubscribe from anything
A final way to avoid getting a deluge of spam email is to avoid using your real email address in online forms or websites. Instead, use an email alias, which is a randomized email address you can use instead of your real one. Emails sent to this email alias will still arrive in your real email addresss inbox, but if that email alias is ever abused, you can just delete the alias, which means that any emails sent to it never reach your inbox.
The easiest email alias system to use is Apples Hide My Email servicea feature available to paying iCloud Plus subscribersand arguably the best reason to become a paying subscriber. As I wrote previously, Hide My Email is probably the best Apple product you arent using. Its effective, easy to use, and costs as little as 99 cents a month.
But what if youre not an Apple user? Google is reportedly working on bringing a Hide My Email-like feature to Gmail users, called Shielded Email. In the meantime, Android and Windows users with non-iCloud email accounts could get similar Hide My Email functionality with Protons SimpleLogin service.
But whatever you do, try to avoid clicking on those tempting unsusbscribe links in spam emails.
One year on from the catastrophic LA wildfires, journalist, author, and MS NOW correspondent Jacob Soboroff examines what the fires reveal about Americas growing age of disaster. Drawing from his new book Firestorm, Soboroff shares hard lessons from the aftermath, exposing systemic failures, unlikely heroics, and what todays recovery efforts tell us about how the U.S. will respond to the next crisis.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You grew up in the Palisades, which were the heart of the fires. For our listeners who haven’t been there, can you describe the Palisades? What it looks like, what type of place it is, and then what happened when the fire swept through and the aftermath?
Pacific Palisades is a coastal enclave, I think you could say, in between Santa Monica and Malibu, the iconic Malibu, and it’s nestled along the Pacific Coast. And it’s actually on the absolute opposite side of Los Angeles County from Altadena where the Eaton fire also burned. And the reason it’s the costliest wildfire event in the history of the country is that both of these massive urban conflagrations unfolded at the same time.
The Palisades fire due to a holdover fire from an arson fire seven days earlier up at the top of Lachman Lane in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Eaton Fire in Altadena because of, the prevailing theory goes, faulty electrical equipment that energized and led to a spark, that when there were hurricane force Santa Ana wind gusts 80 miles per hour or greater, which by the way, were predicted by the National Weather Service as a particularly dangerous situation, one spark like that led to what they knew was going to be a catastrophic situation.
And so the Palisades, the fire raced down from the Santa Monica Mountains and engulfed the community of tens of thousands, and the same exact thing happened in Eaton Canyon on the other side of Los Angeles County, engulfing Altadena.
You said that the winds were predicted. There are some folks who talk about how the conditions were unprecedented, these hurricane force winds, and dry landscape, and densely populated homes altogether. Folks weren’t really prepared to handle what unfolded.
No, definitely not, and growing up in the Palisades, I evacuated the house that we lived in as a kid, and you always return home and the house is fine. And certainly, there have been homes lost in these fires, but nothing like this. Nothing like thousands of homes, 31 people killed, hundreds of thousands of people displaced. This was something that I don’t think any of us had ever seen, and as you mentioned, the conditions were such that we had received barely any rain at all in the late part of 2024 and into the beginning of 2025, and so Los Angeles was a tinderbox ready to go.
And I think what I’ve uncovered, discovered, learned about what it was that I experienced was that this was really the fire of the future. I thought it was a time machine into my past, but really, it was a look into the future that my children and our children will inhabit. And when I say the fire of the future, this was a senior emergency manager working for the federal government that said to me in a clandestine meeting after the fires, who this guy had been to every mass casualty fire in the last five years working for the federal government, there’s not one proximate cause.
And certainly, there’s lots of investigative reporting to be done about whether or not there were predeployed firefighters in the right places or the reservoir was full, and it wasn’t full and should have been and who’s to blame for that? Or should Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, have been in town or out of town? Did Gavin Newsom do what he said? Did Donald Trump’s misinformation and disinformation affect this as the president elect?
