Investors in athletic apparel maker Lululemon Athletica are seeing red this morning after the company reported its second-quarter fiscal 2025 results.
While the athleisure brand surpassed Wall Street earnings estimates for the quarter, it provided guidance that alarmed its investors. Heres what you need to know about that guidance and why Lululemon’s stock (Nasdaq: LULU) is crashing.
Lululemon Q2 results by the numbers
After the closing bell yesterday, Lululemon reported its Q2 results for fiscal 2025, which ended on August 3, 2025.
On the surface, the company had some modest wins for the quarter. The highlight was the companys international net revenue, which increased 22%. International comparable sales increased 15%, and gross profit increased 5% to $1.5 billion.
The company also posted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.10. As noted by CNBC, these results handily beat LSEG analyst expectations of an EPS of $2.88.
Yet its the companys Americas numbers, which include the United States, where cracks have begun to show. Despite strong international net revenue and comparable sales increases, net revenue in the Americas increased by just 1%. And Americas comparable sales decreased 4%.
These Americas results offset a substantial number of the significant gains that Lululemon saw internationally for the quarter, and reduced its global net revenue increase to just 7% (to $2.5 billion). Global comparable sales increased just 1%.
In total, Lululemon posted revenue for the quarter of $2.53 billion, slightly behind the $2.54 billion analysts expected.
But those results arent primarily what have investors spooked. Rather, Lululemon’s guidance for its 2025 full fiscal-year earnings and revenue appears to have shaken investor confidence.
Impact of de minimis exemption expiration and Trumps tariffs
Along with its Q2 earnings, Lululemon updated its full-year earnings and revenue guidance for fiscal 2025.
In terms of 2025 revenue, Lululemon said it expects to take in between $10.85 billion and $11 billion for its fiscal year.
That range is below the $11.18 billion that Wall Street analysts were expecting. However, the revenue shortfall doesnt seem to be the main thing driving LULU shares lower this morning. That would be the companys revised full-year earnings outlook for 2025.
Now Lululemon says it expects diluted earnings per share to be between $12.77 and $12.97. That is well below what Wall Street analysts were expecting, which CNBC says was an EPS of $14.45 per share.
Why did Lululemons guidance fall so sharply?
Blame two Trump-fueled policy shifts: tariffs and the end of the de minimis exemption.
As Lululemon noted in its earnings release, The guidance for 2025 includes an estimated reduction in gross profit of approximately $240 million, net of currently anticipated mitigation efforts, including vendor savings, and pricing actions, reflecting our current assumptions about higher levels of tariffs on imports into the United States and the removal of the de minimis exemption.
American businesses have relied on the de minimis exemption for years. It previously allowed goods valued at less than $800 to enter the country tariff-free. This means a U.S. customer could order up to $800 worth of product and a company like Lululemon could ship it to them directly without paying any import duty, thus keeping down costs.
As of last month, this de minimis exemption is now a thing of the past, meaning companies will now pay more to get their goods to U.S. customers. And if companies pass those costs onto customers, customers could cut back on spending. Thats a big factor why Lululemons is forecasting a full fiscal year gross profit reduction of $240 million.
LULU stock has had a bad 2025
As of the time of this writing, LULU shares are currently plummeting in premarket trading. The stock price is currently down 19% to $166.94 per share. It hasn’t been that low for over five years.
But even before todays premarket crash, LULU shares have had a rough time as of late. Largely thanks to fears over how Trump’s tariffs will impact the companywhich relies on significant imports from Southeast Asian nationsLULU stock has dropped sharply in 2025.
As of yesterdays closing price of $206.09, LULU shares have lost more than 46% of their value since the year began.
