Before food influencers were deep-frying Chipotle burritos, putting an entire serving of mac and cheese on their Chick-fil-A sandwich, and making McDonalds hash browns into ice cream sandwiches, there was another food-hack-slash-Frankenfood that ruled the internet: the quesarito. This week, Taco Bell brought it back to its official menu.
The quesarito is exactly what its name implies: a fully loaded burrito that, instead of being wrapped in a regular tortilla, has been lovingly sealed inside a giant quesadilla. Its the epitome of fast-food gluttony, and as of December 18, its back in Taco Bell stores for a limited time for $6.70 (and a relatively modest 570 calories).
The quesarito feels like the glaringly modern invention of view-farming TikTok food scientists, but its actually been around for more than a decadeand before it ever hit Taco Bells official menu, it started as a humble secret menu item at Chipotle. In honor of the quesaritos fleeting return, heres a look back at the history of one of the weirdestand most forward-thinkingfast-food creations to ever grace our palates.
The hunt for a quesarito
It was December 2013, and Fast Company editor Mark Wilson was going to get his hands on a quesarito, come hell or high water.
That year, the concept of a secret menu was already popular at joints like In-N-Out and Starbucks, but company executives werent exactly embracing the idea. There was a bit of a wink-wink culture surrounding these off-menu creations, led by intrepid fast-food lovers: the internet could create a name for them, determined customers could order them, but CEOs would steadfastly deny their existence.
[Photo: Mark Wilson]
That was the case with the quesarito, which, according to its dedicated Wiki page, is a concept that dates back to as early as 2011. While the very first coining of the term quesarito is unclear, we do know that it started as a menu hack at Chipotle. In one viral Reddit thread from 2012, a former Chipotle employee left a comment about the quesarito in which it was described as a full-blown Chipotle burrito wrapped inside a quesadilla, or, as Wilson put it in a feature story at the time, a 1,540-calorie fallen angel.
But when Wilson tried to order the quesarito at a Chipotle, he was swiftly deniedand when he talked to Chipotles then-communications director, Chris Arnold, about the experience, Arnold denied the existence of a secret menu at all.
Taco Bell eats Chipotles lunch
Chipotle never did acknowledge the quesarito as a true part of its menu. But where it faltered, Taco Bell picked up the slack.
After some initial testing in 2013, the beloved fast-food chain introduced the quesarito as an official menu item in 2014, complete with seasoned beef, rice, Chipotle sauce, reduced-fat sour cream, all wrapped up in a grilled quesadilla loaded with melted cheeses and nacho cheese sauce. The item immediately received press after Taco Bells ad campaign to launch it accidentally interrupted the live draft of basketball star Nikola Jokić; but it soon became iconic in its own right. Taco Bell didnt respond to Fast Companys request for specific sales data, but, according to a press release, the quesarito was an instant sensation.
Despite its popularity, the quesarito was slowly phased out of the limelight and onto Taco Bells back burners, becoming an app exclusive in 2020 and getting cut from the menu entirely in 2023. Per Taco Bells recent press release, After it left the menu, the demand only intensified, sparking tributes, fan petitions and countless pleas for its return. A quick search for quesarito on TikTok confirms that the glorified cheese bomb has a genuine fanbase.
Taco Bell brought back my favorite item of all time! popular FoodToker Steph Pappas says in a new video on the rerelease. I have been doing food videos for a long, long time, and this was always my go-to.
A fast-food harbinger of micro-trends to come
The quesarito feels exactly like the kind of item thats primed to go viral on todays TikTok algorithm. That might be because, compared to 2013, the secret menu is a lot less secret these days.
Internet menu hack culture got a major boost from the micro-trend economy on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reelsmeaning that, every few days, a new popular food combination picks up steam and starts to feel unavoidable. Brands are picking up on this, too: Starbucks launched an official secret menu this summer; followed by Taco Bell, which debuted a feature called Fan Style that let users build their own menu items; and, most recently, Chipotle, which just unveiled an Ozempic-optimized, protein-packed menu inspired by TikTok hacks.
Before all of this brand maneuvering, there was a humble, elusive creation that captured the cultural zeitgeists attention. Welcome back, quesaritoyou were always ahead of your time.
A 911 call about a man resembling “the CEO shooter.” Body-camera footage of police arresting Luigi Mangione and pulling items from his backpack, including a gun that prosecutors say matches the one used to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and a notebook they have described as a “manifesto.” Notes about a “survival kit” and “intel checkin,” and testimony about alleged statements behind bars.A three-week pretrial hearing on Mangione’s fight to exclude evidence from his New York murder case ended Thursday after revealing new details about his December 2024 arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania, steps prosecutors say he took to elude authorities for five days, and what he may have revealed about himself after he was taken into custody.Mangione watched from the defense table as Manhattan prosecutors called 17 witnesses, many of them police officers and other personnel involved in his arrest. Mangione’s lawyers called none. Judge Gregory Carro said he won’t rule until May 18, “but that could change.”Mangione, 27, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The pretrial hearing was in the state case, but his lawyers are trying to exclude evidence from both. Neither trial has been scheduled.
