AI is no longer the future of healthcare; its already reshaping how patients are diagnosed and treated. Some of the most interesting developments involve systems that sense and respond to human emotion. Cedars-Sinais Connect platform, for example, adapts care based on patient sentiment; CompanionMx interprets vocal and facial cues to detect anxiety; and Feel Therapeutics uses emotion-sensing wearables to tailor interventions in real time.
At the same time, clinical tools are evolving. Hospitals are pairing large language models (LLMs) with AI note-taking apps such as Nabla and Heidi, which can listen, summarize, and respond to the nuances of doctorpatient conversations. Investment in medical scribing technologies alone hit around $800 million last year.
A SHIFT TO AI ADAPTATION
All of this points to a bigger shift from AI that automates tasks to AI that adapts. Traditional AI sped up paperwork and crunched data. Adaptive AI helps clinicians make better judgments, understand patients more deeply, and respond in context. You can already see this shift in breast cancer screening, genomics, and drug discovery, where high quality data and constant validation are driving real progress.
Emotionally-aware tools, when designed responsibly, can strengthen the connection between clinicians and patients, personalize care, and ease pressure on overstretched systems. But as adaptive AI becomes more widely available, success depends less on technical brilliance and more on how systems are built. The tools that succeed will be able to flex around people, fitting patients needs, clinicians workflows, and the realities of care. Good AI needs to be anticipatory and sensitive to context, built for the full diversity of patients.
Even the most empathetic AI cannot, of course, erase the imperfections of human systems. Recent studies, for example, show that medical AI tools and LLMbased assistants routinely downplay symptoms in women and treat Black and Asian patients with less empathy than for white men. AI does not cleanse the biases of the real world; it carries them forward and often widens their impact. We have seen this pattern before.
DEPLOYMENT MATTERS
Thats why deployment conditions matter as much as technology. A system that mimics empathy does not automatically grasp nuance, context, or risk. Without firm ethical boundaries, so-called emotional intelligence can give a false sense of security. Clinicians still need to make the final calls, protecting patients and maintaining trust. AI can be a helpful care partner, but it cannot take on the weight of human responsibility.
Building trust requires strengthening the foundations on which it is used. Involving patients, families, and carers from the start surfaces blind spots early and helps balance compassion with practicality. It also clarifies where automation should step back and human care needs to step in. Our Cancer Platform, developed with the Cancer Awareness Trust, illustrates this in practice, showing how empathetic design creates dependable, genuinely helpful tools.
AI isnt here to replace people. Its here to support them in their expertise and scale their impact. Ideally we will build machines to handle complexity and pattern recognition, freeing clinicians to focus on what humans do best: exercise judgement, build connection, and provide care. Machines might learn to care, but it is up to us to create the ecosystem where that care is trustworthy, fair, and meaningfula challenge, yes, but one full of opportunity.
Nicki Sprinz is CEO of ustwo.
Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, L3Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis, while defense firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey is one of the executives sanctioned, who can no longer do business in China and are barred from entering the country. Their assets in the East Asian country have also been frozen.The announcement of the U.S. arms-sale package, valued at more than $10 billion, has drawn an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own and says it must come under its control.If approved by the American Congress, it would be the largest-ever U.S. weapons package to the self-ruled territory.“We stress once again that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in ChinaU.S. relations,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “Any company or individual who engages in arms sales to Taiwan will pay the price for the wrongdoing.”The ministry also urged the U.S. to stop what it called “the dangerous moves of arming Taiwan.”Taiwan is a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations that analysts worry could explode into military conflict between the two powers. China says that the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan would violate diplomatic agreements between China and the U.S.China’s military has increased its presence in Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the island.Under the American federal law, the U.S. is obligated to assist Taiwan with its self-defense, a point that has become increasingly contentious with China. Beijing already has strained ties with Washington over trade, technology and other human rights issues.
Associated Press
For the past three years, AIs breakout moment has happened almost entirely through text. We type a prompt, get a response, and move to the next task. While this intuitive interaction style turned chatbots into a household tool overnight, it barely scratches the surface of what the most advanced technology of our time can actually do.
This disconnect has created a significant gap in how consumers utilize AI. While the underlying models are rapidly becoming multimodalcapable of processing voice, visuals, and video in real timemost consumers are still using them as a search engine. Looking toward 2026, I believe the next wave of adoption wont be about utility alone, but about evolving beyond static text into dynamic, immersive interactions. This is AI 2.0: not just retrieving information faster, but experiencing intelligence through sound, visuals, motion, and real-time context.
AI adoption has reached a tipping point. In 2025, ChatGPTs weekly user base doubled from roughly 400 million in February to 800 million by years end. Competitors like Gemini and Anthropic saw similar growth, yet most users still engage with LLMs primarily via text chatbots. In fact, Deloittes Connected Consumer Survey shows that despite over half (53%) of consumers experimenting with generative AI, most people still relegate AI to administrative tasks like writing, summarizing, and researching.
Yet when you look at the digital behavior of consumers outside of AI, its clear consumers crave immersive experiences. According to Activate Consultings Tech & Media Outlook 2026, 43% of Gen Z prefer user-generated platforms like TikTok and YouTube over traditional TV or paid streaming, and they spend 54% more time on social video platforms than the average consumer, abandoning traditional media for interactive social platforms.
