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Among the nations 100 largest metro area housing markets, no major market saw greater home price appreciation during the Pandemic Housing Boom than Austin, TXwhere home prices surged a staggering 72.5% between March 2020 and June 2022. Since the boom fizzled out three years ago, Austin has also experienced the largest home price correction (-26.0%) among those same 100 major markets.
Austin being among the hardest-hit markets isnt surprising.
Back in May 2022, I wrote an article for Fortune outlining Austins heightened downside risk this cycle, driven in part by the fact that the market had significantly overheated and become markedly overvalued relative to underlying fundamentals, including local incomes.
Put simply: The bigger the local boom, the greater the potential for a local bust. Three years on, that rule of thumb has proven to be a useful guide for the post-Pandemic Housing Boom period.
For todays article, ResiClub analyzed how much home prices rose during the Pandemic Housing Boom between March 2020 and June 2022 and examined how they correlate with the shift in home prices since the 2022 peak. We looked at just the nations 100 largest metro areas by population.
The finding?
Theres a moderate statistical correlation (R = 0.37) between home price shift between March 2020 and June 2022 and the change in home prices from their 2022 peak through the end of October 2025. If the New Orleans metrothe largest outlieris excluded, that correlation strengthens slightly (R = 0.44).
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Our statistical analysis suggests that the U.S. housing market, to a degree, is experiencing a classic partial mean-reversion cycle. The markets that overshot the fundamentals the most during the 20202022 frenzy generally gave back more ground afterward.
It makes sense: Housing markets where prices rose too high too fastand became increasingly detached from local incomes and income growthwere more likely to experience a sharper demand shock once the boom ended. That was especially true in markets where the run-up had been fueled by an influx of higher-income out-of-state buyers during the Pandemic Housing Boom, a source of demand that could also roll over.
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In statistical terms, an R of 0.37 means that about 37% of the variation in how local home prices have performed since 2022 can be explained by how hot they ran during the pandemic frenzy. (When we ran a similar analysis in August using Q2 2022 overvaluation scores, we arrived at a similar result: R = 0.27.)
Of course, other factors are at play. This coming weekend, ResiClub PRO members will receive a more in-depth research article exploring the other variables driving todays regional home price variation across the country.
In the race to deploy large language models and generative AI across global markets, many companies assume that English model translate it is sufficient. But if youre an American executive preparing for expansion into Asia, Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, that assumption could be your biggest blind spot. In those regions, language isnt just a packaging detail: its culture, norms, values, and business logic all wrapped into one. If your AI doesnt code-switch, it wont just underperform; it may misinterpret, misalign, or mis-serve your new market.
The multilingual and cultural gap in LLMs
Most of the major models are still trained predominantly on English-language corpora, and that creates a double disadvantage when deployed in other languages. For example, a study found that non-English and morphologically complex languages often incur 35X more tokens (and hence cost and compute) per unit of text compared to English.
Another research paper places around 1.5 billion people speaking low-resource languages at higher cost and worse performance when using mainstream English-centric models.
The result: a model that works well for American users may stumble in India, the Gulf, or Southeast Asia, not because the business problem is harder, but because the system lacks the cultural-linguistic infrastructure to handle it.
A regional example worth noting
Take Mistral Saba, launched by French company Mistral AI as a 24B-parameter model tailored for Arabic and South Asian languages (Tamil, Malayalam, etc.) Mistral touts that Saba provides more accurate and relevant responses than models five times its size when used in those regions. But it also underperforms in English benchmarks. Thats the point: context matters more than volume. A model may be smaller but far smarter for its locale.
For a U.S. company entering the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa) or the South-Asia market, that means your global AI strategy isnt global unless it respects local languages, idioms, regulation, and context.
Token costs, language bias, and global ROI
From a business perspective, the technical detail of tokenization matters. A recent article points out that inference costs for Chinese may be 2X English, while for languages like Shan or Burmese, token inflation can be 15X.