Here are some of the things we learned from the hearing:
Body cameras give a close-up look at Mangione’s arrest
The public got an extensive, even exhaustive view of how police in Altoona, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan, conducted Mangione’s arrest and searched his backpack after he was spotted eating breakfast at McDonald’s.While there were quirky moments and asides about holiday music, a hoagie and more the point of the hearing was to help the judge assess whether Mangione voluntarily spoke to police and whether the officers were justified in searching his property before getting a warrant.For the first time, body-worn camera video of Mangione’s arrest was played in court and some excerpts were made public. Taken from multiple officers’ cameras, the footage put ears and eyes on critical interactions that played out against the incongruously cheerful sound of “Jingle Bell Rock” and other Christmas tunes on the restaurant’s sound system.Officers on the witness stand were quizzed about what they said and did as Mangione went from noshing on a hash brown to being led away in handcuffs, as well as what they perceived, where they were standing and how they handled evidence after bringing him to a police station.Mangione’s lawyers argue that neither the results of the search nor statements he made to police should be mentioned at his trial. Prosecutors disagree. Carro didn’t hint at his conclusion. He invited both sides to submit written arguments and said he planned to study the body-camera video before issuing a decision.
Differing views of Mangione’s statements and bag search
Mangione’s lawyers noted that one officer said “we’ll probably need a search warrant” for the backpack, but his colleagues had already rifled through it and later searched the bag again before getting a warrant.Prosecutors emphasized an Altoona police policy, which they said is rooted in Pennsylvania law, that calls for searching the property of anyone who is being arrested.The two sides also amplified some contrasting signals, in officers’ words and actions, about their level of concern about whether the backpack contained something dangerous that could justify a warrantless search.The officer searching the bag, Christy Wasser, testified that she was checking for a bomb. But Mangione’s lawyers pointed out that police didn’t clear the restaurant of customers some even walked to a bathroom a few feet away and that Wasser stopped her initial search almost immediately after finding a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.The find appeared to confirm officers’ suspicions that Mangione was the man wanted for Thompson’s killing.“It’s him, dude. It’s him, 100%,” Officer Stephen Fox said on video, punctuating the remark with expletives as Wasser held up the magazine.
What happened before Mangione was read his rights
Mangione’s statements to police prior to his arrest matter mainly because, as shown on body-worn camera video, he initially gave officers a fake name, Mark Rosario. He eventually acknowledged the ruse and gave his real name after police checked his phony New Jersey driver’s license against a computer database.The fake name promptly gave Altoona police a reason to arrest him and hold him for New York City police. “If he had provided us with his actual name, he would not have committed a crime,” Fox testified. An NYPD lieutenant testified that the Rosario name matched one the suspected shooter used to purchase a bus ticket to New York and gave at a Manhattan hostel.Mangione told police early on he didn’t want to talk, but officers engaged him for almost 20 minutes before getting him to admit to lying about his name. After that, a supervisor urged Fox to inform Mangione of his right to remain silent.An important factor in whether suspects have to be read those rights known as a Miranda warning is whether they are in police custody.Prosecutors elicited testimony from officers suggesting Mangione could have believed he was free to leave when he gave the false name. But one of the first officers to encounter Mangione testified that he “was not free to leave until I identified who he was,” though Mangione wasn’t told so. Defense lawyers also underscored that body camera video showed multiple officers standing between him and the restaurant door.
911 caller: Customers concerned ‘he looks like the CEO shooter’
For the first time, the public heard the 911 call that drew police to the Altoona McDonald’s.“I have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of that he looks like the CEO shooter from New York,” the restaurant’s manager told a dispatcher.Still, the manager, whose name wasn’t released, initially told the dispatcher: “It’s not really an emergency.”The manager said Mangione was wearing a medical mask and a beanie pulled down on his forehead, leaving only his eyes and eyebrows visible. She said she searched online for a photo of the suspect for comparison.
A hoagie reward and getting ‘the ball rolling’ with the NYPD
At first, Altoona police officers were skeptical that Thompson’s killer might be in their city of about 44,000 people.Joseph Detwiler, the first officer to arrive at McDonald’s, sarcastically responded “10-4” when a dispatcher asked him to check on the manager’s 911 call, a police supervisor testified.The supervisor, Lt. Tom HanellyJr., testified that he texted Detwiler a reminder to take the call seriously and offered to buy the officer his favorite hoagie a large turkey from local sandwich shop Luigetta’s if he nabbed “the New York City shooter.”Though, Hanelly acknowledged on the witness stand, “it seemed preposterous on its face.”Hanelly said he searched for a direct line “to get the ball rolling” with NYPD investigators but ended up calling New York City’s 911 center.“We’re acting off a tip from a local business here. We might have the shooter,” Hanelly said in a recording played in court.Hanelly said an NYPD detective called him back about 45 minutes later.
