U.S. President Donald Trump lavished praise on Japan’s first female leader Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo on Tuesday, welcoming her pledge to accelerate a military buildup and signing deals on trade and rare earths.
Takaichi, a protegee of Trump’s late friend and golfing buddy Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, applauded Trump’s push to resolve global conflicts, vowing to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
Both governments released a list of projects in the areas of energy, artificial intelligence and critical minerals in which Japanese companies are eyeing investments of up to $400 billion in the U.S.
Tokyo pledged to provide $550 billion of strategic U.S. investments, loans and guarantees earlier this year as part of a deal to win a reprieve from Trump’s punishing import tariffs.
Those gestures may temper any Trump demands for Tokyo to spend more towards its security in the face of an increasingly assertive China, calls that Takaichi sought to head off by promising to fast-track plans to increase defence spending to 2% of GDP.
“Everything I know from Shinzo and others, you will be one of the great prime ministers,” Trump told Takaichi as they sat down to discussions, accompanied by their delegations, at Tokyo’s Akasaka Palace.
“I’d also like to congratulate you on being the first woman prime minister. It’s a big deal,” Trump added.
TAKAICHI INVOKES ABE LEGACY
Takaichi repeatedly referred to Abe’s affection for Trump and gifted him the former prime minister’s putter encased in glass, a golf bag signed by Japanese major winner Hideki Matsuyama and a gold-leaf golf ball, photographs posted on X by Trump’s assistant Margo Martin show.
Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, was the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his 2016 election victory and the two went on to forge a close bond over several rounds of golf in the United States and Japan.
Over a lunch of U.S. rice and beef, and vegetables from Takaichi’s hometown of Nara, she presented Trump with a map of major investments Japanese firms have made in the United States since his last visit in 2019.
Japanese companies on the list of possible future investors included Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Softbank, Hitachi, Murata Manufacturing and Panasonic, among others.
Japanese carmaker Toyota would also open auto plants in the United States to the tune of $10 billion, Trump said.
Toyota did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DEAL ON CRITICAL MINERALS
Trump praised Japan’s efforts to buy more U.S. defense equipment, while Takaichi said his role in securing ceasefires between Cambodia and Thailand, and Israel and Palestinian militants, was an “unprecedented” achievement.
They signed a deal to bolster supplies of critical minerals and rare earths, as their nations seek to reduce China’s dominance of some areas of key electronic components.
After lunch, Trump met relatives of people abducted by North Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. While some were later repatriated, Japan continues to press Pyongyang for a full accounting of all the abductees and the return of any who remain alive, a cause championed by Abe.
“The United States is with them all the way,” Trump told reporters after greeting the families. He has repeatedly said he was open to meeting North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong Un during his five-day Asia visit.
The U.S. leader began his trip in Malaysia on Sunday, before traveling to Japan late on Monday to receive a royal welcome at the Imperial Palace.
He hopes to cap off his trip, his longest overseas journey since returning to the White House in January, by agreeing a trade war truce with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
VISIT TO U.S. NAVAL BASE
Takaichi’s efforts to invoke Abe’s legacy to forge a bond with Trump could help bolster her weak political position at home and help her navigate Trump’s at times erratic decision-making, analysts said.
Though she has seen a surge in public support since becoming prime minister, her coalition government is two votes shy of a majority in parliament’s lower house.
Trump and Takaichi later flew on his presidential helicopter to the nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier George Washington, docked at the Yokosuka naval base near Tokyo.
There Trump delivered an hour-long speech that ranged from topics such as the U.S. southern border and inflation to American football and the possibility of deploying “more than the national guard” to “troubled” U.S. cities.
Flanked by two fighter jets, Trump ushered Takaichi up on stage before 6,000 U.S. sailors.
“This woman is a winner,” he said, before Takaichi thanked the forces for helping defend the country and the region. Japan hosts the largest concentration of U.S. military power abroad.
Delivery would begin this week on Japan’s long-awaited order of U.S. missiles for F-35 fighter jets, Trump added.
“I told the president that I want to work with him to build a new chapter in the Japan-U.S. alliance that will make both countries stronger and more prosperous,” Takaichi told reporters after returning to Tokyo.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is due to hold talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinjiro Koizumi on Wednesday.