That means if your model uses English-based encoding and you deploy in non-English markets, your usage cost skyrockets, or your quality drops because you cut back tokens. And because your training corpus was heavily English-centric, your underlying model may lack semantic depth in other languages.
Add culture and normative differences into the mix: tone, references, business practices, cultural assumptions, etc., and you arrive at a very different competitive set: not were we accurate but were we relevant.
Why it matters for executives expanding abroad
If youre leading a U.S. corporation or scaling startup into international markets, here are three implications:
Model selection isnt one-size-fits-all: you may need a regional model or a specialized fine-tuning layer, not just the largest English model you can license.
Cost structure will vary by language and region: token inflation and encoding inefficiencies mean your unit cost in non-English markets will likely be higher, unless you plan for it.
Brand risk and user experience are cultural: A chatbot that misunderstands basic local context (e.g., religious calendar, locale idioms, regulatory norms) will erode trust faster than a slower response.
How to build a culturally aware multilingual AI strategy
For executives ready to sell, serve, and operate in global markets, here are practical steps:
Map languages and markets as first-class features. Before you pick your largest model, list your markets, languages, local norms, and business priorities. If Arabic, Hindi, Malay, or Thai matter, treat them not as translations but as first-class us-cases.
Consider regional models or joint-deployment. A model like Mistral Saba may handle Arabic content more cheaply, more accurately, and more natively than a generic English model fine-tuned.
Plan for token-cost inflation. Use pricing comparison tools. A model may have a U.S. cost of $X per 1 M tokens, but if your deployment is Turkish or Thai, the effective cost may be 2X or more.
Fine-tune not just for language, but for culture and business logic. Local datasets shouldnt just include language, they should capture regional context: regulations, business customs, idioms, risk frameworks.
Design for active switching and evaluation. Dont assume your global model will behave locally. Deploy pilot tests, evaluate on local benchmarks, test user-acceptance, and include local governance in your rollout.
The bigger ethical and strategic lens
When AI models privilege English and Anglophone norms, we risk reinforcing cultural hegemony. The technical inefficiencies (token cost, performance gap) are symptoms of a deeper bias: which voices, languages, economies are considered core versus edge.
As executives, its tempting to think well translate later. But translation alone fails to address token inflation, semantic mismatch, cultural irrelevance. The real challenge is making AI locally grounded and globally scaled.
If youre betting on generative AI to power your expansion into new markets, dont treat language as a footnote. Language is infrastructure. Cultural fluency is a competitive advantage. Token costs and performance disparities are not just technical: they are strategic.
In the AI world, English was the path of least resistance. But your next growth frontier? It might require language, culture, and cost structures that act more like differentiators than obstacles.
Choose your model, languages, rollout strategy not on the size of the parameter count, but on how well it understands your market. If you dont, you wont just fall behind in performance: youll fall behind in credibility and relevance.
The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against some of the nation’s top food manufacturers on Tuesday, arguing that ultraprocessed food from the likes of Coca-Cola and Nestle are responsible for a public health crisis.City Attorney David Chiu named 10 companies in the lawsuit, including the makers of such popular foods as Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids, Kit Kat, Cheerios and Lunchables. The lawsuit argues that ultraprocessed foods are linked to diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and cancer.“They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body,” Chiu said in a news release. “These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.”Ultraprocessed foods include candy, chips, processed meats, sodas, energy drinks, breakfast cereals and other foods that are designed to “stimulate cravings and encourage overconsumption,” Chiu’s office said in the release. Such foods are “formulations of often chemically manipulated cheap ingredients with little if any whole food added,” Chiu wrote in the lawsuit.The other companies named in the lawsuit are PepsiCo; Kraft Heinz Company; Post Holdings; Mondelez International; General Mills; Kellogg; Mars Incorporated; and ConAgra Brands.None of the companies named in the suit immediately responded to emailed requests for comment.U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been vocal about the negative impact of ultraprocessed foods and their links to chronic disease and has targeted them in his Make America Healthy Again campaign. Kennedy has pushed to ban such foods from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for low-income families.An August report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that most Americans get more than half their calories from ultraprocessed foods.In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law to phase out certain ultraprocessed foods from school meals over the next decade.San Francisco’s lawsuit cites several scientific studies on the negative impact of ultraprocessed foods on human health.“Mounting research now links these products to serious diseasesincluding Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, colorectal cancer, and even depression at younger ages,” University of California, San Francisco, professor Kim Newell-Green said in the news release.The lawsuit argues that by producing and promoting ultraprocessed foods, the companies violate California’s Unfair Competition Law and public nuisance statute. It seeks a court order preventing the companies from “deceptive marketing” and requiring them to take actions such as consumer education on the health risks of ultraprocessed foods and limiting advertising and marketing of ultraprocessed foods to children.It also asks for financial penalties to help local governments with health care costs caused by the consumption of ultraprocessed foods.