Mangione in court: Pumping his fist and scribbling notes
Mangione stayed active throughout the hearing, taking notes, reading documents, conferring with his lawyers and occasionally looking back toward his two dozen or so supporters in the courtroom gallery.He watched intently as prosecutors played a surveillance video of the killing and viewed footage of his interactions with Altoona police. He pressed a finger to his lips and a thumb to his chin as he watched footage of two police officers approaching him at the McDonald’s.He gripped a pen in his right hand, making a fist at times, as prosecutors played the 911 call.Mangione was brought to court each morning from a federal jail in Brooklyn, wearing gray or dark blue suits instead of jail garb. His hands were uncuffed throughout the proceedings.One day, he pumped his fist for photographers. Another day, he shooed away a photographer he felt had gotten too close to him.
A backpack full of ‘goodies,’ including to-do lists and travel plans
Along with the gun and notebook, police officers said Mangione’s backpack was stuffed with food, electronics and notes including to-do lists, a hand-drawn map and tactics for surviving on the lam items Altoona Police Sgt. Eric Heuston described as “goodies” that might link the suspect to the killing.“Keep momentum, FBI slower overnight,” said one note. “Change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows,” said another.One note said to check for “red eyes” from Pittsburgh to Columbus, Ohio, or Cincinnati (“get off early,” it reads). The map showed lines linking those cities and noted other possible destinations, including Detroit and St. Louis.Other items found on Mangione or in his bag included a pocketknife, driver’s license, passport, credit cards, AirPods, a protein bar, travel toothpaste and flash drives, police said.Heuston testified that he read portions of the notebook to NYPD detectives by phone and suggested that the finds “made it more likely than not that he was the shooter.”
Mangione talked behind bars, prison officers say
Before he was moved to New York City, Mangione was held under close watch in a Pennsylvania state prison.Correctional officer Matthew Henry testified that Mangione volunteered that he had a backpack with a 3D-printed pistol and foreign currency when he was arrested.Correctional officer Tomas Rivers testified that Mangione asked him whether the news media was focused on him as a person or on the crime of Thompson’s killing. He said Mangione expressed that he wanted to make a public statement.Rivers said Mangione also talked about his travels to Asia, including witnessing a gang fight in Thailand, and discussed differences between private and nationalized health care.Rivers said Mangione was under special supervision partly because the prison superintendent had said he “did not want an Epstein-style situation,” referring to Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide at a Manhattan federal jail in 2019.
Michael R. Sisak and Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press
With the last weekend before Christmas upon us, the holiday travel period has begun.
This year, the American Automobile Association (AAA) says a record number of Americans will be making journeys122.4 million of them in total. While millions of those journeys will be made by plane or other forms of public transportation, the overwhelming majority109.5 millionwill be made by car.
If youre one of those making your Christmas trip by car, here are the best and worst times to hit the road over the holiday travel period, which AAA defines as running from December 20 to January 1.
Best times to hit the roads
The 2025 holiday period spans 13 days this year, running from Saturday, December 20, 2025, to Thursday, January 1, 2026.
The good news is that for four of those daysChristmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Dayroad traffic is expected to be minimal.
Unfortunately, on the other nine days, traffic could become quite congested as people take to the roads to get to or come back from their holiday destinations.
However, even on busy days, there are specific times of day when congestion is expected to be lighter.
Here are the best times, according to information compiled by AAA from transportation data and insights provider INRIX:
Saturday, December 20: After 9 p.m.
Sunday, December 21: Before 11 a.m.
Monday, December 22: Before 10 a.m.
Tuesday, December 23: Before 10 a.m.
Wednesday, December 24: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Thursday, December 25: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Friday, December 26: Before 11 a.m.
Saturday, December 27: Before 11 a.m.
Sunday, December 28: Before 11 a.m.
Monday, December 29: Before 10 a.m.
Tuesday, December 30: Before 10 a.m.
Wednesday, December 31: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Thursday, January 1: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Worst times to hit the roads
Now for the bad news: INRIXs data shows that on most days during the travel period, roads are likely to be congested for most of the 24 hours.
Some of the busiest days are expected to be this weekend, as people set off on their holiday journeys, and December 26, when they begin returning.
Here are the worst times to be on the road during the holiday travel period, according to AAA and INRIX:
Saturday, December 20: 12:00 PM 8:00 PM
Sunday, December 21: 1:00 PM 7:00 PM
Monday, December 22: 1:00 PM 7:00 PM
Tuesday, December 23: 1:00 PM 7:00 PM
Wednesday, December 24: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Thursday, December 25: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Friday, December 26: 11:00 AM 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 27: 11:00 AM 8:00 PM
Sunday, December 28: 11:00 AM 8:00 PM
Monday, December 29: 12:00 PM 8:00 PM
Tuesday, December 30: 12:00 PM 7:00 PM
Wednesday, December 31: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
Thursday, January 1: Minimal Traffic Impact Expected
A record 122.4 million people will travel this holiday period
A staggering 122.4 million people in America are expected to travel over the 13-day holiday period. Thats a record, according to AAA.
To put that number in perspective, itt 2.2% more than the 119.7 million travelers last year, and 2.8% more than the 119.3 million who traveled in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
When looking at automobile travel by itself, 109.5 million are expected to make the journey by car this year, a 2% increase from the 107.4 million car journeys last year and a 1.4% increase from the 108 million auto journeys in 2019.