Trump will meet business leaders in Tokyo later on Tuesday, before travelling on Wednesday to South Korea to meet President Lee Jae Myung ahead of his Thursday summit with Xi.
Trevor Hunnicutt, Tim Kelly and John Geddie, Reuters
A shortage of air traffic controllers caused more flight disruptions Monday around the country as controllers braced for their first full missing paycheck during the federal government shutdown.The Federal Aviation Administration reported staffing-related delays on Monday afternoon averaging about 20 minutes at the airport in Dallas and about 40 minutes at both Newark Liberty International Airport and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The delays in Austin followed a brief ground stop at the airport, meaning flights were held at their originating airports until the FAA lifted the stop around 4:15 p.m. local time.The FAA also warned of staffing issues at a facility in Jacksonville, Florida, that could cause some problems.Just last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had predicted that travelers would start to see more flights delayed and canceled as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the shutdown, which is nearing the one-month mark.During a weekend appearance on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures,” Duffy said more controllers were calling in sick as money worries compound the stress of an already challenging job.“And that’s a sign that the controllers are wearing thin,” Duffy said.Earlier Monday, flights were also briefly delayed at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest in the world. The disruptions emerged a day after the FAA had issued a temporary ground stop at LAX for about two hours due to a shortage of controllers. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said about 72% of the flights scheduled Sunday at LAX took off within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure times.Most controllers are continuing to work mandatory overtime six days a week during the shutdown without pay, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said Monday. That leaves little time for a side job unless controllers call in sick to the FAA.Union members were expected to gather Tuesday at major airports across the U.S., including in New York City and Atlanta, to pass out leaflets to passengers detailing how the shutdown is negatively impacting the national aviation system and the workers who keep it running safely. The action coincides with controllers’ first full missing paycheck since the shutdown began.Some U.S. airports have stepped in to provide food donations and other support for federal aviation employees working without pay, including controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents.Before the shutdown, the FAA was already dealing with a shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers. Nick Daniels, president of NATCA, has said the agency had reached “the lowest staffing we’ve had in decades of only 10,800.”
Rio Yamat, AP Airlines and Travel Writer
Food banks and pantries were already struggling after federal program cuts this year, but now they’re bracing for a tsunami of hungry people if a pause in federal food aid to low-income people kicks in this weekend as the federal government shutdown persists.The rush has already begun. Central Christian Church’s food pantry in downtown Indianapolis scrambled Saturday to accommodate around twice as many people as it normally serves in a day.“There’s an increased demand. And we know it’s been happening really since the economy has downturned,” volunteer Beth White said, adding that with an interruption in funding for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, “it’s going to continue to get worse for folks.”It’s a concern shared by charitable food providers across the country as states prepare for lower-income families to see their SNAP benefits dry up. SNAP helps 40 million Americans, or about 1 in 8, buy groceries. The debit cards they use to buy groceries at participating stores and farmers markets are normally loaded each month by the federal government.That’s set to pause at the start of next month after the Trump administration said Friday that it won’t use a roughly $5 billion contingency fund to keep food aid flowing in November in the government shutdown. The administration also says states temporarily covering the cost of food assistance benefits next month will not be reimbursed.
[Map: AP Digital Embed]
“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a statement. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.”It’s the latest in a string of hardships placed on charitable food services, which are intended to help take up the slack for any shortcomings in federal food assistance not replace government help altogether.Charities have seen growing demand since the COVID-19 pandemic and the following inflation spike, and they took a hit earlier this year when the Trump administration ended programs that had provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks to fight hunger.
Food pantry visitors are worried
Reggie Gibbs, of Indianapolis, just recently started receiving SNAP benefits, which meant he didn’t have to pick up as much from Central Christian Church’s food pantry when he stopped by on Saturday. But he lives alone, he said, and worries what families with children will do.“I’ve got to harken back to the families, man,” he said. “What do you think they’re going to go through, you know?”Martina McCallop, of Washington, D.C., said she’s worried about how she’ll feed her kids, ages 10 and 12, and herself, when the $786 they get in monthly SNAP benefits is gone.“I have to pay my bills, my rent, and get stuff my kids need,” she said. “After that, I don’t have money for food.”She’s concerned food pantries won’t be able to meet the sudden demand in a city with so many federal workers who aren’t being paid.In Fairfax County, Virginia, where about 80,000 federal workers live, Food for Others executive director Deb Haynes said she doesn’t expect to run out of food entirely, largely because of donors.“If we run short and I need to ask for help, I know I will receive it,” Haynes said.