This creates a fundamental mismatch: Consumers live in a multi-sensory world, but their AI tools are stuck delivering plain text. While the industry recognizes this gap and is investing to close it, I predict well see a fundamental shift in how people use and create with AI. In AI 2.0, users will no longer simply consume AI-generated content but will instead leverage multimodal AI to bring voice, visuals, and text together, allowing them to shape and direct their experiences in real time.
MULTIMODAL AI UNLOCKS IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING
If AI 1.0 was about efficiency, AI 2.0 is about engagement. While text-based AI is limited in how deeply it can engage audiences, multimodal AI allows the user to become an active participant. Instead of reading a story, you can interact with a main character and take the plot in a new direction or build your own world where narratives and characters evolve with you.
We can look to the $250 billion gaming industry as the blueprint for the potential that multimodal AI has. Video games combine visuals, audio, narrative, and real-time agency, creating an immersive experience that traditional entertainment cant replicate. Platforms like Roblox and Minecraft let players inhabit content. Roblox alone reaches over 100 million daily users, who collectively spend tens of billions of hours a year immersed in these worlds; engagement that text alone could never generate.
With the rise of multimodal AI, users everywhere will be able to create these types of experiences theyve loved to participate in through gaming. By removing technical barriers, multimodal allows everyone to build experiences that not only feel authentic to the real world but also actively participate in them. Legacy media is also responding to this trend. Disney recently announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a licensing deal that will let users create short clips with characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars through the Sora platform.
WHY MULTIMODAL AI CAN BE SAFER FOR YOUNGER USERS
As AI becomes part of everyday life, safetyparticularly for younger usershas become one of the most critical issues facing the industry.
Moving from open-ended chat to structured, multimodal worlds allows us to design guardrails within the gameplay. Instead of relying on continuous unstructured prompts, these environments are built around characters, visuals, voices, and defined story worlds. Interaction is guided by the experience itself. That structure changes how and where safety is designed into the system.
Educational AI demonstrates this approach. Platforms like Khan Academy Kids and Duolingo combine visuals, audio, and structured prompts to guide learning. The AI isnt trying to be everything; it focuses on one task well. As multimodal AI evolves, one of its most meaningful opportunities may be this ability to balance creative freedom with thoughtful constraint. AI 2.0 presents a design shift that could give builders, educators, and families new ways to shape safer, more intentional digital spaces for the next generation.
WHY MULTIMODAL AI IS THE NEXT FRONTIER
In 2026, I predict that consumers wont be prompting AI; it will be a more immersive interactive experience. This excites me because users wont just passively receive outputs; theyll actively shape experiences and influence how AI evolves in real time. We could see users remixing the series finale of their favorite TV show, or students learning history not by reading a textbook, but by actively debating a historically accurate AI simulation.
For founders and creators, the next step is to stop building tools only for efficiency and start building environments for immersion and exploration. The winners of the next cycle wont be the ones with the smartest models, but the ones who make AI feel less like a utility and more like a destination for rich, interactive experiences.
Karandeep Anand is CEO of Character.AI
The White House will unveil new details on President Donald Trump’s planned East Wing ballroom during a hearing early next month, according to a federal commission tasked with reviewing the project.
The new ballroom, which Trump has said would cost $400 million and would dwarf the adjacent White House building, has been challenged in court by preservationists, while Democratic lawmakers have called it an abuse of power and are investigating which donors are supporting it.
The National Capital Planning Commission, chartered by Congress to manage planning for Washington-area federal lands, said on its website that the White House will provide an “information presentation” on plans to rebuild the East Wing during a commission meeting on January 8.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The commission, chaired by a White House aide and onetime personal lawyer to Trump, Will Scharf, has declined to review the demolition of the former East Wing, preparation activities at the site, or potential effects to historic properties, in what would mark the biggest change to the historic property in decades.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress, is suing to halt the construction, arguing that the proposed 90,000 square foot (8,360 square meter) ballroom would dwarf the rest of the White House, at 55,000 square feet.
The judge in the case earlier this month declined to issue a temporary restraining order against work on the project, noting among other things that the size, scale and other specifications had not been finalized. Another hearing is scheduled for next month.
The president, a one-time real estate developer, has taken a hands-on role in what he has described as sprucing up the White House and the U.S. capital city ahead of celebrations next year marking the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary.
He has also proposed a new grand arch near Washington, while decorating the Oval Office extensively in gold leaf and installing plaques there offering his personal take on his predecessors’ legacies.
The former East Wing was largely demolished in October, with comparatively little public notice or consultation.
In a recent notice posted online, the planning commission said a formal review taking place this coming spring will consider topics including lines of sight, public space and landscapes. Members of the public will be allowed to submit comments or testify during the review, it said.
Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters
California, soaked from days of relentless rain and recovering from mudslides in mountain towns, was hit with another powerful storm Christmas Day that led to evacuation warnings and high surf advisories.The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, a mountain town about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, a day after rescuing people trapped in cars during a mud slide.The National Weather Service said waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) Friday.Statewide, more than 70,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths.A major storm system moving toward the Midwest and Northeast was expected to interfere with travel, according to the National Weather Service.A mix of freezing rain and sleet could create icy conditions in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland. Forecasters warned heavy ice could cause outages. Snow was expected to blanket the Northeast early Friday.Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.“It’s really a crazy Christmas,” said Jill Jenkins, who was spending the holiday with her 13-year-old grandson, Hunter Lopiccolo.Lopiccolo said the family almost evacuated the previous day, when water washed away a chunk of their backyard. But they decided to stay and still celebrated the holiday. Lopiccolo got a new snowboard and e-bike.“We just played card games all night with candles and flashlights,” he said.Davey Schneider hiked a mile and a half (1.6 kilometers) through rain and floodwater up to his shins from his Wrightwood residence Wednesday to rescue cats from his grandfather’s house.“I wanted to help them out because I wasn’t confident that they were going to live,” Schneider said Thursday. “Fortunately, they all lived. They’re all okay just a little bit scared.”Arlene Corte said roads in town turned into rivers, but her house was not damaged.“It could be a whole lot worse,” she said. “We’re here talking.”With more rain on the way, more than 150 firefighters were stationed in the area, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Shawn Millerick.“We’re ready,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at this point.”A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash.Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under a flood watch until Friday afternoon, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.The storms were the result of atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters), with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.More heavy snow was expected in the Sierra Nevada, where gusts created “near white-out conditions” and made mountain pass travel treacherous. Officials said there was a “high” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe and a winter storm warning was in effect through Friday.Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe recorded about 1 to 3 feet (30 to 91 centimeters) of snow overnight, said Tyler Salas, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno. Forecasters expect to see up to another 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow through Friday, Salas said. The area could see 45-mph (72-kph) gusts in low elevation areas and 100-mph (161-kph) winds along mountain ridges.Gov. Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance.The state deployed resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby.
Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Oakland, California, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.
Ty ONeil, Associated Press
Whats one thing most Americans likely dont know? Demand for donor sperm is increasing. Initially established in the 1970s to help men undergoing vasectomies and facing cancer treatments, sperm banks today support people facing a wide range of challenges on their path to pregnancy. Alongside heterosexual couples dealing with infertility issues like azoospermia and young men facing cancer diagnosis, single mothers by choice, and same-sex couples are frequently turning to sperm banks in hopes of building their family.
With approximately 1,500 sperm donors serving the entire United States, a new sperm bank, Premier Sperm Bank, is venturing to address modern family building needs with a commitment to research and ethically-minded practices. I caught up with John Jain, MD, the sperm banks founder, to understand more about the future of family building with donor sperm.
Q: Why sperm and why now? Why enter the sperm bank industry?
Jain: During my time running an egg bank in California, I took a real interest in male reproductive health, observing that very little research was being done even though sperm is 50% of the baby equation. So, it was sort of a natural progression for me, having run an egg bank, to open Premier Sperm Bank. And this is an exciting time to open a sperm bank, as the way people build their families has evolved and society is adapting with new technologies. Were seeing increased rates of single mothers by choice, lesbian couples, and people of all identities wanting to be parentsand we can help these families by offering them a chance to self-inseminate in the privacy of their own home as an alternative to in-clinic insemination.
Simultaneously, while launching Premier, I built a research center in Oxford, England to study the genetics and epigenetics of sperm.
Q: Can you explain a little bit more about your research? How is that connected Premier Sperm Bank?
Jain: The cornerstone for male fertility has been the semen analysis, a nearly 100-year-old test that was standardized in the 1930s that does not truly predict fertility. There have been no meaningful advances in sperm testing to connect the health of the sperm to fertility outcomes, and/or the health of the resulting children. This field is strangely quite nascent when compared to our understanding of female fertility. How does the DNA work, how do the epigenetics fit in? My research going forward is focused on epigenetics and how we better assess sperm to ensure we are optimizing for good fertility outcomes and healthy babies for families using donor sperm.
Q: Your website mentions that you are the only sperm bank in the world that DNA verifies sperm. What does that mean?
Jain: It means we have verified the identity of the donor by matching his sperm to his DNA profile. Its important because the other methods of verification used by sperm banks depend on manual human processes or electronic medical witnessing systems. Clients want to know that they are receiving the correct sperm. DNA-verified is nearly 100% accurate and Premier is the only sperm bank in the world to offer the service.
Q: What is your donor selection process? How do you select a donor?
Jain: It’s pretty rigorous. We only accept 1.8% of donor applicants into our portfolio. While we consider physical characteristics, personal accomplishments, and check criminal and educational backgrounds, my role as a medical director is to assure quality sperm from healthy donors. We do that by performing an extensive 100-question family and medical history, FDA-mandated infectious disease tests, and sperm quarantine for 6 months. We also use a test that screens 500 genes to lower the risk of passing on a genetic disease.
Q: Where do you see the industry in the next 10 to 20 years?
Jain: I think there needs to be more acknowledgement about the needs of donor-conceived children and their families. Legacy sperm banks have not consistently monitored how many families have used a donors sperm; it is not uncommon to see donors whose sperm has resulted in dozens or even hundreds of donor-conceived children. Many donor-conceived children eventually want to meet their biological father. Anonymous donation is becoming a thing of the past, as we are now only accepting donors willing to disclose their identity once the child is 18.
The next 10 to 20 years will also see the emergence of better tools to evaluate sperm and predict fertility and childhood health. My lab in Oxford was built with that purpose in mind. And then there’s germline gene editing, the intentional modification of DNA in sperm, eggs, and embryos, currently banned in most countries. I believe gene editing is inevitable as it brings the potential of eliminating serious diseases like cancer, but it does change the human genome and presents an ethical slippery slope that requires oversight.