When the Labor Department put out a disappointing jobs report a month ago, an enraged President Donald Trump responded by firing the economist in charge of compiling the numbers and nominating a loyalist to replace her.Nothing quite so dramatic is likely Friday when the department releases hiring and unemployment numbers for August. They are expected to show that companies, government agencies and nonprofits added a modest 80,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.That would be a slight improvement on July’s 73,000 but still offer more evidence that the American job market has cooled significantly from last year.The unemployment rate is forecast to stay at a low 4.2% suggesting that employers are stuck in a no-hire, no-fire mode: They are reluctant to add many new workers but don’t want to give up the ones they have. But there are signs they may be starting to cut staff.The U.S. job market has lost momentum this year, partly because of the lingering effects of 11 interest rate hikes by the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve in 2022 and 2023 and partly because President Donald Trump’s policies, including his trade wars, have created uncertainty that leaves managers reluctant to make hiring decisions.So far in 2025, the economy has generated 85,000 new jobs a month, down from 168,000 last year and an average 400,000 a month during the hiring boom of 2021-2023 as the United States roared back from COVID-19 lockdowns.“The labor market is showing signs of cracking,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “It’s not a red siren alarm yet, but the signs keep growing that businesses are starting to cut workers.”The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits a proxy for layoffs rose last week to the highest level since June, though the number of claims remained within a healthy range.The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Wednesday that U.S.-based employers have announced more than 892,000 jobs cuts this year through August, more than the 761,000 reported for all 12 months of 2024.In a sign that U.S. hiring gains are limited and fragile, nearly 80% of new private sectors jobs this year have been created in just one industry: healthcare and social assistance, a Labor Department category that spans hospitals to daycare centers.After seeing the weak July jobs numbers, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, baselessly claiming the hiring report had been rigged to hurt him politically.He has nominated a partisan idealogue, E.J. Antoni, to replace her. But for now, pending Antoni’s confirmation by the Senate, the jobs report is in the hands of the acting BLS commissioner, William Wiatrowski, a career Labor Department official.Economists and others familiar with how the jobs numbers are collected have expressed confidence that Labor Department procedures will keep the data are safe from political interference.What set Trump off a month ago wasn’t the July hiring or unemployment figures. It was BLS revisions, which shaved a stunning 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls and slashed average monthly hiring from May through July to a mere 35,000.The revisions are standard practice, and necessary because many companies surveyed by the government submit their responses late or correct what they’ve already sent in.Government economists are also contending with a big drop in the share of companies that respond to the surveys. A decade ago, about 60% of companies surveyed responded. Now only about 40% do.And it’s an international problem for data collectors, especially since COVID-19. The United Kingdom even suspended publication of an official unemployment rate because of inadequate responses.“I remember being at an international conference where the chief statistician of the Russian Republic was complaining about how the Russians don’t want to complete their surveys,” William Beach, BLS commissioner from 2019 to 2023, said in an interview last month. “What could he do? If you can’t compel completion in Russia, you can’t compel it anywhere.”
Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
New data suggests that high-paying remote positions are almost as rare as they were before the pandemic.
According to a recent analysis of over one million job postings between January and July from Ladders, a career platform for six-figure salary jobs, those offering salaries of $100,000 or more and that also offer remote or hybrid work plunged 15% in the second quarter of 2025.
Only about 6% of high-paying jobs now provide location flexibilitydown from a high of 41% in 2022, and just a couple points above the 4% recorded back in pre-pandemic 2019.
By comparison, roughly 20% of jobs advertised on LinkedIn offer hybrid or remote work options. According to Indeed, fully remote positions advertised on its platform jumped from 2.4% of all postings in 2019 to 10.2% in 2022, but have since declined to about 7.9%.
Its definitely an employers market, says Ladders founder Marc Cenedella. In 2025, by and large, U.S. and Canadian companies have decided [workers earning six figures or more] are going back to the office.
Cenedella adds that while six-figure jobs once represented a small slice of the workforce, the data now applies to a larger proportion of knowledge economy workers, thanks in part to inflation and the growth of the knowledge industry.
When we started the business 20 years ago it would have been the top 25% of the workforce, he says. Now probably the top 50% of professional workforces is at that level.
The Ladders data suggests that as the labor market tightens, employers are increasingly demanding more in-person work, especially among top earners.
Where did all the high-paying flexible jobs go?
This trend is an abrupt 180 from even a few years ago.
Cenedella explains that employers were amazed in 2021 that they could be just as profitable as they were in the past without having to have all this real estate and overhead. But just a year later, many employers started trying to pull staff back into the office, regardless of how much they make.
Today, a more challenging economy and a tighter labor market is giving them the opportunity to enforce their preferred location policies. As time went on, those good habits kind of deteriorated. A new generation hasn’t been taught those good habits, Cenedella says.
Cenedella reasons that if organizations could successfully operate remotely, most would opt to do so, as it offers some short-term savings on real estate and overhead.
In fact, a recent study conducted by professors at Harvard University, Brown University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that workers would accept a significantly lower salaryup to 25% lessin exchange for the opportunity to work remotely or hybrid.
But instead of saving on salaries by permitting remote work, the researchers found employers tend to do the opposite: If firms don’t have to pay as much to attract people for remote positions, we might expect the salaries to be lower for remote work rather than in-person workand we don’t find that, says Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, an assistant professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship at Brown University, and one of the studys coauthors. In fact, remote workers make a tiny bit more.
Despite workers willingness to sacrifice some of their salary for the opportunity to have more flexibility, the Ladders data suggests employers are unwilling to make that trade.
Are high-paying remote jobs ever coming back?
Still, Pakzad-Hurson doesnt believe high-paying remote and hybrid work opportunities will remain at such low levels for long.
Things in the short-run are tied to political and economic factors, but I dont think the prevalence of work-from-home is going to go away, in part because of technological progress, he says.
Much of the hesitation to hire across the board, but especially top earners, is the result of numerous seismic changes hitting the economy and the labor market all at once.
Thats causing employers to hold off until they get more clarity on the long-term effects, says career expert Jasmine Escalera of resume writing resource MyPerfectResume. There are way too many factors that are completely changing corporate America, she says, from economics to politics to AI.
Amid all these changes Escalera says employers are more hesitant to hireas reflected in recent Bureau of Labor Statistics dataand may feel more emboldened to impose their preference for in-person work on a labor force with more limited options, especially for staff that command a premium salary.
