A culture of fear makes it easy to cloud our judgment
For thousands of years, walking and horseback riding were the fundamental modes of transport, and settlement patterns were a direct reflection of transport options. Compact, low-rise villages and cities made sense based on how far people could reasonably travel on foot or by horse. This was true all the way up until the late 1800s.
Then came an invention that let people travel incredible distances in seconds, entirely reshaping cities with dense population clusters. The technology was a sturdy box designed to transport multiple people at once, but often carried just one. I’m talking, of course, about the elevator.
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Elevators transformed city planning in remarkable ways, long before automobiles sprawled life horizontally. Before elevators, buildings stayed squat because stairs limited height. Walking up two or three flights isn’t terrible. Carrying a briefcase up 10 flights of steep, dark stairs to the office is, pardon the pun, another story. It didnt take long for skylines to change following the invention of the elevator.
Each early elevator had its own operator who mastered the timing and touch of hand-crank controls. These operators wore their Sunday best as a psychological reminder: “We will safely get you to your destination.” Brilliant minds innovated on the elevator, adding safety technology like automatic brakes, but it was the human touch that eased public nerves. It’s hard now to imagine feeling completely helpless in an elevator, but such was life in the early 20th century. Zero chance ordinary people like you and me were going to attempt to operate an elevator without rigorous training first.
Full automation
That changed dramatically with the September 1945 New York City elevator operators’ strike. Around 15,000 operators, doormen, porters, and maintenance workers walked off, halting service in over 2,000 buildings. About 1.5 million people avoided elevators, opting for stairs or staying home rather than risk operating the cars themselves. But self-service features like electric power, emergency phones, and push buttons were already spreading, so the strike helped open the doors to full automation.
Self-driving elevators! You can practically hear the traveling public gasp. Walk into a box, let the doors close and lock you in, and trust that this thing would take you quicklybut not too quicklythe proper distance.
Otis gets credit for installing the first fully automated elevator in 1950 in Dallas. But the transition took time, both for technology to improve and for a skeptical population to trust it. Operators were still employed in some cities 30 years later. Today, you can casually scan your hotel room key in a lobby that summons a box to whisk you to your precise destination without even pressing buttons inside.
A public health crisis
You and I will never have the time, energy, or need to read the thousands of opinion pieces about the dangers of autonomous technology as it relates to cars. And as robotaxis accelerate deployments in 2026, there will be no shortage of fear-based stories.
There’s no scenario, with or without technology, that results in a danger-free life. The challenge for us is to identify and analyze trade-offs without being clouded by ideology or thwarted by lazy straw man arguments.
I’m not a technology expert, so I don’t get too deep on what a particular shiny new object can or can’t do. I am a traffic safety expert, though, and I can tell you motor vehicle deaths remain a public health crisis.
Every day, more than 100 people are killed in traffic crashes, and thousands more experience life-altering injuries. That’s the track record of human drivers for decades. Software can save lives by preventing people from driving too fast, running red lights, passing school buses, tailgating in bad weather, or committing other dangerous antisocial acts. If only 50 people are killed each day because of autonomous technology, isnt that worth celebrating? What if the technology could bring traffic fatalities down to nearly zero?
It’s natural to be scared by emerging tech. Early elevator riders felt helpless stepping into a closing box with no operator to guide them. But people adapted because the status quo (stairs limiting how we could build and live) was worse, and incremental safety features built confidence over time.
There are absolutely valid concerns about autonomous vehicles, like software hacking, or failure to recognize a one-way street. But remember that humans are not the safest operators, that our current state of mobility is a public health crisis killing tens of thousands every year. Autonomous vehicles programmed to operate safely are part of the quest to design for human flourishing.
If we’ve entrusted machines to carry us sky-high without hesitation, we can approach transportation systems the same way: cautiously optimistic, evidence-driven, and open to progress that saves lives.
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This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina.
The Tennessee Valley Authoritys (TVA’s) quarterly meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to its work during Winter Storm Fern. Energy had come through, yet again, to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utilitys coal workhorses, then noted that nuclear provided uninterrupted power and hydro responded instantly. The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back.
What the video hinted at, the board made official. Its seven members unanimously dropped renewable energy as a priority, ended diversity programs, and granted two of the agencys four remaining coal plants a reprieve. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three Biden appointees.
The changes, made during the February 11 board meeting, signal more than a routine policy reset for the nations largest public power provider. They will slow the TVAs shift away from fossil fuels just as electricity demand is spiking, raising questions about future costs, pollution, and the role of federally-owned utilities in the countrys energy transition.
For years, TVA planners had mapped out a future without coal. That is now on hold. The Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was scheduled for retirement in 2027, with all nine of its units slated for demolition and replacement with an energy complex of gas generation and battery storage. All of them will remain online alongside the gas plant, but renewables are no longer part of the picture. The board also shelved plans to scuttle the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Stewart County, Tennessee, in 2028.