Jaimie Ding, Associated Press
Spotify Wrapped 2025 is here, and its inspired by mixtapes, DIY aesthetics, and all things pre-internet.
After plenty of anticipation, Wrapped has now debuted for the eleventh year in a row. As public interest in Wrapped has mounted exponentially each yearand other brands have flocked to dupe the formatSpotify has been compelled to continuously up the ante on its own design concept, and this year is no exception. Wrapped 2025 comes with 12 brand new features, each intended to make the experience more personalized than years past.
In the music world (and everywhere else), 2025 has been a year dominated by conversation around the explosion of AI technology. In September, Spotify itself issued new policies around AI-generated music, explaining that while it wont ban AI-generated songs or AI tools, it is focused on removing what it calls AI slop from the platform. At the time, Spotify said it had already removed 75 million spammy AI tracks from the site in just 12 months. Now, it appears Spotify is going full anti-AI in the design of Wrapped.
[Image: Spotify]
If brands are looking to the future or to AI for inspiration, we did the opposite, Payman Kassaie, Spotifys director of brand and creative, said in a press conference ahead of the launch. This year, Wrapped is rooted in the world of mixtape cultureand its a refreshing change from last years Wrapped, which was widely critiqued for embracing AI.
[Image: Spotify]
How Spotify Wrapped became a marketing hit
Since debuting in 2014, Wrapped has become a massive hit for Spotify. In 2023, the campaign drew in more than 225 million monthly active users and increased engagement by 40% year-over-year across 170 markets, according to an earnings report from the company.
And thats not even counting the free marketing that Spotify rakes in annually through the thousands of user-generated, organic posts from Spotifys user base of 700 million, who share their Wrapped results with followers across socials. To meet the hype, Spotify has slowly turned Wrapped into a design-centric extravaganza, debuting an entirely fresh look and feel for the review each year.
Spotify’s 2022 wrapped: “Listening Personality”. [Image: Spotify]
In 2021, the brand introduced Audio Aura, a color analysis of users top musical moods. In 2022, it tried out a zodiac-esque feature called Listening Personality alongside a psychedelic design. And last year, it opted for a techy, glitchy aesthetic to complement a new add-on called Music Evolution, which tracked users musical eras over the course of the year, and an AI-generated podcast feature that narrated users’ listening history (but somehow did not include top album or genre stats). While typically an easy brand win, last year’s launch was broadly panned.
[Image: Spotify]
Spotify Wrapped 2025 embraces a retro aesthetic
To appease those critiques, Spotify appears to be doing a full 180 with this years design. The techy aesthetic has been traded for a look that calls to mind an era when listening to music was a physical processfrom building a mixtape to burning your own CD or even putting together a scrapbook of your favorite artists.
[Image: Spotify]
We looked back at the way people used to share music before Wrapped existed, and that led us to rooting our visual identity this year in the world of mixtape culture, Kassaie said. I may be dating myself a bit here, but if you’ve ever burned a CD for a friend, you know that each one becomes its own little canvas for the creator. That’s kind of the feeling we wanted to captue with this year’s design.”
[Images: Spotify]
Every visual, he added, is made to feel handmade, with cutouts, images, doodles, and various textures lending the platform a DIY quality. The design is grounded in a palette of black and white, with pops of color reserved for key moments like artist images and album covers.