With the current labor market conditions, those who are keen on finding a role with both location flexibility and a high salary may need to adjust their expectations, and their timeline.
Escalera says the Ladders survey further demonstrates how employers feel theyre in a position to call the shots, and while many are hesitant to cut back on salary, they appear more than willing to cut back on flexibility perks.
They feel as though if I give you a higher paying salary, I get to make demands, she says. Companies have way more of an upper hand, and they’re basically dictating how things are going to flow, and workers just have to roll with it.
Whatever the reason, employers appear to have settled on a preference for in-person work, and Cenedella of Ladders doesnt believe flexibility will ever return to anything near that 2022 peak.
Should it go back to being a hot marketand it will by 2027 or 2028will those numbers go up 1 or 2%? Absolutely, he says. But I cant see a world where we go from 6% remote work to 20%.
No one has ever called LeBron James underrated. But the NBA star wasnt always on top, particularly outside of basketball. He’s been questioned and critiqued for his pursuits in philanthropy, education, business, and entertainment. Thats part of why he founded the media brand Uninterrupted, with the tagline More Than an Athlete, answering critics who told him to shut up and dribble whenever his opinions ventured beyond the court.
That idea of being overlooked is the crux of a new campaign and web series for employment brand Indeed called The Main Thing, set to launch October 1. Created by Uninterrupted, the four-part series features James interviewing skateboarding icon and entrepreneur Tony Hawk, R&B artist Teyana Taylor, tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, and fashion designer Melody Ehsani. The focus of the show is how skills forged through lived experience, creativity, and hard work can open doors across industries.
Uninterrupted has dropped a new ad, narrated by sportscaster Ernie Johnson Jr., using LeBrons own work history as a jumping-off point.
Maverick Carter, CEO of Uninterrupted and co-CEO of its parent company, Fulwell Entertainment, says that Indeed wanted to create something entertaining that challenges traditional job hiring practices.
Their focus on championing opportunities for all and their skills-first approach to help people get jobs hit home for us, Carter says. Weve always believed in platforms that unlock access and create space for people whove been overlooked.
[Photo: Indeed]
Skills to pay the bills
Brand content is also a way for Uninterrupted to boost its bottom line. Over the years the company has produced content for major brands such as JPMorgan Chase, Nike, and Google, and commercial work remains a key cog in its business.
James’s SpringHill Co., which produces TV shows, films, podcasts, and more, reportedly lost $28 million on sales of $104 million last year, according to Bloomberg News. In February, it completed a merger with Fulwell 73 to create Fulwell Entertainment, with work now spanning branded content and commercials, unscripted content, documentaries, scripted TV and film, and live events.
James Whitmore, Indeeds chief marketing officer, says the goal is to create content that reflects the brands focus on hiring for skills rather than just titles or backgrounds: Were telling stories that highlight what people can do, not just what theyve done, and in doing so reinforce what Indeed has always stood for: helping people get jobs by connecting them with opportunity.
The internet is awash in brand content, but Indeed has made a strategic bet that launching a series with LeBron James just as he begins his 23rd NBA season, combined with a varied guest list boasting their own fan bases, will draw an audience.
Carter says the key to making The Main Thing, or any brand content, worth watching is to treat it like any other piece of entertainment. Its not about slapping a logo on content, he says. Its about co-creating platforms that drive impact, shift culture, and tell important stories.
Every day, we hear about new algorithms, groundbreaking analyses, and the potential for AI to revolutionize patient care. Yet, for many physicians and their teams on the front lines, AI can feel like another layer of complexity, another screen to navigate, or another barrier between them and their patients.
The reality is, most doctors don’t compete with each other; they fight to survive under the weight of the healthcare system’s administrative demands. Providers face burnout from outdated processes, complex government regulations, and the confusing world of insurance payers.
While many AI tools promise relief, too often they create new points of frictioninterfaces to learn, workflows to manage, or alerts to respond toadding rather than removing complexity. This disconnect between AI’s promise and its practical application highlights a fundamental flaw.
It’s time for a different approach.
For AI to be truly impactful for doctors, it needs to recede into the background. Specifically in a clinical setting, AI should be present but not visible, perceptive but not intrusive, and powerfully helpful without demanding attention or detracting from time with patients. Unfortunately, contrary to their intent, many of today’s AI tools can actually increase workloads rather than decrease them.
Engineering AI to Adapt to Providers
In healthcare, we’re emerging from an era where technology has played too prominent a role in the patient-provider interaction. Hardware interfaces, supporting digital charting, coding, and billing, consumed valuable energy that should have been dedicated to patient care. While electronic health records (EHRs) initially promised efficiency by moving providers away from paper charts, the demands and growing complexity of documentation and reporting requirements quickly outpaced these EHRs’ capabilities. This led to a new layer of burnout for providers and a less personal experience for patients.