Food banks feel the increased demand
Food pantries provide about 1 meal to every 9 provided by SNAP, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks. They get the food they distribute through donations from people, businesses and some farmers. They also get food from U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and sometimes buy food with contributions and grant funding.“When you take SNAP away, the implications are cataclysmic,” Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said. “I assume people are assuming that somebody’s going to stop it before it gets too bad. Well, it’s already too bad. And it’s getting worse.”Some distributors are already seeing startling low food supplies. George Matysik, executive director of Share Food Program in the Philadelphia area, said a state government budget impasse had already cut funding for his program.“I’ve been here seven years,” Matysik said. “I’ve never seen our warehouses as empty as they are right now.”
States scramble to fill in where they can
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is fast tracking $30 million in emergency food assistance funds to “help keep food pantries stocked,” and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said her state would expedite $8 million that had been allocated for food banks.Officials in Louisiana, Vermont and Virginia said last week they would seek to keep food aid flowing to recipients in their states, even if the federal program is stalled.Other states aren’t in a position to offer much help, especially if they won’t be reimbursed by the federal government. Arkansas officials, for example, have been pointing recipients to find food pantries, or other charitable groups even friends and family for help.-AP writers JoNel Aleccia in Los Angeles, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, and video journalists Obed Lamy in Indianapolis and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.
Margery A. Beck and Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press
The Federal Reserve will almost certainly cut its key interest rate on Wednesday and could signal it expects another cut in December as the central bank seeks to bolster hiring.A cut Wednesday would be the second this year and could benefit consumers by bringing down borrowing costs for mortgages and auto loans. Since Fed chair Jerome Powell strongly signaled in late August that rate cuts were likely this year, the average 30-year mortgage rate has fallen to about 6.2% from 6.6%, providing a boost to the otherwise-sluggish housing market.Still, the Fed is navigating an unusual period for the U.S. economy and its future moves are harder to anticipate than is typically the case. Hiring has ground nearly to a halt, yet inflation remains elevated, and the economy’s mostly solid growth is heavily dependent on massive investment by leading tech companies in artificial intelligence infrastructure.The central bank is assessing these trends without most of the government data it uses to gauge the economy’s health. The release of September’s jobs report has been postponed because of the government shutdown. The White House said last week October’s inflation figure may not even be compiled.The shutdown itself may also crimp the economy in the coming months, depending on how long it lasts. Roughly 750,000 federal workers are nearing a month without pay, which could soon start weakening consumer spending, a critical driver of the economy.Federal workers laid off by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts earlier this year may formally show up in jobs data if it is reported next month, which could make the monthly hiring data look even worse.Powell has said that the risk of weaker hiring is rising, which makes it as much of a concern as still-elevated inflation. As a result, the central bank needs to move its key rate closer to a level that would neither slow nor stimulate the economy.Most Fed officials view the current level of its key rate 4.1% as high enough to slow growth and cool inflation, which has been their main goal since price increases spiked to a four-decade high three years ago. The Fed is widely expected to reduce it to about 3.9% Wednesday. WIth job gains at risk, the goal is to move rates to a less-restrictive level.Kris Dawsey, head of economic research at D.E. Shaw, an investment bank, said that the lack of data during the shutdown means the Fed will likely stay on the path it sketched out in September, when it forecast cuts this month and in December.“Imagine you’re driving in a winter storm and suddenly lose visibility in whiteout conditions,” Dawsey said. “While you slow the car down, you’re going to continue going in the direction you were going versus making an abrupt change once you lose that visibility.”In recent remarks, the Fed chair has made clear that the sluggish job market has become a signficant concern.“The labor market has actually softened pretty considerably,” Powell said. “The downside risks to employment appear to have risen.”Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data Oct. 1, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.Layoffs also remain low, however, leading Powell and other officials to refer to the “low-hire, low-fire” job market.At the same time, last week’s inflation report released more than a week late because of the shutdown showed that inflation remain elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher rates to tame it.Yet a key question is how long the job market can remain in what Powell has described as a “curious kind of balance.”