But cars arent the only mode people will be traveling by.
AAA says air passengers will hit 8.03 million this holiday period. Thats up 2.3% from the 7.85 million who took to the skies last year, and 12% more than the 7.33 million who made car journeys in the 2019 holiday period.
Finally, AAA says 4.9 million Americans are expected to make this years holiday journeys by bus, train, or cruise.
Thats up 9% from the 4.49 million who did so in 2024, and up a whopping 24.9% from the 3.89 million who made similar journeys in the 2019 holiday period.
Few brands have been more associated with the fast-fashion boom of the last two decades than Zara, the flagship apparel chain owned by Spanish clothing giant Inditex SA.
It may surprise some consumers to learn, then, that Zara has in fact reduced its global footprint over the last few years since the pandemic.
The brands decline in physical storefronts has been moderate but meaningful, from a third-quarter peak of around 2,139 stores in 2019 to just under 1,800 stores five years later, according to earnings statements from Inditex. Thats a reduction of 16%.
Now, thanks to new accounting metrics from the company, weve learned that Zaras physical footprint is even smaller than we thought.
Earlier this year, Inditex began breaking out store count numbers for Lefties, its discount chain. Lefties is small but growing. According to earnings data posted earlier this month, the chain had 213 global locations as of the third quarter of 2025, up from 203 locations from the same period last year.
What’s more, Lefties stores had previously been counted as Zara stores in Inditex earnings reports, a spokesperson confirmed with Fast Company. That means Zara’s reported store count is now lower than it had been in earlier filings: Under the new metrics, it had just 1,528 stores as of October 31.
Amaya Guillermo, who heads corporate communications for Zara USA, says the decline reflects a shift toward Inditex’s “optimization plan,” which began several years ago.
“Under this strategy, smaller stores have been absorbed into larger, upgraded locations,” Guillermo said. “Creating distinctive retail spaces allows us to enhance the customer experience by incorporating the latest in-store technologies, including assisted checkouts, among many other features.”
Guillermo further points out that while Inditex has fewer stores, its commercial space grew by 2% as of 2024, with sales up almost 5.9% that same year.
Inditex’s stock price reflects the appeal of its more-with-less strategy among investors. Madrid-listed shares of the group have more than doubled over the last five years.
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Where have Zara locations closed?
Inditex breaks down Zara location counts by country in its annual reports each year. Comparing 2024 figures to 2017 reveals some interesting trends.
The brand’s store count has declined in many of its core European markets, including its home country of Spain, where it reported 256 stores in 2024 compared to 306 in 2017. It has also seen declines in France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe.
Perhaps the most dramatic decline has been China, where Inditex reported just 73 Zara stores in 2024, compared to 183 in 2017.
Zara’s store count has also grown in some markets over that same period, including the United States, where it reported 98 stores as of last year versus 87 in 2017.
According to Guillermo, the United States remains a key market for Zara, with recent openings at the Las Vegas Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Could Lefties be the new Zara?
Lefties is not new, but Inditex clearly sees the fast-growing chain as vital to a future.
The brand began in the 1990s as an outlet for Zara “leftovers”hence the namebut it has become more popular and more important to Inditex’s portfolio as consumers have grown increasingly price conscious.
With Gen Z shoppers flocking to ultra-cheap online platforms like Shein, Lefties has been called Inditex’s “secret weapon.”
While store counts for Lefties are now broken out separately, sales are still reported as part of Zara’s overall sales.
As of now, the Lefties chain operates in 18 countries, mostly in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Expect that number to grow in the years ahead.
Few brands have been more associated with the fast-fashion boom of the last two decades than Zara, the flagship apparel chain owned by Spanish clothing giant Inditex SA.
It may surprise some consumers to learn, then, that Zara has in fact reduced its global footprint over the last few years since the pandemic.
The brands decline in physical storefronts has been moderate but meaningful, from a third-quarter peak of around 2,139 stores in 2019 to just under 1,800 stores five years later, according to earnings statements from Inditex. Thats a reduction of 16%.
Now, thanks to new accounting metrics from the company, weve learned that Zaras physical footprint is even smaller than we thought.
Earlier this year, Inditex began breaking out store count numbers for Lefties, its discount chain. Lefties is small but growing. According to earnings data posted earlier this month, the chain had 213 global locations as of the third quarter of 2025, up from 203 locations from the same period last year.
What’s more, Lefties stores had previously been counted as Zara stores in Inditex earnings reports, a spokesperson confirmed with Fast Company. That means Zara’s reported store count is now lower than it had been in earlier filings: Under the new metrics, it had just 1,528 stores as of October 31.
Amaya Guillermo, who heads corporate communications for Zara USA, says the decline reflects a shift toward Inditex’s “optimization plan,” which began several years ago.
“Under this strategy, smaller stores have been absorbed into larger, upgraded locations,” Guillermo said. “Creating distinctive retail spaces allows us to enhance the customer experience by incorporating the latest in-store technologies, including assisted checkouts, among many other features.”