These moves come despite the agencys 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which called for retiring the two facilities because of Kingstons high cost and challenged condition and Cumberlands lack of flexibility. The Kingston coal plant was also the site of a devastating 2010 coal ash disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.
The board defended its decision by citing energy affordability for the Tennessee Valley.
As power demand grows, TVA is looking at every option to bolster our generating fleet to continue providing affordable, reliable electricity to our 10 million customers, create jobs, and help communities thrive, agency spokesperson Scott Brooks said in a statement.
Left unsaid was the fact that a coal-fired power generation unit at the Cumberland Fossil Plant failed during last months storm.
Much of TVAs load growth comes from the rise of artificial intelligence, said CEO Don Moul, and data centers account for 18% of its industrial load. During the same meeting, the board allowed the company xAI, owned by Elon Musk, to double the amount of power it draws from the grid.
For former board member Michelle Moore, one of the Biden-era appointees President Trump fired in March, the shift aligns squarely with the administrations priorities. It also signals, she said, that the utility is no longer fulfilling its mission to provide affordable power, economic development, and environmental stewardship across the seven-state Tennessee Valley. The politics in Washington may change, she said. But the TVAs mission does not.
That independence has at times put the Tennessee Valley Authority at odds with presidents of both parties. The utility resisted Trump administration pressure to keep coal plants open, continuing to retire facilities based on economic reasons. But it also fell short of President Bidens decarbonization goals.
Moore worries ordinary ratepayers are no longer an active part of TVAs decision-making. Typically, a shift as monumental as turning away from renewable energy would have been subject to a lengthy review with input from communities throughout the region, something that simply will not occur now. This is one more indicator that the public power model is being eroded and is at risk, Moore said.
Last month, the TVA said it would streamline how it reviews the ecological impacts of its projects, allowing some to move ahead with far less, if any, scrutiny. The move follows a broader rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act under President Trump that grants greater discretion over such considerations to entities like the TVA. For nearly 60 years, the law required an assessment of the environmental impacts of federal projects. Over the past several years, the TVA board has faced pressure to make decisions based on stringent environmental regulations, said board member Wade White.
The TVAs willingness to join the Trump administrations push to revive the coal industry has rankled locals and environmentalists. In the first year of his second term, President Trump lifted Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on the industry, used emergency executive orders to keep aging coal plants open, expanded mining, and ordered the Pentagon to buy electricity from power plants that use coal. The president has since received an award from industry executives dubbing him the Undisputed Champion of Clean, Beautiful Coal.
From a public health standpoint, its a nightmare. Coal is one of the worst things you can imagine for the environment, said Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University who leads a coal and coal ash research group. Mining destroys ecosystems and poisons groundwater, polluting rivers and streams with sulfuric acid. Burning the fossil fuel releases fine particulate matter, impacting the health of nearby residents. A 2023 study in the journal Science found that coal plants caused nearly half a millon excess deaths between 1999 and 2020, and a Sierra Club report notes that TVA coal-fired plants were the nations deadliest.
People are upset, they feel like were going backwards, said Amy Kelly, a Sierra Club campaign manager. The fact that these plants are from the ’50s and ’60s, and were just going to prop them up with Band-Aid solutions to appease the current administration is going to cost people.
Even some coal plant operators agree. A Colorado utility is suing to close a facility, calling a federal emergency order to keep it online unconstitutional. For those who live near the two plants the TVA just saved, the decision is, in Joe Schillers words, a betrayal. Schiller, a retired college professor, has lived near the Cumberland plant for 30 years. It contradicts everything theyve told us about the plants in the past, he said. Even so, he added, its a beautiful area. Moments before, his wife had called him outside to admire the sandhill cranes flying by.
Its not like you look around every day and say, Yep, that Cumberland plant is slowly killing me, Schiller said with a laugh. Although it probably is.
Reading or sending emails may seem like an innocuous task, but sometimes, this simple act can trigger a dramatic bodily response. Like forgetting to literally breathe.
Many of us have heard of sleep apnea: the condition where breathing gets interrupted during sleep. Dora Kamau, Lead Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher at mental health app Headspace, told Fast Company. Email apnea is a similar ideajust happening in the middle of your workday,
When we’re intensely focused on a task, the brain will “switch off” certain unconscious functions to redirect its processing power to the task at hand. In that state, a lot of people unknowingly alter their breathing, taking short sips of breath, or sometimes holding it altogether.
The term for this phenomenon was first coined by Linda Stone in the late 2000s in an article published by HuffPost. After noticing her own breathing became shallow when sat at her computer checking her emails, she decided to invite 200 participants to take part in a study at her home.
She found that 80% of the participants also breathed more shallowly when stationed in front of a screen. Those who didnt had received some kind of formal training in breathing as either athletes, dancers or musicians.