More recently, the rapid deployment of AI ambient listening solutions, though well-intentioned and helpful with transcription, can produce unintended consequences. Providers sometimes find themselves correcting the mistakes of poorly trained AIs or spending hours after clinic responding to messages, reviewing alerts or actioning downstream steps needed to complete the patient visit, adding to cognitive overload and burnout.
These early one-size-fits-all AI tools often feel like half measures, designed in silos or by technology teams that have failed to truly grasp the holistic challenges doctors face with their time and efficiency. Every minute spent troubleshooting technology, correcting errors, or navigating a clumsy interface is a minute taken away from precious eye contact, active listening, and the invaluable opportunity to offer true empathy and build connection with patients.
Of course, new technology always requires users to learn new ways of doing things, but instead of asking physicians to adapt to AI, true adoption depends on designing AI to adapt to them. In the context of the doctor’s office, this means:
By Doctors, For Doctors: For AI to truly recede into the background and become a reliable partner, its precision cannot be overstated. This level of contextual understanding of the doctors world is not an inherent feature of generic algorithms; rather, it needs to be painstakingly forged with AI models rigorously trained with extensive input from doctors and vast, de-identified real-world clinical data.
Deep Medical Intelligence: Unlike generic AI, systems should be grounded in vast, medical language and structured data that is medically unique to the needs of each doctor and their area of expertise. This allows AI to understand the subtle language of various specialties like dermatology or ophthalmology, delivering insights that match the needs and rhythms of each clinical domain.
Seamless Workflow Integration: There should be no new disruptions. AI should enhance existing workflows, reducing clicks and administrative burdens without forcing radical changes. For example, ambient listening technology can capture clinical conversations in real time, seamlessly, safely, and without disrupting the flow of discussion between doctor and patient.
Augmenting, Not Replacing: The commitment must be to responsible AI. Tools should offer intelligent suggestions, surface crucial information, and automate repetitive tasks, always ensuring the physician maintains control and clinical judgment. In this model, AI acts not as a replacement, but as a silent partnera trusted copilot, bolstering clinical expertise without overshadowing it.
Building Trust: Trust in AI doesn’t come from splashy featuresit’s earned through consistency, safety, and clarity. Systems should surface when they’re helpful, and step back when they’re not. When AI respects clinical boundaries, avoids false alarms, and delivers reliable results, providers learn to trust it as part of the care team, not a replacement for it.
Quiet transformation
The future of healthcare AI isn’t about shouting from the rooftops about technological prowess. It’s about the quiet, profound transformation that occurs when technology enhances care without announcing itself. It’s about technology acting as a catalyst for deeper human connection, helping doctors to be fully doctors again and patients to feel truly heard and cared for.
The goal is clear: build AI that becomes woven into the fabric of the practice, thoughtfully amplifying clinical excellence and fostering unparalleled patient experiences. When we design technology that respects the time, intelligence, and humanity of providers, we allow the patient-provider connection to shine. This is the next era of healthcare, defined not by what AI can do but by how effortlessly it helps providers do what they do best.
Hello once again and thanks for spending time with Fast Companys Plugged In.
Fifteen years into the era defined by the iPhone, a question still looms over the consumer tech industry: Whats the next great personal computing device after the smartphone?
The brave new ideas keep on coming. A few have succeededbut as phone accessories, not replacements. Others remain works in progress. Some have already failed in spectacular fashion.
But one emerging device category has been easy to gloss over: the folding phone. No, it doesnt represent a bold gambit to kill the smartphone. It is a smartphone! However, by squeezing the equivalent of a tablet into pocketable form, it also departs radically from the Hershey Bar-shaped touchscreen gadget that Apple pioneered and the rest of the industry cloned as fast as it could.
After six years on the market, foldable smartphones reportedly account for only 1.5% of smartphones sold. At least in part, thats because theyve had a whole flock of albatrosses around their neck. Figuring out how to design ones that are inviting to use when theyre folded upand twice as thick as when unfoldedhas been a challenge. Theyve often been outfitted with less-than-stellar cameras and other sub-flagship components. Hinge robustness and general durability have been open to questions. And all of thats before you get to their price tags, which started at $1,980 with Samsungs original Galaxy Fold and hover in the same imposing vicinity today.
Recently, though, foldables seem to be hitting their stride. My colleague Jared Newman was wowed by Samsungs latest model, the Galaxy Z Fold7. Googles Pixel 10 Pro Fold, shipping next month, is the first foldable to achieve IP68 water and dust resistance. Bloombergs Mark Gurman says the first foldable iPhone is a go for 2026evidence that Apple believes the category is real rather than a fad to be ignored.
The product of seven generations of evolution, Samsungs Galaxy Z Fold7 has overcome many of the early folding Galaxy phones limitations. [Photo: Courtesy of Samsung]
And then theres Honors Magic V5, the newest foldable from one of Chinas major phone makers. Though not for sale in the U.S., it recently debuted in Europe, claiming bragging rights as the worlds thinnest folding phone. Thats only so heady an achievement: It applies to only one color variant (Ivory White), involves beating the Fold7 by just .1 millimeter, and doesnt count the bulbous camera bump, which protrudes from the back of the V5 like a spare tire mounted on a Jeep.