Guillermo further points out that while Inditex has fewer stores, its commercial space grew by 2% as of 2024, with sales up almost 5.9% that same year.
Inditex’s stock price reflects the appeal of its more-with-less strategy among investors. Madrid-listed shares of the group have more than doubled over the last five years.
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Where have Zara locations closed?
Inditex breaks down Zara location counts by country in its annual reports each year. Comparing 2024 figures to 2017 reveals some interesting trends.
The brand’s store count has declined in many of its core European markets, including its home country of Spain, where it reported 256 stores in 2024 compared to 306 in 2017. It has also seen declines in France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe.
Perhaps the most dramatic decline has been China, where Inditex reported just 73 Zara stores in 2024, compared to 183 in 2017.
Zara’s store count has also grown in some markets over that same period, including the United States, where it reported 98 stores as of last year versus 87 in 2017.
According to Guillermo, the United States remains a key market for Zara, with recent openings at the Las Vegas Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Could Lefties be the new Zara?
Lefties is not new, but Inditex clearly sees the fast-growing chain as vital to a future.
The brand began in the 1990s as an outlet for Zara “leftovers”hence the namebut it has become more popular and more important to Inditex’s portfolio as consumers have grown increasingly price conscious.
With Gen Z shoppers flocking to ultra-cheap online platforms like Shein, Lefties has been called Inditex’s “secret weapon.”
While store counts for Lefties are now broken out separately, sales are still reported as part of Zara’s overall sales.
As of now, the Lefties chain operates in 18 countries, mostly in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Expect that number to grow in the years ahead.
TikTok has signed agreements with three major investors Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture, ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States.The deal is expected to close on Jan. 22, according to an internal memo seen by The Associated Press. In the communication, CEO Shou Zi Chew confirmed to employees that ByteDance and TikTok signed the binding agreements with the consortium.“I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued dedication and tireless work. Your efforts keep us operating at the highest level and will ensure that TikTok continues to grow and thrive in the U.S. and around the world,” Chew wrote in the memo to employees. “With these agreements in place, our focus must stay where it’s always beenfirmly on delivering for our users, creators, businesses and the global TikTok community.”Half of the new TikTok U.S. joint venture will be owned by a group of investors among them Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX, who will each hold a 15% share. 19.9% of the new app will be held by ByteDance itself, and another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors, according to the memo. The memo did not say who the other investors are and both TikTok and the White House declined to comment.The U.S. venture will have a new, seven-member majority-American board of directors, the memo said. It will also be subject to terms that “protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”U.S. user data will be stored locally in a system run by Oracle. The memo said U.S. users will continue “enjoying the same experience as today” and advertisers will continue to serve global audiences with no impact from the deal.TikTok’s algorithm the secret sauce that powers its addictive video feed will be retrained on U.S. user data to “ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said. The U.S. venture will also oversee content moderation and policies within the country.American officials have previously warned that ByteDance’s algorithm is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties specifically the algorithm with ByteDance.The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement. The third came in June, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.TikTok has more than 170 million users in the U.S. About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published this fall.Shares of Oracle jumped $9.07, or 5%, to $189.10 in after-hours trading.
Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer
Thank you once again for reading Fast Companys Plugged In. A quick programming note: We will be taking the next two Fridays off. Happy holidays to all, and I look forward to resurfacing in your inbox next year.
For any number of reasons, 2025 has hardly been my favorite year. But if I were to make a list of things that went well, my relationship with AI would be on it.
This was the year I went from being an AI dabbler to a daily user. And while some of that usage still amounts to messing aroundhello, Sora!even more involves tasks that make me more productive. More importantly, it brings me better results, a goal I hold dear. (Sadly, not every AI enthusiast agrees.)
Here, then, is a look at how Im using AI as 2025 winds down. I covered some of this ground in a September Plugged In. But since I wrote that, the technology has become even more core to my workflow, and my AI A-team has shifted pretty dramatically to Google products for the first time. So a year-end update seemed worthwhile.
First, Ive finally figured out how to use chatbots such as OpenAIs ChatGPT, Anthropics Claude, and Googles Gemini as research tools. I remain wary of accepting anything they say as the truth, since AI still has a devious knack for hallucinating fantasies that sound like fact. But its dawned on me that I dont need to take AI at its word.
Starting a research quest with a detailed AI prompt is often more effective than trying to boil it down into keywords of the sort I would have typed into a search engine in the past. And every self-respecting chatbot now provides citations for its work, at least when I ask for them. They lead to web pages written by actual humans, which are far easier to assess than wordage extruded by an LLM.
After spending most of 2025 weaving between ChatGPT and Claude as my chatbot of choice, I was (mostly) wowed by the new Gemini 3 Pro-powered version of Gemini that debuted in November. Its become my default bot. But the frenzied pace of competition in the category argues against long-term loyalty: I need to spend more time with the new GPT-5.2 version of ChatGPT, which arrived last week.