Maureen Brown is CEO and cofounder of Mosie Baby.
As 2025 comes to a close, business leaders are inevitably already planning how 2026 will shape up, particularly as the last year proved to be a tumultuous one. The so-called AI boom is still booming, corporate DEI initiatives have shrunk or disappeared altogether, and return-to-office mandates have tightened.
No one has a crystal ball to predict emerging technologies, financial headwinds, political hurdles, and market trends for the next year. But that doesnt mean that companies can sit backthere are steps to take now to help insulate your company against potential turbulence in the coming year, while simultaneously fostering success by focusing on the human aspects of technology and leadership.
So, here are five things Im thinking about as we head into 2026and I welcome every other business leader to join me as we ring in yet another new year.
1. There is no AI bubble
Some business leaders speak about AI like they did about the internet circa 1998. But while we saw a dotcom bubble burst in the stock market, consumer appetite for e-commerce only grew and grew. The same will be true for AIalthough we may see tech company value corrections, theres no bubble regarding user demand. What were seeing instead is a seismic shift in how humans and non-humans interact with each other. The only real risk is to the companies (choosing to be) left behind through inaction.
2. AI should be leveraged for growthnot cost saving
Company leaders are approaching AI with a short-term lensviewing it as a means to save money and drive shareholder value from a profitability perspective. This short-sighted way of planning means doing the same amount of work with less, leading to sacrifices from a product, process, or people perspective. Instead, C-suites should be looking at AI from a long-term growth lens by using it to augment and accelerate the work people are already doing. The goal should be to spend the same amount of money while increasing output, without hamstringing the quality of work.
3. Use AI to amplify creativity and critical thinking
Implementing a solid AI strategy takes more than downloading the hottest new tool. Which leaders in your organization are ensuring that your culture of creativity and critical thinking is alive and well? To be truly successful with AI, the human element cannot be overlooked. Just like a parent governs their childs technology use to foster growth, a successful leader implements AI in a way that is supportivenot stifling.
4. Abolish absolutism
When a leader speaks in absolutes, its a huge red flag. Everyone must be in the office five days a week, or We must do all this work in-house because thats always best. Leaders should remember that the future is hybrid in all its iterations. Not just in terms of how often employees are in an office, but in terms of staffing and how they leverage technology. The flexibility offered by hybrid thinking affords leaders an opportunity to diversify their business and find the most effectiveand profitableway to operate. With the world seemingly more uncertain than ever, building agility into your leadership style and business planning is increasingly important.
5. Check your ego
Its time that the C-suite remembers to embrace a bit more humilityor at least try to. No matter how senior you are, no one cares about your opinion unless you care about theirs. Successful leaders consistently recognize that their people are their greatest asset, whether theyre internal or external. Im not saying a company should be run like a democracy, but its important to be collaborative about forming opinions. Remember: Your point of view isnt the only one.
Justin Tobin is founder and president of Gather.
A Powerball ticket purchased at a gas station outside Little Rock, Arkansas, won a $1.817 billion jackpot in Wednesday’s Christmas Eve drawing, ending the lottery game’s three-month stretch without a top-prize winner.The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52 and 59, with the Powerball number being 19. The winning ticket was sold at a Murphy USA in Cabot, lottery officials in Arkansas said Thursday. No one answered the phone Thursday at the location, which was closed for Christmas. The community of roughly 27,000 people is 26 miles (42 kilometers) northeast of Little Rock.Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot higher than previous expected, making it the second-largest in U.S. history and the largest Powerball prize of 2025, according to www.powerball.com. The jackpot had a lump sum cash payment option of $834.9 million.“Congratulations to the newest Powerball jackpot winner! This is truly an extraordinary, life-changing prize,” Matt Strawn, Powerball Product Group Chair and Iowa Lottery CEO, was quoted as saying by the website. “We also want to thank all the players who joined in this jackpot streak every ticket purchased helps support public programs and services across the country.”Lottery officials said they won’t know who won until at least Monday because winners must contact a claims center, which is closed for the holidays until then, according to Karen Reynolds, a spokesperson for the Arkansas lottery.The prize followed 46 consecutive drawings in which no one matched all six numbers.The last drawing with a jackpot winner was Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas won $1.787 billion.Organizers said it is the second time the Powerball jackpot has been won by a ticket sold in Arkansas. It first happened in 2010.The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes also has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.Powerball’s odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins. Lottery officials note that the odds are far better for the game’s many smaller prizes.“With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?” Indianapolis glass artist Chris Winters said Wednesday.Tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Associated Press videojournalist Obed Lamy in Indianapolis contributed.
Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Olivia Diaz, Associated Press/Report for America
Its time to reckon with the reality that nonstop doomscrolling has delivered us: a hard-to-ignore erosion of our cognitive skills. Weve lost the ability to focus on words for long stretches of time . . . er, read books.
Years of turning everything worth consuming into content thats been optimized for attention has turned our brains into mush, shoved our mental health into free fall, and reduced our ability to pay attention to anything for more than five seconds at a time. (In fact, I clicked away from completing this sentence to check Facebook Marketplace for credenzas on sale.)
While were still in the early days of what the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on our brains might look like, a growing contingent of folks are fighting back against the hijacking of our attention spans in favor of good old-fashioned reading.