Still, after spending a week or so with a review unit provided by Honor, Im impressed. The price remains steep: In Europe, the phone sells for 1,999 euros (about $2,300). But Honor has overcome many design challenges once inherent to the foldable category. It also has a competitive advantage in its use of silicon carbide battery technology, which allows it to pack more battery density into the phones slender frameshort running time being yet another hobgoblin faced by past foldables. In my experience, even using the phone with abandon over the course of a day didnt drain its battery to anywhere near zero.
Closed, the Magic V5 is a very pleasant Android phone. It runs Honors MagicOS 9, a reskinned version of Android 15 bearing so close a resemblance to iOS that my fingers forgot they werent maneuvering around an iPhone. I thought the brown vegan leather back on the review unit would come off as tacky, but its aesthetics and comfort quickly won me over. Even sheathed in the bundled casealso in brown vegan leatherthe phone doesnt feel any bulkier in my hand than my own cased iPhone 16 Pro.
I was ready to turn my nose up at the Magic V5s brown vegan leather back, but ended up liking it. [Photo: Harry McCracken]
I was also prepared for the Magic V5s cameras to be letdowns, like those on some of the foldables Ive tried in the past. Instead, the snapshots I took with its rear-facing camerasultrawide, wide, and 3X telephonewere in the same image-quality ballpark as those from my iPhone.
Unfolded, the Magic V5 really does feel more like a tablet than a phone. The 7.9-inch screen is smaller than an iPad Mini, but its a boon to any task that feels cramped on a garden-variety phone, from watching movies to reading books to wrangling spreadsheets. Honors multitasking interface makes it easy to have multiple apps on-screen at once: side by side or with some floating in windows. The phone also includes a profusion of bundled Honor appssuch as a caledar, notetaker, and photo gallerythat smartly fill all that real estate with sidebars and other elements that wouldnt fit on a standard phone screen.
Many of the third-party apps I tried did leave me vaguely unsatisfied, though. Only rarely did I detect evidence they were aware they were operating on a larger, folding screen. Way back when Android tablets were first a thing, I groused that they ran smartphone apps that had been merely scaled up rather than reimagined. Today, folding phones suffer from a similar failure by developers to seize the opportunity before themmaybe because their user base remains dinky.
Which brings us to the folding iPhone that will theoretically arrive next year.
According to the rumor mill, that phone may reflect Apples efforts to address lingering folding-phone downsides, such as the obviousness of the crease down the middle of the unfolded screen. (It was readily apparent on the Magic V5, though I didnt find it particularly aggravating even if I forced myself to obsess over it.) Apple could also bring some fresh thinking to the software side: Oddly enough, Split Screen and SlideOverthe iPad multitasking features abandoned in iPadOS 26would serve as a solid foundation for a folding iPhone interface.
As for third-party software, anyone whos already building both iPhone and iPad versions of an app has a head start on tailoring experiences to a variety of screen sizes. That might give a folding iPhone an edge on Android foldables, particularly if developers sense that the device is a hit and its users represent a growing percentage of their customers, even if it starts small.
Whether Ill end up owning a folding phone myself, Im still not sure. But seeing phone makers get serious about them has put me in piqued-interest mode. Thats progress in itself. Its fun to wonder where foldables might be by the time Im ready to talk myself into splurging on one.
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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TikTok gave us slang like rizz, while X popularized ratio and doomscroll. But according to new research from Florida State University, the newest force shaping language isnt a person or platform: Its artificial intelligence.
In a peer-reviewed study published in the Cornell University archive arXiv, FSU researchers found that AI is influencing not just how we write, but how we speak. After analyzing more than 22 million words from unscripted podcasts, the team observed a surge in terms favored by large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT (delve, boast, meticulous, and garner to name a few), while use of their synonyms remained relatively flat.
The researchers call this the seep-in effect or lexical seepage. Unlike slang spread by subcultures or mass media, this shift originates with an algorithm. In cognitive psychology, this is known as implicit learning, where recurring phrasing and word choices are unconsciously stored in memory. Likewise, language research also highlights a phenomenon known as priming, where exposure to specific words or syntax leads to an increased likelihood of using them later. In just a few years, the chatbots preferred vocabulary has moved off-screen and into daily conversation.
AI may literally be putting words into our mouths, as repeated exposure leads people to internalize and reuse buzzwords they might not have chosen naturally, says Tom Juzek, a computational linguistics professor at FSU and lead author of the study. The deeper concern is that the very same mechanism could shape not just vocabulary but also beliefs and values.
The study teamJuzek, Bryce Anderson, and Riley Galpinanalyzed 1,326 episodes of tech and science podcasts, split evenly between a pre-ChatGPT period (2019 to 2021) and a post-ChatGPT period (2023 to 2025). They drew on transcripts where possible, or generated them with OpenAIs Whisper model, resulting in a dataset of about 22 million words. They then compared per-million usage rates of AI-associated buzzwords against close synonyms to test whether shifts reflected ordinary drift or a distinct AI-style influence.