When we open an inbox, scroll through a feed, or get pulled into something on a screen, our nervous system shifts into low-grade alert mode, explains Kamau. In these moments, the body is doing what has been designed to do: to protect us. Its a human, biological response to perceived uncertainty, threat or danger, which in the modern world, an overflowing inbox can feel like.
If you dont think you do this, the tricky thing about email apnea is that its easy to miss, because it happens in the background of something else youre doing, says Kamau.
Do you reach the end of a work session feeling inexplicably tired, even if you havent done anything physically demanding? Do you suffer from tension headaches or a tight feeling across the shoulders and chest? Do you find yourself taking a big, involuntary sigh or deep breathing without really knowing why?
These are all signs of email apnea. That sigh is your body self-correcting, trying to restore balance after a period of shallow or held breath, says Kamau.
When we hold our breath or breathe shallowly for extended periods, carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream, signaling to the body to stay on high alert. Even after you’ve closed the email, that stress response keeps running, holding on to that tension long after your laptop is shut.
It also negatively impacts cognitive function, Kamau explains. When we’re not breathing fully, we’re not getting optimal oxygen to the brain, which means decision-making, creativity, and focus all take a hit. Ironically, the very things we need most at work.
Next time youre racing to hit inbox zero, take a beat and notice your breath. Slow diaphragmatic breathing, expanding the lungs fully and breathing into the stomach, signals to the body it can relax. It reduces the heart rate, lowers blood pressure and can even help us make better decisions.
Its also important to designate mini-breaks to keep email apnea at bay. At Headspace, we just created and launched a Pomodoro timer specifically designed with this in mind, says Kamau.
Making micro-adjustments to the way you sit can help, too. Hunching over a screen compresses the lungs and makes full breathing physically harder, she says.
Simply sitting up slightly, rolling the shoulders back, and dropping them away from the ears creates more space for the breath to move in our bodies.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
More than 600,000 podcasts released 27 million episodes in 2025. Keeping up with even a tiny fraction of those 70,000-plus daily releases is impossible. So Ive been exploring new ways to keep up with audio: podcast summaries, audio digests, and cool new tools for finding and saving audio highlights.
Podsnacks: Get podcast summaries by email
Get podcast summaries delivered to your email with Podsnacks. Catch up on shows you dont have time to listen to. The free digest includes AI-generated summaries drawn from 25 of the most popular news, business, and tech podcasts. For $5/month, you can get a daily digest of any five podcasts you want. Snipcast is an alternative that offers 2 summaries a month for free or 50 episode summaries for $8/month.
TL;DL by Headliner: Listen to podcast digests
If you want to listen to podcast summaries, try TL;DL. Pick up to five podcasts to summarize in 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes. I like that its not just an AI-voiced synthesis, but includes excerpted audio clips. You can always click through to hear the full episode. Caveat: Expect to wait at least five minutes for each summary, and its still in beta. I run into occasional errors.
Examples: Listen to this summary from my recent podcast interview with Azeem Azhar. Or try this summary of an episode of Shankar Vedantams terrific Hidden Brain podcast.
Snipd: My favorite podcast app
Snipd keeps improving. I rely on it mainly because it lets me save highlights from podcasts Im listening to by tapping my AirPods. The app also provides detailed podcast summaries so I can decide what to listen to. Among the new features I like most:
Skip intros and outros that clutter up many podcasts.
AI chat with any episode to ask for best quotes, must-listen moments, key takeaways, clarification of a complex idea, or whatever else you want.
I love the new mentioned books tab. It shows all the books discussed on a particular podcast. Click on a cover to learn more about the author and to see a list of podcasts where that book was discussed.
Search by guest. Find and listen to all the podcasts where your favorite author/musician/guru has been interviewed.
Listen and highlight audiobooks. Connect a Libro.fm audiobook account and import books with one click to listen to and highlight on Snipd. (Libro supports your local bookstore.) Alternatively, find free public domain audiobooks at LibriVox. You can manually upload your own audiobooks.
Podcast Magic: Save a key audio moment
When youre listening to a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and want to save a highlight, take a screenshot and email it to podcastmagic@sublime.app. Podcast Magic will email you back an audio clip and transcript of the key moment to save or share. Its a clever way to easily save and share a quote or anecdote.
Example: One show I highlighted recently was Audio Flux, which The New Yorker picked as one of the 10 best podcasts of 2025. The all-star audio duo commissions and spotlights bold short-form audio stories. (You can also follow Team Audio Flux on Substack.)
Listen Notes: Search for podcast mentions
With Listen Notes, you can find podcast episodes where youre mentioned. Type in your name or the name of your organization and search. Or look for interviews with a favorite author or musician. Other useful features:
Curated Lists: See recommendations from publications, like the 6 healthcare podcasts or 7 podcasts for bookworms the NYTimes recommended.