These are teenagers forgoing social media for social reality, working moms carving out time in their busy schedules to devour books, and people on #BookTok swapping tips to get into reading.
In the spirit of celebrating the dying art of reading actual, honest-to-god chapter booksand not just furiously scrolling through endless Instagram slideshows and calling it a dayand before AI-written novels completely take over (this reality might already be upon us), I consulted a number of my colleagues at Fast Company to compile a list of the best books theyve read this year in the hopes of inspiring you, too.
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
From Amy Farley, Executive Editor
You Dreamed of Empires is a weird, wild, hypnotic retelling about the fateful meeting between emperor Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan. The action takes place across a single day in 1519, but what a day: packed with family drama, palace intrigue, world history-altering misunderstandings, and lots and lots of psychedelics.
But the highlight, for me, were Enrigue’s descriptions of the city of Tenochtitlan itself: its layout and architecture, the smells and food, the everyday routines of its many residents. Halfway through reading the novel, I started planning a trip to Mexico City.
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
From Isa Luzarraga, Social Media Producer
Nearly everyone knows the name Sally Ride. In 1983, she became the first American woman in space, setting a crucial precedent for female astronaut candidates at NASA.
Still, the National Geographic documentary Sally, released earlier this year, verified what many had only surmised during the astronaut’s life, that Ride was queer.
There are clear parallels between Ride’s story and the protagonist of Taylor Jenkins Reids most recent novel.
Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin as she becomes a member of the second NASA astronaut class to accept female candidates. The narrative alternates between two timelines: Joans years of training at NASA and her role as the on-ground liaison between the astronauts and command center for a mission gone wrong. Throughout her training, Joan forms a secret relationship with fellow astronaut Vanessa.
Like the rest of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s body of work, this historical fiction novel is rigorously researched and highlights the author’s signature, evocative prose. It is an ode, not only to Ride and the first female astronauts, but also to the queer community as a whole.
Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams
From Bryan Lufkin, Senior Editor
I started reading this after getting super into the This Jungan Life podcast. The three brilliant, warm and funny psychoanalysts who host it wrote this book about how to analyze dreams. (They analyze a listener’s dream at the end of every episode.) Every one of us is an iceberg, and this book gives amazing insight into the huge stuff going on with you underneath the surface!
Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire
From Vanessa Singh, Executive Producer
This is such an insightful look into Britain’s world empire takeover, but specifically about the Caribbean-British experience and growing up in London as a Black person during the ’80s and ’90s. Written by Akala (a British rapper and activist), the book is history that is easy to digest and semi-autobiographical.
I love it because it is not written by an upper-class historian who has no emotional investment in the topics discussed. It is written by a highly intelligent, working-class, mixed-race man from London. The book looks at how racism and class shape life in modern Britain, and he shows how the legacy of empire still influences policing, education, and opportunities today. Very no-nonsense.
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
From Rebecca Barker, Event Producer
I cant believe it took me until 2025 to read Elena Ferrantes esteemed Neapolitan Novels, but, as they say, better late than never.
The Story of a New Name is the second book of the series and follows the events of the New York Times best book of the 21st century, My Brilliant Friend, chronicling the teenage and early adulthood years of friends Lenu and Lila, who have grown up together in poverty in 1960s Naples.
I consider the first books role as building a rich foundation for the characters and setting that drive the plot of the secondin my humble opinion, The Story of a New Name is where things get good.
As the girls navigate Lilas new marriage (which brings her wealth and stability but lacks love and respect), a growing schism between their social classes and the opportunities available to them, political turmoil, and a shared romantic interest, they are forced to reckon with the strength of their friendship and what it can survive.
Ferrante paints one of the most intricate and beautiful portrayals of female friendship in literatureI cant recommend it enough.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
From Maia McCann, Executive Digital Director
The story is told by Klara, an artificial friend/AI robot for a very ill child. Klara and her human, Josie, live in a dystopian future where some children are genetically lifted or enhanced and others are left behind. The reader follows an AI as it tries to understand complex human emotions like grief and love.
Potentially a little disturbing, but you wind up really rooting for the robot.
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
From Anne Latini, Art Director
I was absolutely rapt reading this beautiful science-fiction fantasy while on vacation this summer. Written as a series of letters that rove forward and backward through time, the book reminds you that the tension between technology and nature has been with humanity since the beginning and will continue long after we’re gone.
[Image: Scribner]
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
From Jill Bernstein, Editorial Director
I finally read Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach and couldn’t put it down. I loved the characters and was totally absorbed by the action and historical detail. It’s about bravery, love, and the mysterious pull of the sea.
Foster by Claire Keegan
From Jay Woodruff, Senior Editor
Knowing my wife and I were heading to Dublin for our daughter’s wedding in October, a friend told me, “Read everything you can get your hands on by Claire Keegan.” If this exquisite Irish novella doesn’t help restore your faith in humanity, it will definitely restore your faith in first-rate, quiet, vivid storytelling.
Manys the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing, one kindly character tells the narrator.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
From Sandra Riano, Photo Editor
This was an eye-opening memoir about Facebook’s leap from Silicon Valley tech enterprise into global politics. Both illuminating and terrifying, it poses the question, How far will Meta go under the guise of free speech? Carless People is a cautionary tale about Big Tech’s quest for more and what we all stand to lose.