[Image: Spotify]
On the data side, Spotifys team went back to the drawing board to differentiate itself from competitors. This year, it will offer a top album list for the first time ever. In addition, its introducing 12 entirely new data-driven features, including Listening Age, which analyzes the five year span of music that users engaged with more than others in their age group; Wrapped Clubs, which sorts users into one of six clubs based on listening style; and Wrapped Party, which lets groups of friends compare their Wrapped data in a real-time, interactive setting.
[Image: Spotify]
Spotify hasnt entirely forgone AI in this process, either. Listening Archive is an AI-powered feature that spotlights certain days throughout the year, like a users biggest discovery day or most nostalgic day. Still, the overall vibe of Spotify Wrapped 2025 is less a celebration of AI, and more a return to the fundamentals that make sharing music fun.
[Image: Spotify]
Less than five months have passed since American Eagles controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign, which led to accusations ranging from cluelessness to Nazi propaganda.
While the mall mainstay defended the campaign and has escaped relatively unscathed, a new quarterly earnings report shows the success of its sister-brand Aerie is buoying its financial results.
On Tuesday, December 2, apparel retail company American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) shared its third-quarter earnings for fiscal 2025, including $1.36 billion in revenue.
The 6% increase year-over-year (YOY) beat Wall Streets predicted $1.32 billion in revenue, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. The company also reported earnings per share of 53 cents, compared to 44 cents expected.
American Eagles namesake brandand home to the Sydney Sweeney has great jeans advertisementscant claim much responsibility for the jump. Its comparable sales grew by only 1% YOY, while Aeries comparable sales jumped 11% YOY.
“Resurgence in intimates”
Looking at the fiscal year to date, Aerie also reported higher revenue than last year, while the American Eagle brand lagged behind itself YOY.
In an earnings call, president and executive creative director of American Eagle and Aerie, Jennifer Foyle, pointed to a “resurgence in intimates and strength across all of the brands offerings, as key to Aeries success.
Foyle added that the brand has seen an acceleration in demand since the spring.
In October, Aerie made an anti-AI pledge, promising not to use the technology to generate bodies or people in its ads, staying 100% Aerie real.
AEO has raised its fourth-quarter guidance, with CEO Jay Schottenstein sharing that the company had a record-breaking Thanksgiving weekend led by an acceleration in demand across brands and channels and underscored by outstanding growth at Aerie and Offline.
Offline is an activewear brand opened by American Eagle in 2020.
The company now predicts $155 to $160 million in operating income for the fourth quarter, up from $125 to $130 million, and an 8% to 9% increase in comparable sales. Its operating income guidance for the fiscal year also rose, jumping from between $255 and $265 million to $303 to $308 million.
Investors responded with glee to the news. American Eagle shares (NYSE:AEO) rose more than 14% after-hours and into premarket trading on Wednesday. The stock is up more than 21% year to date.
The Trump administration is pausing all immigration applications such as requests for green cards for people from 19 countries banned from travel earlier this year, as part of sweeping immigration changes in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard troops.The changes were outlined in a policy memo posted Tuesday on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency tasked with processing and approving all requests for immigration benefits.The pause puts on hold a wide range of immigration-related decisions such as green card applications or naturalizations for immigrants from those 19 countries that the Trump administration has described as high-risk. It’s up to the agency’s director, Joseph Edlow, on when to lift the pause, the memo said.The administration in June banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of 12 countries and restricted access for those from seven others, citing national security concerns.The ban applied to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen while the restricted access applied to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.At the time, no action was taken against immigrants from those countries who were already in the U.S. before the travel ban went into effect.But now the news from USCIS means those people already in the U.S. regardless of when they arrived will come under extra scrutiny.The agency said it would conduct a comprehensive review of all “approved benefit requests” for immigrants who entered the country during the Biden administration.The agency cited the shooting of two National Guard troops by a suspect who is an Afghan national as a reason for the pause and heightened scrutiny for people from those countries. One National Guard soldier was killed and another wounded in the Thanksgiving week shooting near the White House.“In light of identified concerns and the threat to the American people, USCIS has determined that a comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens from high-risk countries of concern who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021 is necessary,” the agency said.The agency said in the Tuesday memo that within 90 days it would create a prioritized list of immigrants for review and if necessary, referral to immigration enforcement or other law enforcement agencies.Since the shooting, the administration has announced a flurry of decisions it was taking to scrutinize immigrants already in the country and those seeking to come to the U.S.Last week, the director of USCIS said in a social media post that his agency would be reexamining green card applications for people from countries “of concern.” But the policy directive Tuesday goes further and lays out in more detail the scope of who will be affected.USCIS also said last week that it was pausing all asylum decisions, and the State Department said it was halting visas for Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort.Days before the shooting, USCIS said in a separate memo that the administration would review the cases of all refugees who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration.Critics have said that the Trump administration’s actions have amounted to collective punishment for immigrants.