But really, this man, Jonathan White, from the Commissioned Health Service Corps, said to me, he took my notebook and he said, “Let me draw an X on it.” And on the forums of the X were obviously climate change, infrastructure falling apart, changes in the way we live, thousands of electric car batteries, another new technology exploding during the fires. And then the big one is the misinformation and the disinformation in terms of how people got notified, or didn’t, about what was happening in Los Angeles.
And all of those things together is what made this not only the Great Los Angeles Fires, but also in some measure, the new age of disaster, America’s new age of disaster where it isn’t just a spark. It’s a spark combined with our politics, it’s a spark combined with the ways we live, it’s a spark combined with hurricane force winds in bone dry Los Angeles in the middle of the winter. It’s all of those things combined.
You write in the book about people fighting to save their homes or spraying down their own property with flames all around them. What’s our individual responsibility in a disaster versus what we should be expecting of our government? The tales of people spraying down their own houses, it seems dangerous.
I think it certainly was. My own brother spent a long time considering whether or not to leave their house that ultimately burned down that he was living in, his in-laws’ home. And I know many stories like that, that people didn’t leave till the very last second, and I think it’s human nature to want to stand up and defend what is yours. These men and women of the LA County Fire Department, of the LA City Fire Department, of the mutual aid efforts from all over not just Southern California, but the American West and Mexico and Canada, firefighters came from everywhere, thousands and thousands of firefighters. They did everything they could to stop this blaze.
There’s a firefighter, Eric Mendoza, who I write about, who laid on his stomach in the middle of El Medio Street in the Palisades with his hose, two and a half diameter hose, biggest hose they could flow open full bore with thousand plus degree temperatures, automobile metal melting around them, and saying to himself, “I’m going to have black shit in my lungs and be coughing up stuff for days and weeks. I can barely see. I need to go into a house to wash my eyes out.”
The question is what’s our government’s role? Our government’s role is to provide services to us to mitigate and ideally stop, but the reality is it’s not going to be possible. And as I said, are there questions to ask about could there have been more pre-deployed firefighters in the Palisdes? Of course, those are important questions to ask.
But to me, it’s also as much a story, if it’s a story about failures, it’s a story about hope, because I got to meet and spend time around incredible people, not just the firefighters from the Palisades and from Altadena, wildlife biologists who studied the animals that were the first to repopulate these areas, federal government employees like the meteorologists that predicted this stuff. All of them give me hope in the way in which they have approached this. Day laborers, by the way, who are out rebuilding and cleaning up, despite the fact that they’re under the crosshairs of this administration.
I always find that in a catastrophe, there are hopeful threads. It’s easy to think about the negative parts of this, but to me, I’m also as uplifted as I’ve ever been after having a really hard year, and I think that that’s what this book was for me as much as anything, which was a cathartic process to work through.
For years, AI at work felt like a quiet helper in the background. It summarized meetings, suggested text, and answered questions when we asked. That era is ending.
The latest AI agents are beginning to move through systems more like teammates. They join projects, update plans, and act across teams. For the first time, organizations are effectively bringing on colleagues that can see more of the workplace than any single person ever could.
Ive spent years building tools to give teams clarity and save them time, so I see the upside. But that shift forces a harder question: what does it really mean for an AI to see everything in a workplace?
The ethical issue isnt whether agents can technically access information. It is whether their access mirrors what a reasonable employee would encounter in the course of doing their job.
When Visibility Turns Into Influence
Most workplaces rely on role-based access and permissions to maintain order. People see only the information relevant to their role, and those boundaries shape how teams collaborate and how they resolve disagreements.
AI agents complicate that system. If an agent has more access than it should, even by accident, it can surface information that changes how work is interpreted and shifts decisions away from the people meant to make them.
These scenarios usually appear in small ways first. An employee might ask an agent a question and receive an answer based on sensitive information they did not realize was in the agents scope.
People also produce their best ideas through drafts, notes, and early sketches that are not meant for broad consumption. Even the chance that AI might leverage those early drafts changes how people ideate. They’ll start revising earlier, sharing less freely, and spending more time avoiding misinterpretation.