Listen Later: Make and share a curated podcast playlist. The playlist has an RSS feed that you can add to any major podcast player. Heres a playlist of a few shows I like. Heres a longer list of my favorites.
Podchaser is a good alternative when youre looking by topic. I discovered new podcasts about tennis and classical music. Also try the new advanced search by combining terms.
EarBuds Podcast Collective, founded by podcast guru Arielle Nissenblatt, shares well-curated podcast recommendations. Each week a guest picks five shows to recommend. Example: 5 podcasts about bodies and how we see ourselves. Also: CBCs Podcast Playlist (RIP) was a great show featuring highlights from all sorts of podcasts. The archive is full of great episodes.
Perplexity Voice Mode for Web, iOS, and Android
When I dont have my computer, I prefer searching with my voice over thumb typing on my phone. Querying Perplexity verbally when Im walking or when my fingers are freezing is convenient because it answers with audio quickly and accurately. I can ask follow-ups for clarification or elaboration. These iterative search conversations let me steer the exploration toward whats most useful. (iOS and Android)
Example: Here’s a screenshot of Perplexitys short reply when I asked what voice search is useful for. Tip: Ask Perplexity for its sources to verify its results; voice searches dont surface those unless you ask.
Voicebox: Collect audio feedback
Create your own inbox for voice input. Give anyone your Voicebox link or QR code, and they can leave you an audio message. No typing, no downloads, no forms to fill out. They just share their thoughts in a simple voice memo. Its like an answering machine for the digital era. Voicebox is marketed as a B2B tool, but anyone can use it as an individual.
Try it: Leave me a voice message about one thing you do that AI will never be able to replicate. Optionally, include your name and email.
Send an audio note: Tuttu is a super simple free site where you can record and share a voice note. Then email a link to that audio or embed it. Heres a quick example I recorded about 3 ways you can use Tuttu.
Alternative: VideoAsk is a slick tool for collecting video or audio feedback instead of a dull form. You can gather 20 minutes of input each month for free. Collecting 100 monthly minutes costs $24/month billed annually.
Rover AI: Get audio briefs to answer questions
Rover is an early-stage app that answers your questions with AI-generated audio briefs. Type in a query, wait a few minutes, then listen to your 2-3 minute audio conversation between two AI hosts. Unique feature: Choose from three alternative responses to your query. Example: Listen to a short audio debate about whether Jonathan Franzen is overrated or a genius.
Alternatives: NotebookLM, which Ive written about, does a fantastic job of creating audio summariesor even debatesexploring complex topics. And Huxe, which I wrote about last week, creates useful personalized audio updates. Rover is an earlier-stage experiment, by contrast, focused on brief audio answers to eclectic queries. Become a tester to try it out.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Accessibility is often treated as a technical problem. Does it meet standards? Is it ergonomic? Is it safe? Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. Many products fail not because they dont function, but because they make the user feel singled out.
Shame is one of the most powerful barriers to product adoption, and it is rarely discussed in design reviews. People delay using canes, grab bars, hearing aids, or mobility supports even when they would meaningfully improve daily life. Why? Because many products still communicate something the user does not want to say out loud: Something is wrong with me.
If we want accessible design to succeed, and we want people to get the utility of these products, we have to design beyond function. We have to design for dignity, and we have to recognize that design has the power to remove stigma.
ADOPTION IS EMOTIONAL
A product can meet every ergonomic benchmark and still sit unused. Emotional adoption determines real adoption.
When design feels institutional, clinical, or stigmatizing, it does not matter how useful it is. The user experiences a cost that is not in the price tag. The cost is identity. Great design reduces that cost. It normalizes support. It invites pride. It says, You belong here, not You are an exception.
We have seen this shift before. Years ago, eyeglasses were considered medical devices. Kids were teased as four eyes. Glasses signaled something was wrong. Then design and culture evolved. Frames became expressive and stylish. Today, glasses are fashion accessories, and many people wear them without prescription lenses because they like how they look. A stigmatized object became a form of self-expression.
The same pattern played out with bicycle helmets. They used to be awkward Styrofoam brain buckets, worn only by the most concerned riders, who were often teased for their appearance. Over time, design improved and so did perception. Helmets became lighter, sleeker, and more personal. Colors got bolder. Styles emerged, including playful options for kids like watermelon themes, mohawks, and distinctive graphics. Today, many children and young adults would never consider biking without a helmet. What was once stigmatized became normal, even a point of pride.
This is what design can do. It can shift the cultural meaning of an object.
WHAT SHAME LOOKS LIKE IN DESIGN
Shame shows up in visual language and cues:
Products that look medical, cold, or utilitarian
Aesthetic choices that communicate equipment instead of object
Forms that feel like warnings rather than invitations
Branding that talks down to the user or overexplains
This is not about hiding disability. It is about refusing to equate disability with ugliness, awkwardness, or compromise. We have found that most people do not reject support, but many reject what the support implies about them.