Vince Gilligan spent a decade ruminating about his next TV series before he had a clear vision of what it was going to be. But through all that time, the writer/director, who is best known for creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, knew one thing for sure: it had to be entirely different from what hed made before. In fact, it had to be completely unlike any other show, period.
As far as a prime directive, it is always: A) how can we make this show look different than any other show on TV? That’s the most important one, Gilligan told me during a recent call. And B, how can we make the show look and sound and feel different from the other shows we’ve already done?
Gilligan made good on his promise to himself. The resulting show, Pluribus, really is a wholly unique take on the sci-fi genre. Massive in scope, yet intimate at its core, its a deep study of a character who is going through an impossibly hard situation that affects the entire planet.
Before Gilligan told anyone about his idea for Pluribus, he wanted to get his idea onto paper. I wait as long as I can, and I have as much figured out, at least with the first episode, as possible, he says. And in this case, I had the luxury of having a completely written first script, I think actually, possibly a completely written first two scripts.
Vince Gilligan (center) [Image: Apple]
That’s what he showed to Rhea Seehorn, who played Kim Wexler opposite Bob Odenkirks Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul. Initially, Gilligan thought about a male protagonist for Pluribus but, after working with Seehorn, he decided to write the series for her. I talked to Rhea first because I wanted to make sure Rhea would star in the show, he says.
It was only after Seehorn agreed to play Carol Sturkathe grumpy bestseller romance author who becomes the herothat he got the production ball rolling. I started talking to our department heads, our wonderful crew people that I’ve been working with for years, he tells me. And that makes it a lot easier.
[Photo: courtesy of Apple]
Gilligantogether with series writer/director Gordon Smith and writer Alison Tatlocksays the shows premise is meant to be the opposite of every “alien invasion film” youve seen up to this point. Having first worked as a writer on The X-Files, which embodied and invented many of the universal sci-fi tropes, Gilligan knew that Pluribus needed to serve the premise with no cracks in the story, which resulted in flipping, subverting, and ultimately destroying every single sci-fi trope wedged into our collective mind since The Twilight Zone.
For Gilligan, Pluribus is the culmination of decades of work in TV. Filmed in Albuquerque (where most of the crew lives), Gilligan says the show is a direct result of working with the same reliable team hes been with since Breaking Bad. Pluribus composer Dave Porter, who worked with Gilligan on his previous two series, told me that Gilligans directive cut across departments on Pluribus: We wanted to plant our flag in the ground to say this is a very, very different experience.
[Photo: Apple]
A Post-it sketch becomes a panopticon
To understand the production design, it helps to know what the series is about (my recommendation: run to watch the first episode if you havent yet). The series begins with an eerie but subtle alien encounter. The U.S. Army lab uses RNA code radioed from an exoplanet 600 light-years away to create a self-replicating alien retrovirus. The virus infects one person transforming her into the first node of a hive mind called The Others. Within a few weeks, all of humanity turns from a selfish, violent-prone, greedy group of individuals into a pacifist, vegetarian, and very happy collective.
Immune to this alien virus, only 13 humans survive this process, called The Joining. Carol being one of them, is the only person in the U.S. that keeps her free will. The Others only have one mission: To turn civilization and the entire planet into a hippie bliss paradise, all while trying to find a way to save those last 13 humans from what they think is the angst of freewill, the pain of our daily choices, our imperfect nature. Its not that they want to assimilate the 13 like the Borg or cordyceps; The Others believe they are doing the right thing when they liberate you from your sad pointless life.
[Photo: Apple]
Pluribus follows Carol as she grapples with this new reality, and as she tries to find a way to revert the world back to how it was. Carol has a mission, but her mission is far from a sci-fi trope of saving the world. There are no tropes in Gilligans vision. In fact, the series team had to strip away the spectacle usually associated with global cataclysms.
Smith and Tatlock describe this as a pursuit of scrupulous emotional truth. In most sci-fi, when the world changes, the characters sprint toward the explosions. In Pluribus, as it happened in Better Call Saul, they stop. Your wife just died. Really? The world just became a hive mind, how fast do you move to get past that? Smith asks.
This refusal to rush required a specific kind of geography and to ground the infinite scope of a global hive mind, led the production team to build a very small, very specific cage for Rhea Seehorns character. Her home is the center of her world.
That began with a crude drawing. My favorite picture is a Post-it drawn by Vince, production designer Denise Pizzini tells me. He has a little cul-de-sac and he has these houses and he has the one house at the top that says C, which is Carol’s house.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
That doodle evolved into a big civil engineering project. Rather than fighting the logistical nightmare of filming in a real neighborhood for multiple seasons, Pizzini and her team leased a plot of empty land outside Albuquerque and built Carols cul-de-sac from the dirt up, complete with plans and full permits and licenses. They poured concrete slabs, laid curbs, and constructed seven custom homes around a circle of asphalt, which became itself a way to communicate later in the series (warning: some minor generic spoilers ahead).
[Photo: Apple]
A controlled gaze
The physical location of the house is real, with fully working systems and finished downstairs interiors. The team also built the upstairs bedroom, office, and hallways on a controlled soundstage. They duplicated the ground floor almost exactly, allowing the camera to seamlessly look from the street into Carol’s living room, or from her kitchen window out to the hive, without a cut, effectively building the house twice.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
The architectural mirroring was so precise that the illusion eventually fooled its own creator. I watched the episode last night, and there’s a shot of her in the kitchen seeing the exterior, and I thought, I couldn’t tell, Pizzini confesses. Is that on location or is that on the set? Which is great because I don’t remember.