Rebecca Santana, Associated Press
Chanel’s new showman, Matthieu Blazy, took his designs on the road Tuesday or rather, underground, with a buzzy New York runway show staged on an actual subway platform.The designer, just weeks after his splashy Paris debut for Chanel in October, took over a decommissioned part of Manhattan’s Bowery station for his first Métiers d’Art collection. The annual show, which takes place in a different city each year, celebrates the craftsmanship of the artisans that partner with Chanel.In this case, it was two showsone in the afternoon and one in the evening. And befitting the first Chanel shows in New York since 2018, there were VIPs aplenty: A$AP Rocky, Tilda Swinton, Ayo Edebiri, Rose Byrne, Kristen Stewart, Sofia Coppola, Lupita Nyong’o, Jessie Buckley, Margaret Qualley, Bowen Yang, Jon Bon Jovi, and many others.The location had been a closely held secret. Guests entered via a doorway at 168 Bowery, and at first, it seemed like Chanel had perhaps decorated an event space to resemble a subway station, complete with tiled walls, turnstiles and a newsstand (with its own bespoke newspapers).But down a flight of stairs was the real platform. Guests settled into bleacher seats resembling subway benches. “Stand clear of the closing doors!” came the announcement on the soundtrack, familiar to New Yorkers. Then a train came rolling in, and out of the cars came the models.The show was a marked contrast in vibe with the last Métiers d’Art collection in New York in 2018, when the late designer Karl Lagerfeld took over the Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for what felt like a mini-Met Gala, with clothes channeling the luxury of Egyptian royalty.Blazy was inspired not by royalty but by ordinary urban commuters, of different ages and types, coming together in a mashup of styles from different eras, from the 1920s onward.“The New York subway belongs to all,” the designer said in his show notes. “Everyone uses it. There are students and game-changers, statesmen and teenagers. It is a place full of wonderful encounters, a clash of pop archetypes.”His models strolled the platform, some checking for arriving trainsfeigning annoyance at their latenessor leaning against a post as they waited. Their numbers increased until, by the end, there was a virtual rush hour of fashion, with the eclectic soundtrack playing the Happy Days theme song as a finale.Some of these commuters wore classic Chanel suitsperhaps with an “I (Heart) NY” T-shirtand others, tweed coats, flowing black capes or brightly patterned skirts. All were intended to show off the craftsmanship involved.“This felt like breaking the system,” said Stewart, speaking after the afternoon show. “I genuinely had an emotional response to the show. I felt like I just saw so many different versions of a person walking. It wasn’t one woman.”Stewart, like others, had no idea going in what the show’s theme would be, and thought the subway environment felt like “a flurry of fleeting caught moments.”“Like, ‘Where is she going?’ I wanted to go with them,” Stewart said. “I believed in it. All of this is artifice, but when you do a really good impression of the truth, you find your own. This felt real to me.”It was real enough that Chanel had printed its own “newspaper”called La Gazetteto accompany the show, with articles and interviews. An interview with Blazy quoted the designer as saying the collection was inspired partly by the 1931 visit to New York of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel.And he sang the praises of the subway.“It’s almost like it’s the vortex of the city,” Blazy said. “It connects everything.”