“There have been some worrisome data points in the last few months,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander, an investment bank. “Is that a weakening trend or are we just hitting an air pocket?”The uncertainty has prompted some top Fed officials to suggest that they may not necessarily support a cut at its next meeting in December. At its September meeting, the Fed signaled it would cut three times this year, though its policymaking committee is divided. Nine of 19 officials supported two or fewer reductions.Christopher Waller, a member of the Fed’s governing board and one of five people being considered by the Trump administration to replace Powell as Fed chair next year, said in a recent speech that while hiring data is weak, other figures suggest the economy is growing at a healthy pace.“So, something’s gotta give,” Waller said. “Either economic growth softens to match a soft labor market, or the labor market rebounds to match stronger economic growth.”Since it’s unclear how the contradiction will play out, Waller added, “we need to move with care when adjusting the policy rate.”Waller said he supported a quarter-point cut this month, “but beyond that point” it will depend on what the economic data says, assuming the shutdown ends.Financial markets have put the odds of another cut in December at above 90%, according to CME Fedwatch and Fed officials have so far said little to defuse that expectation.Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS, said that he will look to see if Powell, at a news conference Wednesday, repeats his assertion that the risks of a weaker job market remain high.“If I hear that, I think they’re on track to lowering rates again in December,” he said.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
As more and more drivers purchase electric vehicles, some people have voiced concerns about how the EV boom could further strain our aging, stressed electricity grid. More EVs means more electricity demand, which could require costly infrastructure upgrades or limit when drivers can charge if demand is too high.
But one long-talked about promise of EVs is that they could actually make our electricity grid more resilient. Through bidirectional charging, EVs could essentially act as batteries parked outside your home, powering houses so that they dont need to rely on outside electricity.
They could also even send energy back to the grid.
[Image: Ford]
A handful of EVs can already power your home during an outage, including the Ford F-150 Lightning. And Ford is expanding how its EV drivers can take advantage of bidirectional charging.
[Image: Ford]
Through its Home Power Management program, F-150 Lightning owners can use their trucks to power their homes when electricity prices from the grid are high, easing energy burdens and saving people money on their monthly bills.
It also gives customers the ability to send energy from the trucks back to the grid, in some instances earning them money from their electricity company for doing so.
We see an opportunity here where our vehicles can be part of the solution rather than compounding the problem, Dave McCreadie, director of Fords EV-Grid Integration Strategy and Business Development, said during a recent press briefing on the program.
The rollout is currently limited, but Ford expects to expand a Home Power Management pilot in 2026.
At a time when EV sales are lagging and EV tax credits have expiredand as homeowners across the country are seeing their energy bills increaseFord hopes potential customers see these features as another benefit to owning an EV.
[Image: Ford]
A personal power plant to lower energy bills
Backup power has been a feature in the F-150 Lightning since its release in 2022.
After major hurricanes like Helene in North Carolina and Beryl in Texas, F-150 Lightning owners used their trucks as generators, allowing them to keep the lights on and the refrigerator running when the power went out. A fully charged F-150 Lightning can power a home for three days; if that power is rationed, it can last up to 10 days.
Backup power only works when the grid goes down. Home Power Management, however, allows EV owners to use their trucks to power their homes even when the grid is up and running.
The idea is that customers can charge their EVs overnight during offpeak hours, when electricity rates are low. Then, when demand peaks and rates go up, they can use their EV to power their homes.
That both offsets a homeowners electricity bills and frees up power from the grid to go elsewhere. The home in question is now essentially invisible to the grid, the automaker explains.
[Image: Ford]
In June 2024, Ford partnered with Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) and Sunrun, a home solar and battery company, to launch the countrys first vehicle-to-home pilot program, allowing EV owners to use their vehicles to power their homes anytime, not just during an outage.
Brian Foreman, an F-150 Lightning owner in Highland, Maryland, was the first customer to do so, essentially turning his EV into his own personal power plant.
Ford didnt share exactly how much Foreman saved on his electricity bills, but says that customers can save an average of $42 per month, or $500 per year, by using the vehicle-to-home capability.
When most people would be concerned, Ive got an electric vehicle, my electricity bill is going to go up, well now you have this offset. Your vehicle is actually working for you in your driveway while its parked, said Ryan OGorman, senior manager of energy services business strategy and delivery at Ford.