DESIGN FOR PRIDE
Design that reduces shame does a few things consistently. It respects the home. Accessible products should feel like they belong in a thoughtfully designed environment, not like they were borrowed from a hospital. It respects identity. People want tools that fit their aesthetic, their personality, and their sense of self. Options matter. And since no single brand can ever create the perfect widget for every body, real options only become possible when accessible design becomes cost of entry across categories, not a special edition for a small audience. It respects emotion. The experience should feel affirming. A product should make someone feel capable, not corrected.
This is the heart of emotional accessibility. When people feel good using a product, they use it earlier, more often, and for longer. That improves independence, safety, and quality of life.
REDUCING SHAME IS A BUSINESS STRATEGY
There is a direct business consequence to stigma. If people delay adoption, they are not only losing out on joyful life experiences and often putting themselves in danger, but brands lose demand. If products are purchased reluctantly, loyalty erodes. If the category feels embarrassing, growth slows.
Design that reduces shame expands markets. It turns an avoided purchase into a desired one. It transforms I need this into I want this. That shift changes everything. It also creates a new kind of brand equity. Companies that design with dignity earn trust, and trust is the rarest currency in consumer experience today.
THE NEW GOAL FOR ACCESSIBLE DESIGN
The future of accessibility is not compliance. It is cultural. It is designing products that support human vulnerability without amplifying it.
Design is on the verge of destigmatizing aging and disability across our activities of daily living. When we get this right, we do more than make products usable. We make them desirable. We make them typical. We make them something people are proud to bring into their lives.
The real test is not whether a product can be used. It is whether people want to use it, openly, confidently, and without shame.
Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
At 12, I was walking around a very affluent neighborhood with my father and he said, Mikey, all these people in these nice houses, not one of them could run a gas station. That stuck with me. The gas station test isnt about intelligence or ambition, its about aptitude for running a successful business.
As a strong student, then an investment banking analyst, then a private equity associate, I was in this jetstream towards a career in investing. But can investors run gas stations? Does it matter?
This concept was always in the back of my mind. I dove so deep into business details as an investor that my interest actually inhibited my performance. I was propelled into the operating world. As someone who made the transition from the investing world, albeit relatively quickly after four years, I get asked a lot about what attributes make someone successful in an operating role versus in an investing one.
OPERATORS GO DEEP
What stands out to me as the most basic difference between operating and investing comes back to the gas station. Most people in those nice houses I walked by at 12 years old probably werent interested in details like convenience store inventory. When you work in the operating world, you are in the weeds of your business. For example, at SoFi I knew all the nuances of different types of student loan forbearance programs and at Brex I knew the minutiae of the Mastercard transaction chargeback rulesthough not an expectation of my role at either company.
This contrasts with my experience as a private equity investor where I look at purchasing a business ranging from a chain of laundromats to Ancestry.com within the same month. In private equity, success often came down to three things: underwriting growth, paying the right multiple, and adding leverage. There is no way to distill what it is like to run a business, especially one as complex as Figure, into such a simple framework. The most successful operators enjoy going deep.
PROACTIVITY VERSUS PROCEDURE
In terms of behaviors that make someone successful in the operating world, proactivity stands out. My experience in fintech has been that everything is breaking all the time. I wake up each day to problems new and old. While high-growth industries like fintech exacerbate this, all operating roles have all kinds of changing dynamics and customer issues that create challenges. The way to combat this chaos and thrive is to proactively anticipate issues. The moment that most exemplified my proactivity was at Brex when I managed the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. I had been tracking the issues at the bank early, and I was able to swiftly reduce almost all of Brexs exposure, enabling the company to be offensive in the wake of the crisis, and add over $1 billion of deposits in a weekend.
On the investor side, work life is a lot more procedural. There is an investment processand that itself differs across private and public investing. But regardless, there is a relatively defined set of steps investors take. Evaluating an investment in a gas station or chain of them is very different than actually operating one. The former allows you to calmly consider the supply and demand dynamics, commodity price forecasts, etc., but there is almost no chance you will be screamed at by an unhappy customer or feel the visceral worry about the liquidity to fund your business. The process is much calmer and more controlled. That doesnt make investing easier, but the challenge is more intellectual rather than operational.
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IS THE JOB
The operating world is all about people. The people who get to the top are most often the best managers of people. They know how to set goals and mobilize large teams towards those goals, because, at scale, leadership is less about individual contribution and more about creating the conditions for an organization to succeed. This seems very basic but its at the core of what differentiates operating roles from investing ones. My time as an operator meant managing a range of teams from accountants to mortgage loan officers to executives. The common approach I have taken is to understand peoples motivations and how I can help the company and role best fulfill them.
Contrast this to my investor experience, where people management was a very small part of the picture. Most of the people were highly motivated and compensated in a competitive environment. Feedback was rarely given and what determined promotions was opaque.