Each incident can seem isolated, but together they alter how authority, context, and trust flow through an organization.
What Responsible Use Should Look Like
The central question for leaders is not what AI agents are capable of doing; it is what they should be allowed to see. Boundaries must be clear before these systems become part of daily work.
An agent working on behalf of an employee should have the same access that employee has, no more and no less. Anything else creates uncertainty. Who can see what? Who can change what? That uncertainty erodes internal trust.
Limiting agents to any other standard also creates problems. An agent that lacks access to shared context, public decisions, or common company knowledge will give incomplete or misleading answers. Ethical design is not about minimizing access. It is about giving agents enough accurate, live context to be genuinely useful.
Responsibility also has to remain with people. Access defines what an agent can do; accountability defines who owns the outcome. When an agent takes an action, the individual who invoked it should be accountable for the result. Just like a manager owning the work done by their team, delegating tasks to AI can help with efficiency, but decision-making still belongs to the humans who direct the work.
Private creative spaces deserve protection as well. Drafts, personal notes, and early explorations help employees test ideas before presenting them. These spaces do not need to be sealed off, but they should be clearly defined and respected. Preserving them supports healthier experimentation and a more open exchange of ideas.
Transparency matters throughout this process. Protected spaces only work if the system around them is visible and understandable. When an agent recommends an action or executes one, employees should be able to understand, at a basic level, how it reached that conclusion.
As companies adopt AI agents more widely, technical and organizational decisions will converge. The systems will influence how teams collaborate, how information moves, and how people feel about their work. This shapes whether AI becomes a supportive part of the workplace or a source of friction.
The issue is no longer whether AI can see everything. It is how leaders define the limits, and how clearly they communicate those choices to the people who rely on them.
In todays rapidly changing work environment, developing trust among team members is crucial for success. Yet, many organizations struggle to foster an atmosphere of collaboration and understanding, often resulting in communication breakdowns, conflicts, and a decrease in productivity. The inability to trust can be the result of misunderstanding, conflicting values, or misjudging others because they trigger us and remind us of a negative situation or experience in our past.
Building our emotional intelligence can help us increase our awareness and become less prone to building up barriers to trust. Trust isnt built through charisma or authorityits built through emotional presence. Leaders who create environments where people feel emotionally safe, seen, and respected accelerate not just connection, but performance, says Dawn Christian, the CEO of BeLeadership, a leadership coaching community. Emotional intelligence means we become more effective at recognizing and managing our own emotions, as well as understanding and influencing the emotions of others. As an author of two books on emotional intelligence, Ive found that by boosting emotional intelligence, leaders and employees can build a culture that reduces and eliminates many of the barriers that lead to a lack of trust.
Emotional intelligence can be broken down into five major areas: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Through developing these areas, employees and leaders at all levels can become more adept at navigating through all the areas that build barriers to trust.
1. Self-awareness
The first area is being able to reflect on situations. At the end of the day, everyone needs to take an inner journey and consider why they reacted the way they did to a situation. In hindsight, we could ask ourselves how well we managed our reactions in the moment. Would another way of interpreting and reacting have been more effective? Would the outcome have been more positive? Journaling is a known way to aid in the process of self-reflection. It helps us track emotions and reactions and look for patterns that keep coming up that we may want to work on changing.
2. Self-regulation
We need to practice self-regulating our emotions. When we notice strong emotions emerging, we need to keep ourselves from reacting. For example, when we have a strong desire to act out from our emotions, count to 10 or remove ourselves from the situation. After taking time to think things through, it is unlikely that we would choose the same response we would if we reacted purely from our emotions. When we continually practice this, we will feel more confident that we have mastered our emotions and wont react in a manner that we may later regret.
Busyness doesnt just drain our energyit erodes our emotional capacity . . . Breaking up with busyness isnt about doing lessits about clearing the space where emotional intelligence, trust, and leadership actually take shape, Christian points out.