Brian Foreman [Image: Ford]
Sending energy to the gridand making money
In the summer of 2025, Foreman joined two other BGE customers for another pilot, this time one that allowed customers to use their F-150 Lightnings to send power to the grid.
This turns the EVs into distributed power plants, per the utility company, which also paid customers for the energy they shared.
Instead of just saving customers money on their electricity bills, this next step in Fords Home Power Management program lets EV owners make money through their EVs. The participants could earn up to $1,000 for the power they provided between July and September.
Using your F-150 Lightning to power your home during peak energy demand or to send power to the grid does require extra equipment: an inverter called the Home Integration System, created by Ford and Sunrun.
That equipment is also needed if you want to use your truck to provide backup power during an outage, so some customers already have it installed. The Home Integration System costs $3,895, and installation can be another $3,000, though those prices vary.
That expense is on top of the price to buy and install a home EV charger. Some Ford customers received a free charger and installation through the automakers Ford Power Promise program, but for those that missed out on that opportunity, a level 2 Ford Charge Station Pro costs another $1,310 plus installation, which can vary from $200 to $1,000, depending on any wiring upgrades your home needs.
That means there is an upfront cost to eventually being able to offset your energy bills or make money by providing power through your EV. But Ford says its F-150 Lightning is cost competitive to buying a 10-kilowatt stationary backup generator for your homeplus, it’s a generator you can drive around.
[Image: Ford]
Looking ahead for Ford
Currently, a handful of customers in just nine states are using Fords Home Power Management capabilities, including Maryland, Georgia (where Ford did a six-month pilot program with energy provider Southern Company focused on commercial fleets), and Vermont (where energy expert Peter Schneider tested the program with Ford, using it to power his home, and reduce grid strain, during extreme heat there this past summer).
Getting this system set up requires working with utility companies, which have to provide approval and permits for EVs to be interconnected with the grid in these ways.
Automakers also work with utilities to communicate about peak demand, with software that automatically charges an EV at grid-friendly times.
Ford trying to maintain communications with hundreds and even thousands of electric utilities across the country is an untenable business solution, McCreadie said. We found that other automakers were having the same problem.
Ford worked with BMW and Honda to create ChargeScape, a joint venture that launched in 2024, which basically acts as connective tissue, McCreadie explained, to link utilities and automakers, and integrate EVs into the grid.
Though vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid charging is a goal for the EV industry at large, Ford says it’s ahead of the pack with its recent pilot programs.
Ford and Michigan-based DTE Energy have also recently launched a new program piloting the vehicle-to-home capabilities, starting with a group of 15 Ford employees.
Through that pilot, DTE Energy will pay participants for using their EVs to power their homes during times of high electricity demand. But EV owners dont have to do anything themselves; the system is entirely automated.
DTE Energy will send notifications to ChargeScape to schedule when participants EVs provide power for their homes. Though its only available to Ford employees right now, the automaker says its working with DTE to hopefully expand the program to the general public later on in 2026.
The worlds largest retailer has announced massive job cuts before the holidays.
On Tuesday, Amazon said in a memo to staff that it will lay off 14,000 employees. Heres what you need to know about the Amazon layoffs, and why these arent the last jobs that Amazon will likely cut in the future.
Whats happened?
On Tuesday, Amazons senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, announced the company was eliminating approximately 14,000 positions. Galetti sent a memo about the layoffs to Amazon employees, which was then published to the Amazon website.
The headcount reduction of 14,000 positions is less than the up to 30,000 job cuts that Reuters had reported in the hours before Galettis memo was made public. However, it still represents one of the largest single layoff rounds of 2025. It also comes just days after competitor Target announced it was laying off 1,800 corporate roles.
Amazon did not say which 14,000 jobs would be eliminated, but the memo specified that they would be corporate workforce positions, suggesting Amazons warehouse workforce is safe from the cuts.
But that is to be expected as Amazon would be unlikely to reduce its warehouse staff ahead of the busy holiday season.
According to PitchBook, Amazon has a total workforce of more than 1.5 million employees.
Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 employees?
In the memo, Galetti stated that the layoffs are a continuation of Amazon CEO Andy Jassys September 2024 directive to strengthen Amazon’s culture and teams.
In 2024, that strengthening resulted in a return-to-office (RTO) mandate. In 2025, strengthening your culture apparently means cutting your workforce.