It was important that this was unscripted language, so we focused on conversational showsLex Fridman, Radiolab, Ologiesto capture something close to spontaneous speech, Juzek says. We explicitly excluded sources such as conference talks or lectures, which are often scripted and may even be AI-assisted.
He explains that LLMs dont inherently overuse buzzwords during pretraining on massive datasets. The effect arises later, during human preference learning. From what we know, raters tend to be young, so ideas about what counts as formal writing may vary, says Juzek. AI model fine-tuning involves tricky trade-offs to achieve usefulness, truthfulness/grounding, and getting high-quality preference data is expensive and hard to obtain. Humans often reward style over substance, so models may pick up polished buzzwords in the process.
A similar study in Germany found near-identical patterns on YouTube, suggesting the phenomenon extends beyond American podcasts to other languages and contexts.
Is AI Standardizing Human Speech?
The implications reach beyond word choice. If OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google fine-tune their models differently, populations could adopt subtly distinct speech patterns. Experts warn this could flatten dialects, erase regional slang, and dampen creativity.
While AI does reflect patterns already present, by amplifying and projecting the highest-value version of those patterns learned from millions of interactions, it dramatically shifts the balance of which language forms dominate, says Moti Moravia, cofounder and CTO of Leo AI. Even though you can set parameters for diversity, the main goal of AI models is to maximize perceived quality.
While speech patterns have always evolved, today the shift is happening with unprecedented speed. AI Models like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude are trained on billions of words through web scraping and are used by millions of people almost every day. If algorithms quietly prune our synonym choices, they could also be narrowing how we frame ideas.
AI systems tend to magnify dominant language patterns, which speeds up their adoption in broader culture. Without continued human input, they could stagnate, replaying the past instead of adapting to the present. The result might be a creative landscape that feels out of sync with realityunless new frameworks are developed to prioritize originality. This is a terrifying future, but we still have time to change this and build in frameworks so that original human creativity is still rewarded, says Trip Adler, cofounder and CEO of Created by Humans.
Likewise, Moravia argues that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google will continue to chase higher benchmarks by training on the best data available, optimizing for the metrics they know how to measure. The safeguard, he suggests, is to establish a new benchmarkone that explicitly values diversity in language and beyond. Companies should be incentivized to optimize for more varied outputs in the way models speak. This would be a subtle yet powerful way to encourage AI systems to preserve linguistic diversity rather than unintentionally narrow it.
Holding on to the Human Tone
Juzek cautions that the rise in certain words doesnt prove AI is the sole driver. Many were already trending before 2022, and AI may simply be accelerating an existing shift. It took years before we understood the full mix of benefits and risks that came with social media, and I suspect it will be similar with AI models, he says. Conversations with colleagues tell me that this small tweaks snowball effect may be inherent to gradient descent, the optimization procedure at the core of how the models learn. Understanding that properly will require more foundational research.
Looking ahead, he expects language change to accelerate. Some AI-favored words may fade, much like generational slang, but the larger risk is subtle homogenization.
Culturally, this matters for trust and creativity, Juzek says. Sooner or later, that same uncertainty will reach spoken interactions, for example, phone calls. Arguably, face-to-face conversations remain safe for the foreseeable future.
Work is filled with contradictions and disruptions these days, and the uncertainty can make the workplace feel like a constant emergency. As a result, people are stressed, pessimistic, and pulling back from their organizationsbut they’re not disconnecting from each other.
Our new research shows that, even under tremendous pressure, employees are “quiet connecting”: helping each other regardless of what’s happening at the company level. Organizations would do well to recognize and strengthen these organic bonds because they can serve as a powerful counterforce to widespread employee disengagement.
The Natural Ties That Survive Everything
New research from meQuilibrium’s State of the Workforce Report reveals that people are truly showing up for each other through quiet connecting behaviors. Even as 55% of employees show signs of organizational disconnectwhat some call quiet crackingand 42% report high uncertainty-related stress, connections between colleagues remain remarkably strong.
Among 5,477 employees surveyed by meQuilibrium (meQ), 71% regularly lend a compassionate ear when colleagues face workplace problems. Sixty-two percent actively help coworkers learn new skills or share job knowledge.
Sixty percent dedicate time to advise, coach, or mentor fellow workers. Meanwhile, 53% pitch in to help overwhelmed colleagues with their workload. These aren’t occasional gestures; they’re consistent patterns of mutual support that emerge organically, without formal company initiatives.
These instinctive helping behaviors are inherent even among the most disconnected employees. Workers continue showing up for their colleagues even when they’ve mentally checked out from their organizations and supervisors.
The phenomenon persists across stress levels as well. Employees facing high uncertainty-related stress continue quiet connecting at nearly identical rates to their less-stressed counterparts. In some cases, stressed workers demonstrate slightly higher rates of helping behaviors, suggesting that quiet connecting may actually intensify as a natural response to organizational turbulence.