More than any garden-variety chatbot, I have found Googles NotebookLM utterly essential this year. Instead of trying to be an expert on human knowledge in its entirety, it just digests files you feed to it. Then it lets you ask questions about them and responds with startlingly useful summaries and citations. They frequently lead to insights I wouldnt have managed if left to my own devices, and have never mischaracterized anything or otherwise led me astray.
For me, NotebookLM is most valuable as I spelunk through transcripts of the interviews that provide raw ingredients for articles I write. (In the case of our five-part oral history of YouTube, there were dozens of them, about 168,000 words in total.) For you, the source material might be internal documents, white papers, or something else relating to whatever youre working on. Either way, this free tool, like most of historys best software, is a bicycle for the mind.
(Disclaimer: Im not talking about NotebookLMs best-known featurepodcast-like audio overview synthetic conversations based on your sources, which are an astounding magic trick but have never left me feeling smarter about a topic.)
Finally on the AI good news front, theres vibe codingcoming up with ideas for apps and having AI do nearly all the work of turning them into functioning software. When 2025 started, it didnt even exist as a thing, at least under that name. Now I cant imagine working without it.
That started back in April, when I used a vibe coding tool called Replit to build the note-taking app of my dreams. The project required dozens of hours of effort and hundreds of dollars in usage fees. But eight months later, I use the app I created every day, and it still makes me unreasonably happy.
Lately, I have been vibe coding with Googles AI Studio, which is powered by Gemini 3 Pro. So far, the results have been less quirky and buggy than Replits sometimes are, making whipping up my own apps even more irresistible.
Case in point: Last month, I bought a ScanSnap document scanner and soon discovered that its cloud service gave the resulting PDFs incomprehensible names. With Geminis help, I constructed a smart PDF-naming utility. It reads the files and renames them with clearer descriptions than Id write myself. Problem solved, in about 20 minutes.
Too much AI in all the wrong places
For all the ways AI speeded my work in 2025, its been far from an unalloyed blessing. Notably, all the tools I praise above are newish and AI-first. When existing products are retooled to emphasize AI, the technology often feels bolted on. Its not just that it isnt dependably helpful; sometimes, its an obstacle to progress.
For example, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Gmail, and Outlook would all be delighted to compose text for me, a feature that has become as prominent an element of their user interfaces as the 58-year-old blinking cursor. I have no interest in turning that job over to them. And yet I cant ignore the various icons, widgets, and promos dedicated to these tools, which stare me in the face every time I sit down with these products. Its an ongoing mental tax levied for alleged benefits Id prefer to avoid.
In other cases, its obvious that AI features have been rushed to market without sufficient quality control, as if the bragging rights for havng shipped them were all that mattered. I have learned to tamp down my expectations, or even assume that new functionality will perform as advertised at all.
In August, for instance. I discovered that ChatGPTs new Agent feature couldnt perform some of the tasks in its own list of things I should try. It was also incapable of reliably determining the current date. A month later, I was intrigued enough by Perplexitys Email Assistant to briefly spring for a $200-per-month Perplexity Max account. I never got it up and running, in part because Perplexitys own explanation of its new tool was notably short on, you know, explanation. I might have felt less lost if it had just included a screenshot or two.
Whether or not theres an AI bubble, the industry responsible for the technology is still in the process of confronting its legacy of overpromising and underdelivering. But with the good stuff getting really good, anything that fails to live up to its own hypeor simply meet reasonable standards of utilitywill only look more ridiculous. May the momentum recently seen in AI productivitys best products continue in 2026 and beyond.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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Pricing is one of the most powerful growth levers a business has, yet it is still one of the most overlooked. While teams spend months refining product and brand, pricing decisions are too often rushed, emotionally charged, or guided by instinct rather than insight.
Under the pressure of rising costs and competitive pressures, many leadership teams resort to the fastest fix: promotions to meet short-term targets or price increases to plug a margin leak.
The companies that consistently outperform take a different approach. They treat pricing as a strategic, evidence-led discipline. They ground pricing in how customers perceive value and make decisions to deliver growth that lasts.
Take two companies facing the same rising costs. One applies a uniform 10% price increase to protect margin. It works briefly, until customers notice and push back. Sales slip and the business reacts with discounts that instantly undo the uplift they were counting on.
The other takes a more thoughtful approach. They identify where value is strongest, redesign how options are packaged and presented, and adjust prices selectively. A year later, revenue and gross margin are up, and customer trust remains intact.
This is what happens when pricing becomes a strategic capability rather than a quick fix. Here are six levers business leaders can use to make pricing a sustainable engine of growth.
1. Position: Where do you sit in the market?
Positioning shapes how customers view your product or service when compared to the alternatives. That may be another version of your offer, a competitor offer, or a completely different option that your customers believe can get the job done. Where you sit among those options shapes what customers are willing to pay. Is your offer seen as premium or budget? A “want to have” or a “need to have”?
Make your positioning clear by finding out why customers choose you over the alternatives, and what role price plays in that decision.
2. Perception: How do customers assess value?
Perception is how customers judge the value of your product or service. Its how your solution meets their needs, solves a problem, or brings a moment of ease or delight. That perception forms before they buy through brand cues, third-party reviews and how clearly the benefits are communicated, and it continues to evolve based on how well the product performs in use.