3. Motivation
A good practice is to always view a situation through the lens of how our reactions will serve us. Once we have a firm understanding of our goalsprofessionally and personallyit becomes easier to motivate ourselves. Once we have a clear picture of what we want from life, and where we are going, we are better able to hold ourselves accountable and not deviate from actions that prevent us from moving in the direction of our goals. With this comes a strong realization that we have to be able to collaborate and work as part of a team to succeed. This makes us the kind of person others trust and want to work with.
4. Empathy
Practice active listening and empathy. Most of the time when someone is speaking, we are thinking of a response rather than really listening. Everyone has a need to feel that they have been heard. When others are speaking, pay full attention and let them know by your posture and body language that you are engaged. After they have spoken, ask questions to clarify that we have understood them correctly. Even if we do not agree with their perspective, it is crucial that they feel heard and respected. This is a major step towards building trust.
5. Social skills
Continually build our social skills through activities that encourage collaboration. Any type of team-building activity is a good way to engage with others in an authentic and supportive manner. Activities in which people share both their successes and their struggles help show that we all have strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. Whenever we engage in activities that bring out more of our human side, we build stronger bridges between people and deepen trust.
The Food and Drug Administration commissioner’s effort to drastically shorten the review of drugs favored by President Donald Trump’s administration is causing alarm across the agency, stoking worries that the plan may run afoul of legal, ethical, and scientific standards long used to vet the safety and effectiveness of new medicines.
Marty Makary’s program is causing new anxiety and confusion among staff already rocked by layoffs, buyouts, and leadership upheavals, according to seven current or recently departed staffers. The people spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss confidential agency matters.
At the highest levels of the FDA, questions remain about which officials have the legal authority to sign off on drugs cleared under the Commissioners National Priority Voucher program, which promises approval in as little as one month for medicines that support U.S. national interests.
Traditionally, approval decisions have nearly always been handled by FDA review scientists and their immediate supervisors, not the agencys political appointees and senior leaders.
But drug reviewers say they’ve received little information about the new program’s workings. And some staffers working on a highly anticipated anti-obesity pill were recently told they can skip certain regulatory steps to meet top officials’ aggressive deadlines.
Outside experts point out that FDA drug reviewswhich range from six to 10 monthsare already the fastest in the world.
The concept of doing a review in one to two months just does not have scientific precedent, said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor at Harvard Medical School. FDA cannot do the same detailed review that it does of a regular application in one to two months, and it doesnt have the resources to do it.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that FDA officials have delayed the review of two drugs in the program, in part due to safety concerns, including the death of a patient taking one of the medications.
Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the voucher program prioritizes gold standard scientific review and aims to deliver meaningful and effective treatments and cures.”
The program remains popular at the White House, where pricing concessions announced by the Republican president have repeatedly been accompanied by FDA vouchers for drugmakers that agree to cut their prices.
For instance, when the White House announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would reduce prices on their popular obesity drugs, FDA staffers had to scramble to vet new vouchers for both companies in time for Trump’s news conference, according to multiple people involved in the process.
Thats sparked widespread concern that FDA drug reviewslong pegged to objective standards and procedureshave become open to political interference.
Its extraordinary to have such an opaque application process, one that is obviously susceptible to politicization, said Paul Kim, a former FDA attorney who now works with pharmaceutical clients.
Top FDA officials declined to sign off on expedited approvals
Many of the concerns around the program stem from the fact that it hasn’t been laid out in federal rules and regulations.
The FDA already has more than a half-dozen programs intended to speed up or streamline reviews for promising drugsall approved by Congress, with regulations written by agency staff.
In contrast, information about the voucher program is mostly confined to an agency website. Drugmakers can apply by submitting a 350-word statement of interest.
Increasingly, agency leaders such as Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDAs top medical officer and vaccine center director, have been contacting drugmakers directly about awarding vouchers. Thats created quandaries for FDA staffers on even basic questions, such as how to formally award a voucher to a company that didnt request one.
Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said that voucher submissions are evaluated by a senior, multidisciplinary review committee, led by Prasad.
Questions about the legality of the program led the FDAs then-drug director, Dr. George Tidmarsh, to decline to sign off on approvals under the pathway, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Tidmarsh resigned from the agency in November after a lawsuit challenging his conduct on issues unrelated to the voucher program.