How to Recognize These Support Networks
Quiet connecting operates largely under the radar. It emerges through informal mentoring relationships, spontaneous knowledge sharing, and emotional support during difficult times. They’re the coworkers who stay late to help with a deadline and the colleagues who share expertise without being asked.
Look for the employees others naturally turn to for advice. Notice who provides emotional support during workplace challenges. Identify the informal mentors who take time to develop others’ skills. This is quiet connection in action.
The persistence of these behaviors reveals something profound about human nature at work. Even when traditional engagement metrics fail and organizational trust erodes, resilient peer relationships endure through quiet connecting. These strong lateral bonds may well buffer against the negative impacts of disengagement.
How Managers Amplify What Already Exists
The most effective approach isn’t creating helping behaviors from scratch. It’s recognizing and strengthening the quiet connecting that already exists naturally. The data shows exactly how this works.
Managers who prioritize team mental well-being create environments where quiet connecting flourishes. Employees who report strong managerial support engage in these behaviors at significantly higher rates than those without such support, suggesting that managerial support amplifies natural quiet connecting tendencies.
The multiplier effect is measurable. These supportive managers reduce their teams’ uncertainty stress by 37%. They also dramatically cut disconnect rates, from 78% down to 40% when managers actively support team well-beingeffectively reducing disengagement while strengthening quiet connecting.
Empathetic management doesn’t replace peer support. Instead, it creates psychological safety that allows natural quiet connecting behaviors to expand and become more visible. When managers model collaborative problem-solving and openly discuss challenges, they permit others to do the same organically.
The key is recognizing that managers already shoulder a substantial burden. They engage in these connecting behaviors at dramatically higher rates than non-managers78% versus 53% for mentoring and coaching, and 76% versus 56% for knowledge sharing.
Practical Ways to Strengthen Natural Bonds
Make quiet connecting visible. Create formal recognition programs that celebrate employees who support colleagues beyond their job requirements. Share stories of peer support in team meetings and company communications. By highlighting these organic connections, you can encourage more employees to do the same.
Design systematic opportunities for connection. Don’t wait for organic helping to emerge. Implement volunteer programs, cross-departmental collaboration projects, and peer mentoring systems that give structure to natural supportive instincts.
Train managers to nurture, not manage, peer relationships. Extend check-ins beyond task management to include conversations about well-being and stress levels. Provide mental health first aid training so managers can recognize when quiet connecting networks need additional resources and support.
Strengthen managerial support systems overall. While managers are not therapists, they do have a direct impact on team and individual well-being. Evidence-based, comprehensive resilience training programs help managers strengthen their own well-being and support it in others. Toolkits can also equip managers to better support others.
Address remote work challenges. Remote and hybrid workers experience 27% higher uncertainty stress than their on-site counterparts. They need these quiet connecting networks more than ever. Implement regular informal check-ins, virtual coffee chats, and structured opportunities for casual interaction that can facilitate organic peer support.
The Foundation That Endures
Our research reveals a profound truth about natural bonds in the workplace. While traditional engagement metrics show widespread disconnect and stress, human connection persists. Managers and employees continue creating informal systems that help teams survive and thrive during volatile periods.
But leaders shouldn’t try to control these natural dynamics. Instead, recognize peer relationships and quiet connecting behaviors as vital organizational assets worth protecting and nurturing. Understand that the strength of these informal, organic support networks might be the most reliable indicator of true organizational resilienceand a critical antidote to the negative effects of employee disconnect.
In a world where over half the workforce shows signs of disconnect espite traditional engagement efforts, quiet connecting may be the missing link, if we can learn to recognize it and strengthen it. The foundation of coworker connections is already there, emerging organically as employees self-organize around mutual support. It just needs the right conditions to flourish.
Theres a mountain of evidence that having a sense of purpose is correlated with feeling happy. And while an inanimate object such as the moon cant feel emotions, humans have much to thank our natural satellite for in terms of its purpose. From the tides to seasons to gravitational stability, if the moon were a person it would no doubt feel pretty content.
Even better, our moon is somewhat of an entertainer, putting on a dazzling display every few weeks that we here on Earth call the full moon. And this months full moon is no exception: Septembers “corn moon” will reach its peak illumination on Sunday, September 7.
And if you are lucky enough to live in certain areas of Australia, Asia, Europe, or Africa, you will be graced with a total lunar eclipse.
Even those who live outside those regions can enjoy the show, with a clever solution that bypasses both geography and weather. Read on to discover more about this months full moon and how to see it.
How did September’s full moon get its nickname of the ‘corn moon’?
The Old Farmers Almanac collected and popularized different names for the monthly full moons, immortalizing them in print.
These monikers are apparently based on Native American, Colonial, and European traditions. Septembers full moon supposedly gets the title of the corn moon because this month is traditionally when corn was ready to harvest.
Whats the science behind a full moon?
Simply put, a full moon occurs when the Earth is directly between the sun and the moon, which means the entire face of the moon becomes visible as it is bathed in sunlight. The full moon is one of several lunar phases that mark the moons orbit around the Earth.