The mistake teams make is assuming customers see the value as clearly as they do. Instead, listen carefully to your customers to understand what they value most, and what they are willing to pay for that value. Use these insights to refine how you communicate value at every stage of the purchase journey.
3. Packaging: What choices are you offering?
Packaging is the structure behind the choices you offer to customers: whats included, how different features are bundled together, and how customers compare options. For example, streaming services use goodbetterbest packaging, with tiers ranging from a basic with ads plan up to a premium option.
Give customers too many choices, and its overwhelming. Give them too few, and it becomes a question of should I buy? rather than which should I buy?
Guide customers toward better decisions by making options intuitive, with clear trade-offs and visible benefits as they move to more premium options.
4. Presentation: How is your offer presented?
Presentation is how your prices are visually communicated. Customers rely on subtle cues such as color, size, language, and layout to interpret value and compare choices. Each of these cues implicitly shapes how the price feels and can nudge customers toward one choice over another.
Test and refine how pricing information is framed and displayed to build confidence and improve conversion. Experiment to measure which changes drive the best outcomes.
5. Price: Are you charging the right amount?
Price is the number customers see, but it should not be the starting point for pricing decisions. When companies skip straight to the number, they end up debating numbers, not value. The price needs to align with everything that comes before it: positioning, perception, packaging, and presentation.
When customers see a price that mirrors the value they feel, it strengthens trust, confidence, and conversion. Think about your price point. Is it aligned with your value, your position in the market, and the choices on offer?
6. Promotion: When and how should you discount?
Promotion is the lever you pull to spark a specific behavior: trial, urgency, repeat purchase, or upsell. The challenge is that discounts are often used to chase short-term targets, which risks eroding margins and teaches customers to wait for a deal.
Discounts and promotions work best when they are intentional and anchored in a clear pricing strategy. Use promotions to drive specific customer behaviors without undermining value or long-term profitability. Shift the question from How much should we discount to hit this months number? to What behavior are we trying to drive, and is a discount the right lever to do it?
Under pressure, leaders face a choice: rely on reactive decisions or treat pricing as a strategic capability. By pulling a broader set of levers and grounding decisions in real customer value, you turn pricing into a tool that can shape demand, signal value, and lead to sustainable growth.
My work across decades has spanned sectors, geographies, and cultures, focusing on exploration, discovery, and innovation. My husband and I have defined our work across business, nonprofit, and philanthropy simply: “We invest in people and ideas that can change the world.”
I spend much of my time exploring and sharing exciting developments that hold great promise. This work has taken me from building the Internet revolution, to working in villages and cities across the globe and America’s 50 states, to the boardroom of the National Geographic Society, where I just completed a decade of service as Chairman of the Board.
It has been a true privilege to lead these efforts, and we have made a real impact in many ways. But this work can be difficultmy years of engagement in brain cancer research highlighted what an unknown frontier the brain represents. The work can also be complexlike rolling out initiatives across diverse geographies and communities, but it continues to energize and engage me. At nearly every turn, technology has been central to our quest to “find a better way,” and it has played an important part in every one of the success stories in our portfolio.
But here, as we close out 2025, the reality is stark: while technology can still bring hope and promise on many fronts, the underbelly of its excessive use has become painfully clear. Americans now spend over seven hours a day looking at screens. Meanwhile, rates of anxiety, depression, isolation, and loneliness have skyrocketed, particularly among young people. Our brains are being rewired in ways none of us asked for, and the health and wellness of the population more broadly are seriously at risk. And sadly, the promise of technology to bring communities together that animated so many of us in our early tech careers has instead led to rising divisions between people and places.
What can be done?
So, what can be done here to address this worrisome trend? Well, it turns out a solution that might hold great promise was hiding plainly in sight: indeed, the answer doesnt lie in abandoning technology, but rather in the simple act of logging off and getting out in nature.
Thats right. It turns out nature is a powerful medicine.
Recent research validates what many of us intuitively know: a Stanford meta-analysis of 449 studies found that nature exposure significantly improves mental health outcomes, including mood, stress, and anxiety. Perhaps most encouraging, researchers found that just 20 minutes in a parkeven without exercisingpeople reported feeling better, while repeated nature exposure of as little as 10 minutes yields measurable benefits for those with mental illness. But the benefits extend far beyond individual wellness.
These aren’t marginal improvementsthey’re prescription-strength results from the most accessible medicine on Earth. The barrier to entry is often just putting on a pair of sneakers or hopping on a bike. The beauty of outdoor engagement is its democratic accessibility. Unlike expensive gym memberships or specialized equipment, stepping outside costs nothing and requires no particular skill. So whether you walk around the block, walk for 20 minutes in your neighborhood, or find a way to hike in a city, state, or national park, walking delivers measurable health benefits.
A fork in the road
We stand at an inflection point. We can continue accepting digital isolation and declining physical and mental health as inevitable byproducts of technological progress, or we can recognize that the human experience began outdoors, in communities, solving problems togetherand that our health depends on experiences no app can replicate.