THE POINT IS HOW YOURE WIRED
If the idea of going deep on messy details, waking up to problems, and spending most of your time thinking about how to get the best out of other people excites you, you are probably wired to be an operator. You dont need a perfectly defined process to be comfortable; you need ownership.
If, on the other hand, you enjoy pattern recognition across new areas of learning, structured decision-making, and optimizing within a defined framework, investing may be a better fit. Its a very real craft, and often very lucrative.
Early in my career, I assumed that operating was simply a more hands-on version of investing. Its not. Its a different job entirely. Running a business, whether its a fintech company or a gas station, requires a willingness to live inside complexity rather than analyze it from a distance.
Not everyone wants to run a gas station, and thats fine. But if you find yourself drawn to depth over breadth, proactivity over procedure, and people over process, you might want to step out of the jetstream, and into the operators seat.
Michael Tannenbaum is CEO of Figure.
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump made a bold claim about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We ended DEI in America, he said after touting his administrations record on job creation.
The remark was an echo of previous claims Trump has made about DEI, which have been critiqued for misrepresenting his legal authority over DEI programs in the private sector. “I’ve ended all of the so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the entire federal government and the private sector, and notified every single government DEI officer that their job has been deleted,” Trump said in a speech last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “They’re gone. They’re fired.”
Its true that the Trump administrations repeated attacks on DEI have had a chilling effect on corporate America, and have more directly derailed DEI efforts in the public sector. Immediately after assuming office, Trump issued multiple executive orders that targeted DEI, which slashed DEI offices and roles across the federal government and threatened private companies with potential legal action if they maintained illegal DEI programs. The sweeping federal layoffs in 2025 ultimately affected about 277,000 workersincluding those culled from DEI teams at government agenciesand had a disproportionate impact on women and people of color.
Under the Trump administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionthe agency tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination lawshas also adopted an anti-DEI posture. EEOC chair Andrea Lucas has set her sights on DEI-related discrimination, recently mounting an investigation into Nike over its DEI policies, claiming the company had discriminated against white employees and job applicants.
Despite these setbacks, however, Trumps actions have not exactly ended DEIfar from it.
Some employers, including Google and Meta, have moved away from certain types of DEI programs due to legal risk, whether that means cutting representation goals or no longer tying executive compensation to DEI metrics. But many private companies are still doing the work quietly, or have simply stopped using the term DEI, reframing their efforts as belonging instead.
A benchmarking survey that culture and inclusion platform Paradigm put out last year found that federal contractors and large companies were more likely to make more drastic changes to their DEI initiativesbut many others were actually continuing to invest in DEI work; in fact, only 19% of the 400-plus employers surveyed said they were slashing DEI funding.
Prominent companies like Apple and Costco have explicitly pledged their support for DEI, and pushed back on activist shareholders who introduced proposals that sought to end their DEI programs.
And while public sentiment appears to have shifted on this issue, given the anti-DEI rhetoric from the highest levels of government, many workers still do support the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In a Gallup poll from last fall, 69% of Americans still agreed that it was important for businesses to promote DEIand that figure was far higher among women and people of color.
Trump may believe his policies have ended DEIbut it seems few workers want to live in a country where thats the case.
With Netflix now streaming original podcasts and Apple announcing a category-leading video experience on its app this spring, the meaning of the word “podcast” has grown increasingly diffuse.
It was much easier to pin down during the mediums mid-aughts infancy. Back then, a podcast was simply asynchronous talk radiothe natural next step after moving from terrestrial radio, to satellite platforms like SiriusXM, to a new and purely digital format that could be downloaded and consumed on demand.
In the years since, the definition has vastly expanded. Essentially, any form of episodic audio or video content that involves people speaking into microphones can now be considered a podcast. Weve drifted so far away from the original context and definition of the word that perhaps its time for semantics to catch up.
The consumption is moving more and more toward video-based podcasts, says Jonathan Miller, a former Fox digital media and NBA executive and current CEO of Integrated Media Co. At some point, there needs to be a new name. But it’s not going to happen easily.
Pivoting to video
Originally coined in early 2004 by British journalist Ben Hammersley, the word “podcast” was an ingenious turn of phrase at the time. The punny portmanteau succinctly describes the then-emergent format of a broadcast that emanates from ones iPod.
The only problem? That title assumed a world in which iPods hung around for the long haul, rather than entering obsolescence just three years later with the invention of the iPhone. (The iPod ultimately remained in circulation for another 15 years, until Apple ceased manufacturing them in 2022.)
Anyone on the younger end of the prime podcasting demographic of 18 to 34 years old has likely never used an iPod, and might regard one with the same anthropological curiosity they would a VCR or rotary phone.
If the podcasts outdated nominal inspiration werent enough reason for a rebrand, though, the popularity of video may be what cinches it.
As more and more podcasters have started putting their shows on camera, YouTube has become the top podcast platform in the U.S., with over 1 billion active users logging on for them each month.