The reductions were sharing today, Galettis memo states, are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure were investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers current and future needs.
But Galetti continued, explaining that the main driver for the cuts isyou guessed itartificial intelligence.
The world is changing quickly, Galetti said. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology weve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones).
Because of this, Galetti said that Amazon is convinced it needs to become a leaner company with fewer layers.
The “layers” here are people.
Amazon could cut even more jobs next year
While the 14,000 job cuts Amazon announced today are devastating to the workers and their families who are affected, Amazon may not be done cutting positions.
In the memo, Galetti added that looking ahead to 2026, Amazon expects to hire in key areas, while also finding additional places we can remove layers.
How has Amazons stock price reacted?
While the layoffs are devastating to the workers losing their jobs, Wall Street often sees layoffs as a good thing. Thats because laying off a large number of workers is usually the fastest way for a company to cut costs and thus increase its bottom line.
But if Amazon was hoping to see a stock price boost from its layoff announcements this morning, the company is going to be disappointed.
As of this writing, Amazons stock price (Nasdaq: AMZN) is relatively flat in premarket trading. Its up just half a percent to around $228.22 per share.
As a matter of fact, Amazons stock price for 2025 hasnt moved much. Year to date, the companys share price is up just 3.4%. Thats compared to the Nasdaqs 21% gain in the same period.
Amazon is expected to share its third-quarter 2025 financial results on Thursday, October 30.
Early in my career, I was fortunate to cross paths with a mentor who changed how I saw designand myself. He ran a small studio whose influence reached far beyond its size. He led with a quiet confidence and quick wit, showing how intelligence and humility could coexist in the creative process. I was passionate about the craft, but there was still so much more to learn about the tools, and about business. He taught me how to infuse storytelling into design. How to navigate constraints. How to bring meaning to every project, not just the ones that sparked instant excitement. He reminded me that creativity thrives on play and curiosity, and that if you lose joy in the process, the work suffers. Those experiences taught me that mentorship is about passing down not just skills, but a way of seeing and approaching the work.
The guru form of mentorshipthe close, sustained one-to-one relationship between an experienced guide and an eager apprenticehas given way to something more imaginative and community-based. For me, much of that evolution has been visible through creative networks like AIGA that champion connection and professional growth. In addition, platforms like ADP List help creatives solve problems and refine their portfolios through focused, 20-minute feedback exchanges. Inclusive group-based initiatives such as Break the Wall blend workshops, one-on-one meetings, and targeted training to build confidence and open doors for underrepresented creatives.
This new wave of mentorship redefines how we learn from each other in a post-pandemic world when proximity is no longer a given. It challenges the belief that deep creative growth depends on shared physical space, replacing it with something more fluid and democratic.
How are these new approaches enriching creative mentorship, and what do we risk losing along the way?
The Demise of Guru Mentoring
During the era of the hands-on mentor, you didnt just learn what someone did. You absorbed how they thought, often through shared experiences. When I joined Fifty Thousand Feet in 2004, the lessons my mentor taught me became the foundation for how I approached creative leadership and helped grow the practice. I learned that mentorship doesnt stop with one relationship; it becomes part of how you leadand help others to lead. When more experienced designers remind their teammates that trust is as essential to great design as aesthetics, mentorship becomes collective. It becomes how we grow together.
When the pandemic hit, creative studios went quiet. Overnight, our way of working, defined by proximity and spontaneity, was replaced by screens and schedules. We lost the informal learning that happens in passing: the sketch on someones desk, the overheard critique, the unplanned spark of collaboration.
Many leaders tried to re-create that closeness through digital tools. We held virtual check-ins and all-hands meetings. But something was missing. The energy of shared space, the easy conversations, the sense of momentum, was hard to replicate. Collaboration became more intentional, but less organic. In that absence, the creative industry began searching for new models that could sustain connection and growth in a hybrid world.
The Rise of New Mentorship Models
What followed was a burst of experimentation. Across the industry, new forms of mentoring have gained momentum since the pandemic, combining structure with flexibility and access.
Micro mentorship has become a favorite starting point. These short, focused sessions meet creatives where they are, helping them refine portfolios, shape presentations, or overcome creative blocks. The approach trades hierarchy for immediacy. For younger designers, it opens the door to multiple mentors instead of one. For mentors, it offers the chance to share expertise in moments that matter most.