This isn’t about returning to some romanticized past. It’s about balance. It’s about making outdoor, screen-free time as routine as checking email. It’s as simple as taking a walk, encountering neighbors or nature at a park or in your community. Where getting outdoors is the default, not the exception.
The screen will always be there when you return. But the opportunity to rebuild America’s health and social cohesion by getting outdoors requires intention. We need individuals choosing strolling over scrolling, employers encouraging outdoor breaks as part of a productive workday, healthcare providers prescribing park time, and local leaders who prioritize walkable communities that enable us to meet and greet each other and Mother Nature.
The question isn’t whether you have time for outdoor connectionit’s whether you can afford not to make time for the wellness program hiding in plain sight.
AI is forcing every leader into a choice they cant dodge: do you believe your people are fundamentally creative and motivated, or lazy and in need of control?
Most leaders wont want to answer that honestly, but their AI strategy already has. The AI mandates. AI-blamed layoffs. So-called AI-enabled bossware. The truth is in the tools: many leaders prefer synthetic employees they can control, and will treat human beings much the same way until they can be replaced.
Sound hyperbolic? Just look at recent headlines. Klarnas CEO famously bragged about AI replacing his staff after the company fired or lost 22% of its workforce a year earlier (this blew up in his face, of course). Duolingo effectively announced a hiring freeze with the introduction of AI. Elijah Clark, a CEO who advises other CEOs on AI, quipped to Gizmodo, AI doesnt go on strike. It doesnt ask for a pay raise as he expressed excitement about laying off employees in favor of AI. A 2024 review found that more than two-thirds, 68 percent, of U.S. workers report experiencing at least one form of electronic monitoring on the job. There are actual billboards running that say, Stop hiring humans, while a new survey found that 37% of employers would prefer hiring a robot or AI over a recent college graduate.
It isnt just that AI is replacing workers (it is), its that AI is reinforcing our dimmest view of workers in the process.
Generation X
Douglas McGregor was a social psychologist and MIT Sloan professor who, in 1960, argued that leaders dont just manage from goals and objectives; they manage from hidden assumptions about human nature. He called one cluster of assumptions Theory X: the belief that people dislike work, avoid responsibility, and need tight control and incentives to perform. The contrasting Theory Y assumed that, given the right conditions, people will seek responsibility, exercise self-direction, and bring far more creativity and judgment than most organizations ever tap. When leaders push AI in ways that amplify surveillance, shrink autonomy, or quietly replace judgment with automation, they arent just modernizing, theyre hard-coding Theory X into the operating system of work.
Heres the thing about Theory X/Y: McGregor wasnt arguing which was right, whether employees were fundamentally lazy or capable, but that managerial beliefs become self-fulfilling. How you think about your employees determines how theyll act. Bossware, productivity scoring, keystroke tracking, sentiment analysis of employee chats, all of it sends the same signal: we assume you wont do the right thing unless were watching. These tools teach people that initiative is risky, creativity is irrelevant, and trust is conditional. And once those assumptions are embedded in tools, dashboards, and performance reviews, they stop being a management preference and start being the default culture.
It doesnt matter that not every CEO or leader sees employees this way, enough vocal Theory X proponents will shape the narrative for everyone else. Ultimately, the more that human beings are placed in head-to-head competition with AI, the more that the workforce will respond with fear, mistrust, loafing, and even cheating.
Y Not
A Theory Y AI tool starts from the premise that people want to do good work when the system around them makes that possible. Unfortunately, the market isnt offering a lot of Theory Y AI right now. We need more tools here, more competition, more billboards blaring an alternative worldview.
Imagine a tool, for example, that spots duplicated efforts early. Or one that learns from and simplifies decision-making and governance over time. That helps teams compare options, highlights trade-offs, and develops their strategic thinking muscles. That could create shared situational awareness by showing how changes in one team affect others in real time. Instead of secret dashboards used to police performance, Y-style tools could give workers ownership of their data and use it for growth, not punishment. They could make invisible contributions visiblementorship, relationship-building, problem-preventionso the whole texture of teamwork gets its due. In short, they could expand autonomy with guardrails, rather than constrict it with algorithms.
Asking the Wrong Question
The real question isnt how much productivity we can squeeze out by replacing people with AI or treating them like imperfect machines. Its how much potential weve never tapped because the modern workplace was built on bureaucracy, compliance, and risk-avoidance. For decades, weve constrained the very things that make humans extraordinarycreativity, judgment, curiosity, connection, the spark that happens when people riff on each others ideas. Those capacities have never been fully measured, let alone optimized, because most organizations designed them out of daily work.
AI could help us reverse that. Not by automating humans out, but by clearing away the sludge that has buried human capability for a century: redundant approvals, performative documentation, meetings that exist because the calendar said so, processes created for a world that no longer exists. The opportunity isnt a marginal gain from policing employees harderits the exponential upside from finally unleashing the talent you hired in the first place. The leaders who will win the next decade arent the ones who solely bet on synthetic workers, but the ones who use AI to build the first truly human organizationsplaces where people can think, make, collaborate, and surprise you again.