[Photo: Apple]
For Gilligan, this wasn’t just about production convenience; it was about the gaze. Before a single wall was framed, the team pounded stakes into the empty field so Gilligan could test the camera angles. Vince was very specific about what we wanted Carol’s view to be, Pizzini says. We needed from her front door and that front window, we needed to be able to see everybody else’s front door. Plus the city lights below. They even graded each house separately to ensure the street curved precisely to vanish into a fictional neighborhood.
[Photo: Apple]
The result is a set that functions like a panopticon, designed to ensure Carol is never truly alone. Pizzini designed Carols house as the bastion of her humanity, filled with the evidence of her previous life with Helen, who fails to survive the merging into the hive mind. The prodction team filled the space with invisible details. Helen was [Carols] organizer . . . she manages all her tours, Pizzini says. They placed Helen’s laptop on the dining room table, an orchid she bought, her sleeping mask, and her books by the bed. Just little things like that give you an indication that they had a life together, she says.
[Photo: Apple]
Pizzini also designed the interior knowing that this home was a character in itself. Inside, she used arches and open sightlines because so much of the action was going to happen there and they needed to move the camera around. She’s in a little bit of a maze because she’s kind of stuck in her house . . . or she chooses to be, Pizzini tells me. To show the passage of time, Pizzini added an atrium. I decided to do this so there could be actual sunlight coming in. We could see the plants kind of growing or dying because Helen’s not there taking care of things.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Gilligan was over the moon with the Pluribus set, he tells me, because it opened so many creative opportunities for them. They were able to design so many scenes in advance. For episode one, when Carol’s coming home after this horrible night she’s been through, I wanted certain angles past her onto the house next door where the little kids [part of The Others] come out, Gilligan says.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Carols home is a brutal contrast to the spaces controlled by the hive mind. As The Others consolidate, they abandon individual homes for communal living to save electricity and water. The world becomes austere. Traffic doesnt exist. Lawns grow wild. Commercial spaces and offices are closed. Buffalos roam golf courses. Hospitals have the bare minimum personnel (remember, since the minds merged, everyone has everyone elses knowledge, so every person regardless of age, gender, or previous occupation, is now the best doctor, the best pilot, the best physicist, and the best anything you can imagine).
Supermarkets are also empty. The production took over a real Sprouts supermarket after a year negotiating with the actual chain and weeks physically emptying the shelves. Emptying out a supermarket . . . boy, that’s a nightmare, Gilligan says. Sometimes you think something is going to be very complicated but turns out to be so easy. This was the contrary: They thought it was simple but it was a logistical hell, he points out. “Every step of the process, I was like, this is a nightmare,” Smith adds. Seeing the empty supermarketand how it gets filled in a matter of hourscaptures a society that has optimized itself into terrifying efficiency and silence.
[Photo: Apple]
Subtracting humanity, adding logic
So many other things required the same level of subtraction, which became the mandateand nightmarefor the visual effects department. Rather than adding hordes of zombies, spaceships, and lasers, VFX Supervisor Ara Khanikian and his crew spent his time erasing life from each frame. We’re subtracting a lot instead of adding, he says.
To achieve the eerie stillness of a society reduced to its most efficient expression, Khanikians team meticulously rotoscoped out people, cars, and movement from wide shots of Albuquerque. This forced the team to realize more consequences about the shows premise, answering philosophical questions about a post-human world. If there’s no concept of humans and traffic . . . are they all green or do they continue blinking? Or have we turned off the electricity to that because we don’t need it anymore? Khanikian asks.
[Photo: Apple]
Another question was how The Others move. At one point of the series, there is a massiveexodus from the city. The team initially created film plates to animate cars moving in perfect synchronization, assuming a networked intelligence would drive with mathematical precision. But it looked fake. Theoretically, if everybody’s in sync together, there shouldn’t be any traffic jams, Khanikian explains. We have to add a little bit of that human imperfection . . . Some people accelerate just a little bit more. Some brake a little bit later.
[Photo: Apple]
Gilligans commitment to physical reality extended everywhere. At one point, one of the unaffected humans arrives at the airport in Bilbao, Spain, on Air Force One. Initially, Pizzini tells me, they started out building just the planes door, the surrounding frame, some stairs and green screen. But we knew Vince was going to want it big, she says.
[Image: courtesy of Denise Pizzini]
Gilligan saw it and he asked to expand it. He was like, no, we need to do a little more, a little more, she recalls amused. So we built a big chunk of it and we found the stairs that could go up to it. And then we . . . built little pieces of the interior, so you could go inside Air Force One and shoot out and see them coming up the stairs.
But it didnt end there. They ended up buying the frontal 747 landing gear. And, since they filmed scenes on the runways of Bilbaos airport, they had to match the cement and asphalt patterns of the airport. That was a big, big set, Pizzini recalls.
[Photo: Apple]
Clothing becomes function
Like the sets, the costumes show us a civilization that has decided to stop waste, both physical and mental. Costume designer Jennifer Bryan pitched a radical concept to Gilligan: In a hive mind, clothing no longer serves to signal status, culture, or religion. It is reduced to its leanest, meanest function. I pitched to him that the clothes shouldn’t signify any of that, Bryan says.Basically just leaving clothing as a shell to cover your body, like a snail has a shell.