Jocelyn Noveck, AP National Writer
Many major platforms provide personalized year in review features that highlight how users have spent their time over the past year.
Spotify Wrapped is the most popular of these summaries, but Apple Music, Snapchat, Deezer, and others also offer them.
And now, internet users have a new year-in-review feature to check out this year: YouTube Recap.
Heres what you need to know about the video sites year-in-review and how to access itespecially if you’re looking to kill some time while waiting for Spotify Wrapped 2025 to come out.
What is YouTube Recap?
YouTube Recap is Googles just-announced year-in-review feature for its YouTube platform. The personalized recap displays various metrics about your YouTube viewing habits over the past year.
The Recap feature takes the form of a Story, or YouTube Short.
As YouTube explained in a blog post, Youll get a set of up to 12 different cards that spotlight your top channels, interests, and even the evolution of your viewing habits, or which personality type you fall into based on the videos you loved to watch!
Cards include your top interests, your top channels, and your interests based on video views.
If you listen to a lot of music on YouTube, your YouTube Recap will also display your top artists and top songs from YouTube Music.
One interesting bit of information comes from a disclaimer that the YouTube Recap displays when you view it. That disclaimer reads AI can make mistakes. This suggests that Google is relying on artificial intelligence to curate and assemble YouTube Recap videos.
Discover your YouTube personality
Your YouTube Recap video may also feature a personality card that YouTube says reveals what type of personality you have based on your YouTube watch history.
The full list of possible personalities includes:
The Adventurer: Youre drawn to content that takes you on an exciting journey.
The Challenger: Youre drawn to content that shows competition and rising to the challenge.
The Changemaker: Youre drawn to content that inspires positive change in the world.
The Connector: Youre drawn to content that sparks conversation and builds community.
The Creative Spirit: Youre drawn to content that inspires self-expression.
The Curious Mind: Youre drawn to educational content that helps you understand the world.
The Dreamer: Youre drawn to content that fuels your imagination.
The Philosopher: Youre drawn to content that explores the deeper meaning of things.
The Self-Improver: Youre drawn to content that helps you grow and reach your potential.
The Serenity Seeker: Youre drawn to content that helps you relax and find your inner peace.
The Skill Builder: Youre drawn to content that helps you develop skills.
The Sunshiner: Youre drawn to content that spreads positivity and good vibes.
The Trailblazer: Youre drawn to content thats original and challenges the norm.
The Wonder Seeker: Youre drawn to awe-inspiring content that shows extraordinary skills.
In its blog post, YouTube says the most common personalities are the Connector, the Sunshiner, and the Wonder Seeker. The least common personalities are the Dreamer and the Philosopher, which YouTube says are more elusive and rare personas.
How to access your YouTube Recap 2025 on the web
YouTube provides two ways users can access their YouTube Recap. The first is by using any web browser. To access your YouTube 2025 Recap on the web:
Go to www.youtube.com/recap and make sure you are signed in.
Youll find a Your 2025 Recap is here! banner at the top of the page. Click it.
Your YouTube Recap video will open on the same webpage.
How to access your YouTube Recap 2025 in the YouTube app
You can also access your YouTube Recap directly in the YouTube app on iPhone and Android. Heres how:
Open the YouTube app.
Tap the You tab.
Youll find a Your 2025 Recap is here! banner at the top of the page. Tap it.
Your YouTube Recap video will now open in the YouTube app on your smartphone.
How to share your YouTube Recap video
While people love viewing their year-in-review roundups, many also enjoy sharing them with friends and family.
And YouTube makes it easy to share your YouTube Recap video. The caveat here, however, is that you need to share it from the YouTube app. Sharing of your YouTube Recap video from a web browser does not seem to be supported at this time.
To share your YouTube Recap video:
Open the YouTube app.
Tap the You tab.
Youll find a Your 2025 Recap is here! banner at the top of the page. Tap it.
As the video plays, youll see a Share button at the bottom of the video. Tap it.