Meanwhile, Apples audio-only app loses a little more of its market share every year, going from 15.7% of monthly podcast listeners preference in 2022 to 11.3% in 2025.
Perhaps the companys forthcoming video experience will help Apple regain some of that groundif Netflix and its competitors all inevitably throwing their hats in the ring doesnt erode that number further.
But if a podcast is no longer something audiences hear but watch, is it even the same medium?
“What were witnessing isnt a departure from podcastingits an evolution, says Matt Sandler, general manager of creator services at Amazon. The content itself has evolved from interviews into ensemble conversations, documentary-style storytelling, live experiences, and hybrid shows that blur the lines between what weve traditionally seen on social [media], podcasts, and TV. As a result, podcasts have naturally moved from audio-only experiences to screens.
As popular as the video format is getting, not everyone sees it as a full industry takeover. I don’t see a pivot to video but an addition, says Adam Curry, the former MTV VJ whose early adoption of podcasting earned him the nickname “The Podfather.”
Of course, the addition of video to an audio format has always been disruptive, to say the least.
The revolution will not be podcasted
Before it became known as television, one of the inventions developers, Charles Francis Jenkins, dubbed it “radiovision.” There must have been very little doubt among the public about which technology TV was intended to replace.
The introduction of TV solved the problem of how boring and undynamic it must have been to gather ones family around a radio and listen to Fibber McGee and Molly on a Thursday night. It created a dazzling new galaxy of programming possibilities that revolutionized show business, and just about every other kind of business.
TV obviously didnt kill radio, but it drastically diminished radios appeal and quickly supplanted it as the top option for home entertainment.
Among the reasons radio has flourished well beyond TVs invention is because people also wanted to be entertained outside the home. It turned out there were many situations where the dynamism of a visual component proved unnecessarywhile driving, working, or shoveling snow, for instance.
The main distinction between the rise of video podcasts and the rise of television is that, unlike the medium that TV disrupted, podcasts were originally made precisely for such moments of divided attention. People mostly consume them while their eyes are focused elsewhere.
In fact, according to a YouGov survey from 2023, the topmost popular podcast-consuming situations are while doing chores, commuting, or working out.
I want something I can listen to like an audiobook when Im driving, riding the subway, or walking in the park, says Dave Winer, a software developer, writer, and pioneering podcaster.
Though its technically possible to watch a long-form podcast while doing all those things, its not exactly practical.
Still, the medium is now in a weird straddling moment in which many podcasters have not yet figured out for which of their audiences senses theyre primarily creating content.
Its now quite common for the hosts of a podcast to pantomime actions, make faces and hand gestures, or employ some other visual aid that provokes an in-studio laugh, followed by a reflexive explanation to our listeners about what just happened on-screen.
Will they eventually stop explaining? Or will they instead stop playing to the camera?
Either way, it might be helpful to know that not as many people may be watching podcasts as it seems. According to Triton Digitals annual podcasting report, only 7% of audiences exclusively watch their favorite podcasts, while 13% exclusively listen to them, and the remaining 80% now alternate between the two options.
These results hint at an epidemic of video podcasts playing inside listeners jean pockets as they go about their business.
Maybe not for long, though.
Whats in a name?
Whichever way people prefer to onsume video podcasts, the popularity of these shows has big business implications.
As the recent cancellations of both Kelly Clarksons and Sherri Shepherds TV talk shows indicate, podcasts are coming for daytime TV. Theyre also coming for the ailing late-night TV industry, and any other talky TV format that could technically be made with a tiny crew and no union involvement. (After launching without union coverage and incurring some blowback, Netflixs The Pete Davidson Show has since signed with SAG-AFTRA.)
Talk television is set to become a derivative of video podcasting, Integrated Media’s Miller says.
Fewer traditional talk show options will inevitably mean more video podcasts with high-wattage guests, like Amy Poehlers Good Hang and Matt Rogers and Bowen Yangs Las Culturistas. That means more people will likely start consuming their podcasts on smart TVs while curled up on the couch with a second screen.
In a scenario where that mode of consuming podcasts becomes more dominant, the word podcast will feel even more dissonant than it does now.
Part of the reason any medium needs a definitive name is to quantify audience consumption for advertisers. As an industry, video podcasts are now roughly at the point where streaming series were at about a decade ago, when it was still common to call them TV shows.
Nielsen Media Research struggled to adjust its language when TV moved to streaming, and remains stuck in a swamp of acronyms like SVOD (subscription video on demand), OTT (over-the-top), and CTV (connected TV) content.
Keeping the podcast label would cleanly delineate shows like the Kelce brothers New Heights and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy for the remaining years of linear television.
But if the word were to be replaced, what would we start calling podcasts instead?
We might call it social media TV, says Henry Jenkins, a media studies professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The format is a longer and mostly unedited discussion compared to whats possible via broadcasting. Its consumed asynchronously. Both of these overlap with podcasts as we have understood them.”