[Image: courtesy of Jennifer Bryan]
She stripped the costumes of jewelry and accessories. She only kept belts in cases where pants would literally fall down. The clothes also tell the story without having to enunciate it with dialog, one of the core strengths of Pluribus.
[Photo: Apple]
In the early days of the assimilation, because the hive mind shares its knowledge, anyone can do anything, regardless of their attire. This leads to the visual dissonance of a TGI Fridays waitress piloting the Airbus that flies Carol to Bilbao. The woman wears the uniform she was caught in when the virus struck, but she possesses the skill set of a veteran pilot. When you see the uniform or the clothing not matching the occupation, you know something’s off, Bryan says. Even the man cleaning Carols house in a spandex cyclist suit is a misplacement of role (fun fact: that character is played by the actual mayor of Albuquerque).
Those were the early days of the hive mind unification. Later in the series, as society continues to optimize, people lose their individual uniform and begin to wear plainer, neutral clothinga shell aesthetic will only deepen as the series progresses. As the hive mind realizes that wool requires disturbing a sheep and silk requires killing a worm, the very materials of clothing will change to reflect a society that refuses to do harm.
[Photo: Apple]
In the second season you’ll start to see the effects of that, Bryan teases. She explains what we all know about modern society. Somewhere along the line, something had to die for it, whether it’s a mulberry worm to make silk or you cut on a tree to make lumber.
This also opens a stark contrast among the few remaining humans. While waiting to find the science to assimilate them, The Others are obsessed with pleasing the 13 free humans by doing anything these ‘freewill’ humans ask for. While Carol largely rejects the hive’s offers of help and comfort, other survivors indulge.
[Photo: Apple]
Mr. Diabate, one of the 13 free humans, treats the hive like a genie lamp. To dress him, Bryan looked to the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, Congoblue-collar workers who dress in ostentatious, high-end suits. She dressed Diabate in a tuxedo made of African fabric, a visual explosion of ego in a world that has otherwise been flattened to grey. She looked at the characters and asked herself: If you could get every single thing that you wanted, what would you go for?
Since Gilligan insisted on actors who were genuinely from the regions they portrayedlike Mauritius, Colombia, China, or Peru, Bryan collaborated with them on the specific mix of Western and traditional clothing unique to their cultures.
[Photo: Apple]
The sound of the swarm
The final layer of this happy apocalypse is the soundscape. Like everyone else on the production team, composer Dave Porter tells me that he got the same prime directive from Gilligan. After spending 20 years defining the sonic palette of the Breaking Bad, El Camino, and Better Call Saul universe, he realized he needed to strip it down to the studs for Pluribus.
The series premise also defined his musical choice from the start. Instead of sci-fi synths or traditional orchestral arrangements, Porter chose the most innate human instrument: the voice. But like the traffic in Khanikians visual effects, he found that a controlled cacophony of a slightly off-sync choir was the perfect way to convey both the nature of The Others while introducing a disheartening, uneasy feeling. Something must be wrong.
Porter tells me that he was influenced by American minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich to structure the score, using syncopation and phase-shifting to mirror the hives behaviormoving from soothing unison to chaotic dissonance. At times, this chaos gets into an ever-increasing crescendo that reminds me of the work of Hungarian composer György Ligeti for the Monolith in Stanley Kubricks 2001: Space Odyssey. Nobody’s singing any words, but there’s a lot of syncopation and punctuation about what they’re doing, he says.
This technique was used to perfection in a chilling scene in which Carol is trying to extract information from Zosia, the character who serves as her primary contact and chaperone with The Others. In the scene, Carol drugs Zosia with Sodium Pentothal, as she asks Zosia to give her information about what might reverse whats happened to the world. When the hive mind realizes whats going on, a mob appears out of nowhere to surround them. The on-set extras’ voices were blended with a choir to create an overwhelming wall of sound to stop her.
Tatlock told me the story logic behind that moment. The Others were not talking in perfect synchronicity because of network latency but as a tactic to create a buzz to stop her. They can pretty quietly and calmly drown her out, Tatlock explains. It is a sonic tactic designed to foil Carols questions without aggression. The hive doesn’t need to scream; it just needs to vibrate at a frequency to drown you in sound.
[Photo: Apple]
The ants
Porter tells me that the music was designed to explore the tension between the pain of individuality and the comfort of surrender. He also avoided scoring The Others with purely menacing music. Instead, he used vocals that could shift from comforting to terrifying. As Vince has been saying a lot in interviews about the show, theyre not all bad, right?” he says. For Gilligan, it was important that the score didnt paint anything in black and whitethere’s always multiple ways to view things.
[Photo: Apple]
Which brings us back to the very nature of the show. Unlike most series, it doesnt give us answers; instead it gives us all the questions we should be asking. At every plot turn, every reveal, and every character decision, you feel that any kind of dichotomy is a false one. Like Porter says, there are no binary answers in the real world. Especially when it comes to free will, our nature, and the nature of the societies we build.
And thats perhaps Pluribus greatest success, beyond its storytelling and cinematic virtues. Vince and his family have built a glass ant farm, removed the chaos of individuality, and forced us to watch what remains. The result is a world that feels nice, quiet, seductive, yet profoundly inhuman, which makes you appreciate your faulty humanity even more.