From the pop-up menu, select the person or app you want to share a link to your personalized YouTube Recap video with.
YouTube Recap is available now to users in North America. It will roll out to users worldwide this week.
Route 66. The name alone evokes nostalgia for a simpler, freer time in American history, when roadies stopped for a hot dog with ketchup, then drove into ocher sunsets suspended over the Mojave desert.
Ever since it was built in 1926, the Mother Road has gained mythical status, drawing millions of visitors from around the world yearning for a taste of old Americathe one before the interstate highway system favored speed over experience.
For Rhys Martin, who has spent years on the road with his camera, this isn’t what Route 66 is about. Yes, you can travel back in time and get a glimpse of Americana, but the route isn’t fossilized in the past. It’s very much still breathing.
“Route 66 is more than just this 1950s sanitized version of American history,” he says. “It’s diverse, it’s evolving, and I like to say that no matter who you are or where you’re from, somewhere on Route 66, you’ll find your reflection.”
Martin, who manages the Preserve Route 66 program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is part of a group of advocates and preservationists who want to change the narrative around Route 66 from one that paints the road as a mirror into the past to one that reflects the present, where many communities still live and people still work.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
His team’s mission has now culminated in Route 66 Rewind: a browser-based experience that lets users drive across 33 landmarks along the route from their own (virtual) vintage car or motorcycle. You can steer the wheel, pick a radio station, and see how the Midpoint Cafe or the U-Drop Inn looked in previous decades.
[Photo: Kansas Historic Route 66 Association]
The experience was codeveloped by Google Arts & Culture with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and is part of a larger storytelling hub that lives on the Google Arts & Culture platform. The team turned archival photographs into videos using Googles AI video generator Veo, composed the radio music using music generation model Lyria, and wrote the radio commentary using Gemini. The result is a sim road trip that uses AI in the best possible way: to direct the narrative back to people, and highlight the human experience that continues to shape the route today.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Route 66: A corridor of stories
Martin first saw the road through the lens of a camera. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he’d heard of Route 66, but he knew only the broad strokes. Then one day in 2013, he hopped into his late father’s Mustang and drove to Miami, Oklahoma, to photograph the Coleman Theatrea 1929 vaudeville theater with a facade “so ornate it had no business being in the town of Miami,” he recalls. The surprising discovery had him wondering: What else was on the highway?
Martins curiosity led him on a two-year road trip across Route 66 that grew into a decade-long love affair with the people he met along the way. “Eventually I realized it’s a corridor of stories,” he says.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Route 66 is that the destinations along its route have faded into ghost towns. The construction of the interstate highway system in the 50s and 60s, followed by the decommissioning of the route in 1985, no doubt stripped many of these towns of their purpose. As travel evolved and car speeds got faster, the need for frequent gas stations and motels diminished. The government divested. People left towns.
But not everyone left. In Tulsa, entrepreneurs like Mary Beth Babcock have spent years revitalizing stretches of the road. In 2019, she transformed the historic Pemco gas station into a souvenir shop called Buck Atoms Cosmic Curios, complete with two very on-brand, 20-foot-tall mascots that double as roadside attractions.
That same year, Dutch entrepreneur Sebastiaan de Boorder and his wife, Anna Marie Gonzalez, renovated the 1919 Aztec Motel in Seligman, Arizona, which reopened as the Aztec Motel & Creative Space in 2021. “There is so much development still coming to Route 66, and most of it is mom and pops who’ve always dreamed of having a business on Route 66, Martin says.
[Photo: Arizona Preservation Foundation]
Today, the American dream that once defined Route 66 looks different. Some might say it doesn’t exist at all. But for Martin, it lives on along the Mother Road.
“I agree that the American dream doesn’t quite hit like it used to,” he tells me, “but on Route 66, you still find people who have bought into the cliché that Route 66 means freedom, and they are adding their story to this highway that’s now entering its second century.”