After his departure, Dr. Sara Brenner, the FDAs principal deputy commissioner, was set to have the power to decide, but she also declined the role after looking further into the legal implications, according to the people. Currently, the agencys deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Mallika Mundkur, who works under Prasad, is taking on the responsibility.
Giving final approval to a drug carries significant legal risks, essentially certifying that the medicine meets FDA standards for safety and effectiveness. If unexpected safety problems later emerge, both the agency and individual staffers could be pulled into investigations or lawsuits.
Traditionally, approval comes from FDA drug office directors, made in consultation with a team of reviewers. Under the voucher program, approval comes through a committee vote by senior agency leaders led by Prasad, according to multiple people familiar with the process. Staff reviewers don’t get a vote.
It is a complete reversal from the normal review process, which is traditionally led by the scientists who are th ones immersed in the data, said Kesselheim, who is a lawyer and a medical researcher.
Not everyone sees problems with the program. Dan Troy, the FDAs top lawyer under President George W. Bush, a Republican, says federal law gives the commissioner broad discretion to reorganize the handling of drug reviews.
Still, he says, the voucher program, like many of Makarys initiatives, may be short-lived because it isn’t codified.
If you live by the press release then you die by the press release, Troy said. Anything that theyre doing now could be wiped out in a moment by the next administration.
The voucher program has ballooned after outreach by FDA officials
Initially framed as a pilot program of no more than five drugs, it has expanded to 18 vouchers awarded, with more under consideration. That puts extra pressure on the agencys drug center, where 20% of the staff has left through retirements, buyouts or resignations over the past year.
When Makary unveiled the program in October, there were immediate concerns about the unprecedented power he would have in deciding which companies benefit.
Makary then said that nominations for drugs would come from career staffers. Indeed, some of the early drugs were recommended by FDA reviewers, according to two people familiar with the process. They said FDA staffers deliberately selected drugs that could be vetted quickly.
But, increasingly, selection decisions are led by Prasad or other senior officials, sometimes unbeknownst to FDA staff, according to three people. In one case, FDA reviewers learned from GlaxoSmithKline representatives that Prasad had contacted the company about a voucher.
Access to Makary is limited because he does not use a government email account to do business, according to people familiar with the matter, breaking with longstanding precedent.
Under pressure from drugmakers, some FDA reviewers were told they can skip steps
Once a voucher is awarded, some drugmakers have their own interpretation of the review timeline creating further confusion and anxiety among staff.
Two people involved in the ongoing review of Eli Lilly’s anti-obesity pill said company executives initially told the FDA they expected the drug approved within two months.
The timeline alarmed FDA reviewers because it did not include the agency’s standard 60-day prefiling period, when staffers check the application to ensure it isnt missing essential information. That 60-day window has been in place for more than 30 years.
Lilly pushed for a quicker filing turnaround, demanding one week. Eventually the agency and the company agreed to a two-week period.
Lilly’s CEO, David Ricks, told attendees at a health care conference on Tuesday that the company expects FDA approval of its pill in the second quarter of the year.
Nixon declined to comment on the specifics of Lilly’s review but said FDA reviewers can adjust timelines as needed.
Staffers were pushed to keep the application moving forward, even though key pieces of data about the drug’s chemistry appeared to be missing, according to one person involved in the process. When reviewers raised concerns about gaps in the application, the person said, they were told by a senior FDA official that it was OK to overlook the regulations if the science is sound.
Former reviewers and outside experts say that approach is the opposite of how FDA reviews should work: By following the regulations, staffers scientifically confirm the safety and effectiveness of drugs.
Skipping review steps could also carry risks for drugmakers if future FDA leaders decide a drug wasnt properly vetted. Like other experts, Kesselheim says the program may not last beyond the current administration.
They are fundamentally changing the application of the standards, but the underlying law remains what it is, he said. The hope is that one day we will return to these scientifically sound, legally sound principles.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Matthew Perrone, AP health writer