But with video, the medium is now yet another step removed from that original meaning, adds Jenkins. “What I like about social media TV is that it conveys the hybrid nature of this new format. I much prefer understanding it as something new than to allow it to define what podcasting becomes.
Miller thinks a potential linguistic change might be simpler, though. What a podcast really refers to is a unit of somethingone pod is one episode, he says. So maybe, at the end of the day, they simply become known as episodes.
Just because video podcasts have become the dominant commercial format, thoughto the point of possibly redefining the mediumdoesnt mean the original format is on its way out.
If podcasting becomes video, and audio podcasting disappears . . . we’ll just boot up podcasting again with a different name, Winer says.
But dont be surprised if the word sticks around as the industry evolves around it. We still use paper clip icons to attach a file, and a floppy disc icon to save something, Curry notes.
Similarly, theres a reason why iPhones still have the word phone in them, even though making phone calls is now among the devices more marginal functions. Sometimes, words continue to survive long after the idea that inspired them becomes redundant.
One such word, which originally referred to sowing seeds by scattering them over a wide area, is “broadcast.”
A new hotline is inviting Americans to congratulate the U.S. womens hockey team after its historic Olympic gold medal winand its already flooded with messages.
Launched yesterday by the PR firm Jennifer Bett Communications in collaboration with Cosmopolitan, the gold medal hotline allows fans to leave voicemails celebrating Team USA. The number, 1-833-SHE-WON1, has received 278 messages since opening yesterday afternoon, many from girls and women who say the team inspired them.
“This hotline is essentially a giant, collective thank you from fans everywhere,” Jennifer Meyer, founder of Jennifer Bett Communications, tells Fast Company. “We want to remind them that they are seen, they are celebrated, and they have the full support of a country that is incredibly proud of them.”
And the messages themselves reflect that outpouring of gratitude.
“You guys are what I wanted to be when I grew up, but they didn’t let girls play hockey back then. I am bursting with pride over what you’ve done. Congratulations, one message went.
Another said: Boys in my class always make fun of me for playing hockey and sometimes make me think I should quit, but you guys just rebuilt my confidence on and off the ice.
The hotline comes after the U.S. womens team defeated Canada on Sunday to secure its third Winter Olympics gold medaland its first since 2018though the victory was partly overshadowed by a viral video from the mens teams locker room later that day. In the clip, President Donald Trump congratulated the mens team over video call and invited them to the State of the Union and the White House, adding he was also going to have to bring the womens team and that if he didnt, hed probably be impeached. Players could be heard laughing, a reaction that drew accusations of misogyny online. All but five members of the USA mens ice hockey team later visited the Oval Office on Tuesday, while a USA Hockey spokesperson said the womens team also received an invitation but declined.
New Jersey Devils player Jack Hughes, who scored the winner for the U.S., addressed the backlash. People are so negative out there and they are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing, he told the Daily Mail. Everything is so political. Were athletes.
Others were quick to point out that partying with FBI director Kash Patel and celebrating a historic win by attending the State of the Union is, in fact, what makes sports political.
Companies want to hire workers with artificial intelligence skills, but don’t want to pay the premium. Those are the findings from a new report from Payscale, a leading online provider of data on salaries and compensation.
Payscale’s 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report finds that while 60% of companies mention AI as part of their job descriptions, only 55% are willing to shell out extra money for those skills in the form of higher salaries, bonuses or even equity in the company.
Why? Well, according to the report, there are a few reasons for the discrepancy, including the impact of a tight job market on hiring, coming at a time when businesses are also tightening their budgets.
In fact, 51% of the businesses surveyed say their biggest challenge in the current economic landscape is balancing employee pay expectations with budget constraints. It could be that while companies want to pay more, they just don’t have the cash.
So, how much are jobs paying? The report finds the median base pay increase in 2026 is only 3.5%.
Job hugging trend continues in workplace
Another reason for lower-than-desired salaries is “job hugging“the current trend where employees are staying longer in their positions and choosing not to leave their jobs.
Only about 8% of U.S. workers are actually voluntarily quitting, the report finds. And those positions take about 30 days to fill, signaling “reduced churn” and less urgency on the part of companies to compete aggressively for talent.
According to the report, 40% of the organizations surveyed say they have indeed experienced “job hugging” in 2025, with 15% agreeing that it inhibits business growth.
With confidence in finding a new job at an all-time low among workers, and “workers hold[ing] onto their jobs for dear lifeit’s no wonder AI skills aren’t boosting salaries across the board.
How AI is transforming the job market
While 59% of the human resource leaders and compensation teams that Payscale surveyed say they are not replacing employees with AI now or in the future, 30% already areor are considering it for the future.
Construction, business services, technology (including software), and healthcare are the leading industries already replacing workers with AI, according to the report.