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
AI fills the gaps of archival memory
Route 66 is now approaching its centennial. Next year, various destinations along the route will burst into caravans and car parades to celebrate the route’s legacy. But for the team behind Route 66 Rewind, the goal isn’t just to celebrate the past but to galvanize the next generation.
“Preservation creates,” says Martin, noting that anytime a building is preserved, it activates the connection people had with it while helping young people engage with the conversation. “That’s how you inspire the next generation to add their story to this long history.”
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
With its AI-powered features and fun UX, Route 66 Rewind presented itself as a way to make history exciting for younger people. But when the team sat down to convey said history, they realized they didn’t know how many of these places looked in their heyday, beyond a few archival photographs. AI became a way to fill in what Amit Sood, the founder and director of Google Arts & Culture, calls “the gaps of archival memory.”
The Google team worked with the National Trust team to collect black-and-white photos and written accounts they could use to prompt AI, cross-referencing each output with experts at the Trust.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
The resulting videos act as miniature time capsules of a bygone era. In Collinsville, Illinois, you can follow ketchup bottles stream past on a conveyor belt inside the now-defunct Brooks Foods ketchup factory. In Lebanon, Missouri, you can peek inside the now-closed Munger Moss Motel, its iconic neon sign flickering under a 1960s sun.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
But as Sood points out, these dreamy snapshots inspire you to preserve, too. The hope is that the AI-powered vision of, say, the Threatt Filling Stationthe only Black-owned-and-operated gas station during the Jim Crow erawill pique your interest enough for you to visit the storytelling hub and learn about the craftsmen who are now working to restore the building’s “giraffe-stone” exterior.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Next year, Route 66 is likely to be designated a National Historic Trail. The designation, which is being championed by members of both the U.S. House and Senate, could help preserve the historic route, boost tourism, and support local economies ahead of the highway’s centennial celebration.
In the meantime, perhaps the AI-powered platform will galvanize tourists both domestically and from abroad to get on the road and see how the myth lives on. “The goal is to keep the car rolling down the street and get more people engaged,” Martin says. “It’s going to be a big party [next year], but that’s definitely not the end. Its the start of the next 100 years.”
Generic store brand groceries can increasingly be found in the pantries, fridges, and freezers of Americans across all income groups. Once designed to communicate value and affordability, a new generation of private labels designed for high earners is driving sales.
Among households earning more than $100,000 a year, 82% say they’ve increased the frequency of buying store-brand groceries “often” or “very often,” according to a report from Alvarez & Marsal Global, a consulting firm.
That’s compared to 74% of households earnings less than $100,000 a year who also say they’ve increased their store-brand grocery purchases.
Grocers have rebranded and grown their portfolio of private label brands over the past several years to cater to consumers pressed by inflation, and it’s paid off as the highest-earning shoppers make up an increasingly large share of the economy. The report attributed the steep increase among the highest-earning Americans to “improvements made in private label products.”
[Photo: Walmart]
Nowhere is this more true than Walmart, the leading grocer since 2019, which launched a new private label called Bettergoods in 2024 that includes products that are plant-based, organic, or gluten-free. These products intentionally cater to the Whole Foods shopper with bright, well-designed packaging. The company reported quarterly revenue of $179.5 billion, up 5.8%, and said high-income households were part of the reason why.
“We continue to benefit from higher-income families choosing to shop with us more often,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on the company’s earnings call late last month.
Upgraded, design-ified generic brands aren’t just boosting high-income shopping, though. The report found 68% of shoppers across all income groups believe store brands offer quality that is as good or better than national brands, and switching to store brands was the No. 1 way shoppers said they cut their grocery bill.
[Photo: Aldi]
Those trends are shaping the industry. Albertson’s says it’s aiming for private labels to eventually account for 30% of its business, Aldi put its name on all its products for the first time, and Amazon debuted a new branded online grocery store with packaging that makes good use of its new font, bright colors, and white space.
With high-income households driving so much spending, industries from airlines to produce are especially catering to the shoppers with high-end products and premium experiences. At the grocery store, though, the success of private labels proves that when it comes to cooking dinner, even the highest-earning among us are looking for a good deal.