While the full moon has a peak when it is at its fullest and brightest, it remains full to our eyes for a couple of days before it starts to wane.
When is Septembers corn moon?
Septembers corn moon will be at its fullest on September 7 at around 2 p.m. ET, according to the Old Farmers Almanac. That means the moon will be below the horizon, but it will remain full and bright to our eyes for a couple of days before it starts to wane.
What is a total lunar eclipse?
Colloquially known as a blood moon, a total lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes through the Earths shadow, also known as the umbra, effectively blocking out the light from the sun.
Earths atmosphere filters and refracts the suns light, so although the moon doesnt become entirely dark, it turns a deep red or orange color. Thats because short wavelengths of light, like blue and violet light, tend to scatter more easily than those with longer wavelengths, like red or orange light.
When, where, and how can you watch the total lunar eclipse?
The upcoming total lunar eclipse will take place on the evening of September 78, depending on your location.
It will last around an hour and 22 minutes, according to NASA.
Skygazers located in Asia and Western Australia will have the best seats in the house for this natural phenomenon because they will be in the path of totalitythe zone where the eclipse is most visible.
Other night sky enthusiasts in western Africa, western Europe, and eastern Australia and New Zealand will also get to see the eclipse to some degree.
Unfortunately for moon fans in the U.S., a lunar eclipse is visible from half the Earth, and this one is not going to be visible from North America.
But that doesnt mean the show will not go on. Space.com has your back and is hosting a free livestream and blog with updates of the total lunar eclipse, so you can catch the whole thing live despite geography and potential cloud cover.
The website Time and Date is also covering the event. The curtain rises at 11:28 a.m. ET and totality occurs at 1:30 p.m. ET. The full runtime is 82 minutes.
And never fear if you dont catch this one: The next total lunar eclipse that will be visible from the U.S. is set to occur on March 3, 2026.
Happy moon-viewing! Perhaps thats your true purpose after all.
In my 25 years as an entrepreneur and advisor to owner-led companies, Ive seen too many business owners be consumed by the thing thats supposed to give them independence. They work longer hours and solve complex problems. Their company grows, yet theyre no closer to the life they wanted to create.
To be clear, growth in business is generally a good thing. But it does start to become an issue when you want to be bigger for the sake of being bigger.
Its a problem when theres a voice inside your head saying that if you just get to $100 million in revenue, then youll finally be a big shot: that youll get respect from your parents, your peers, and even the people you do not care about at all.
The power of ego
The subconscious reason youre drawn to bigger is that its exactly what your ego wants. Ego is your worst enemy. Its weak, frail, and emotional. It clouds your judgment by convincing you that bigger is better, pulling you toward it like a moth to a flame. It doesnt know why youre going to the flame, or what will really happen once you get there.
Your ego isnt concerned about risk. It lets you become complacent, distracted, or arrogant. It disconnects you from reality, providing you with bad feedback at the very moment you need clarity most. Ego tells you that your success to date was because of talent, rather than the years of grinding and hard work. Its the voice that discounts the important role that discipline and trial and error play in your success.
Whether your net worth is $10,000 or $100 million, the endless pursuit of more can drag you into a doom loop, a cycle of poor choices, and mounting pressure. Thats why growth for growths sake is always a trap.
The discipline of better
Better companies will grow because theyre better. They compound improvement across the four areas that matter mostbetter teams, better customers, better offerings, and better financials. Growth becomes the outcome of doing the right things, rather than the goal in itself.
Better is a choice. It means shaping your business so it enables you to live in the most rewarding way possible for you and the people you love. Better is about building a better life by design. Not just financially, but across the domains that matter: your health, your wealth, your wisdom, your happiness, and your family.
Better is about building an asset that compounds wealth, where that asset works for you. It is about having a business that excites you, that challenges you, and that you enjoy being part of. It is about being intentional with your effort.
When your focus is solely on growth at all costs, theres no guarantee that it will result in the life you want. In fact, many times, the chase for bigger ends up creating problemswhether thats toxic teams, indifferent customers, mediocre products, or ultimately unprofitability.
The irony, of course, is that when you focus on building better, you often end up with a bigger business anyway. But along the way, you also build freedom, wealth, and happiness.
What a better business looks like
If an owner-led company seeks to become better, what does that mean in practice? A better business needs to inspire its people. It should energize owners, leaders, employees, customers, suppliers, and even those watching from the outside.
A better business needs to earn loyalty. That means creating a real connection with customers so they trust you, stay longer, and become advocates. A better business needs to focus on what it can be the best at. That means striving to offer products that are not only good, but great.
Better businesses also need to be financially strong, and that requires a structure and operating system that can withstand tough times. Most importantly, a better business shouldnt drain the energy of its owner. The greatest energy drains come from poor planning, poor strategy, and the absence of a system to run the business.
In the end, a better business is one that creates value, sustains itself, and gives its owner the freedom to live life on their own terms, not the one that values growth above everything else.