At the same time, peer learning communities are reshaping how creatives connect. These networks erase titles and encourage reciprocity. One week you are the mentor, the next you are the learner. Younger professionals bring fresh fluency in tools and culture, while veterans share hard-won perspectives. That exchange keeps creative cultures evolving.
Even traditional apprenticeship models are changing shape. Adobes Creative Apprenticeship, for instance, links aspiring designers with more than 200 creative leaders and 35 agency partners. It borrows the rigor of the studio system but scales it globally.
Meanwhile, digital communities of practice have become the connective tissue of the industry. Organized around disciplines or shared challenges, they create space for ongoing dialogue, workshops, and portfolio exchange.
Together, these models show that mentorship did not vanish in the pandemic. It adapted. It became faster, more open, and more human in its reach.
The Benefits of Peer Learning and Community
New forms of mentorship break down barriers of geography, hierarchy, and privilege. A designer in Nairobi can now receive feedback from a creative director in New York. A freelancer can find a sense of belonging in a global online forum.
They also diversify the voices shaping creative careers. Traditional mentorship often reflected proximitywho sat near whom, who belonged to which agency, who got noticed. Community-based mentorship opens the door to people with different experiences, disciplines, and perspectives. That diversity fuels innovation by exposing creatives to new ways of thinking and working.
Peer and micro-mentorship also allow for real-time feedback rather than waiting for annual reviews or rare moments of contact. They make mentorship a living part of the workday. And perhaps most importantly, they distribute the emotional labor of mentorship. Instead of depending on one relationship, creatives can build a constellation of guides, akin to a network that evolves as their career does.
What We Risk Losing
Yet efficiency has its costs. The quiet accumulation of trust and shared history that forms the long arc of mentorship is harder to replicate online. Tacit knowledge, the kind that comes from watching how someone handles conflict or reads a room, can be difficult to transfer in a virtual environment.
There is something to be said for the value of serendipity, too. In-person work creates unplanned learning: the overheard insight, the offhand comment that sparks an idea. Virtual platforms tend to optimize for structure, not discovery. Without care, mentorship risks becoming transactional, something to schedule rather than something to live.
Blending the Old and the New
But we dont have to lose the good things about one-to-one mentorship. The future of creative mentorship might not be about choosing one model over another. Its about synthesis. The one-to-one relationships that shaped generations of creatives can coexist with todays distributed, community-driven systems. The key is to preserve the human connection at the heart of mentorship while expanding who gets to participate.
For creative leaders, that means being intentional about creating the conditions where mentorship thrives. Make it part of your culture, not an HR program. Pair senior and junior talent on projects and encourage them to exchange feedback in both directions. Create small circles or pods where peers can learn from each other. Recognize mentorship in performance reviews, not just deliverables. Use digital platforms for access but keep curiosity, trust, and generosity as your operating principles.
Mentorship is how creative culture renews itself. Whether it happens across a desk or across a screen, it remains the most human way we learn to create, lead, and grow.
In January 2025, subway riders at the 59th Street-Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan noticed a surprising new addition: spiked metal partitions between each fare gate. Some commuters called the partitions silly and foolish. Others said they were a waste of money.
Over the past nine months, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has rolled out the same spiked partitions to 183 stations across the subway network, with more on the way. Like spikes on a handrail prevent people from sitting on it, these metal screens (which the MTA calls sleeves) are designed to prevent people from hoisting themselves over the turnstiles. Theyve also turned what was already an inhospitable system into an actively hostile public space.
The MTA argues it has good reason to take these measures. About 40% of the agencys operating budget comes from fares and tolls, meaning every tap and every swipe helps keep trains and buses running. But many riders arent paying at all. In 2024, fare evasion on the subway cost the agency around $350 million, though it topped $1 billion if you include unpaid buses, trains, and tolls.
[Photo: courtesy of the author]
At 59th Street-Lexington Avenue, the spiked partitions, which were custom-made specifically for the New York subway, seem to have worked. According to an April 2025 MTA press releasefour months after installing the mechanismsfare evasion at the station dropped by roughly 60%.
There is no way of knowing, however, if the drop is due to the “sleeves” or the other measures the MTA introduced at that station, including turnstiles with larger “fins,” and new anti back-cocking mechanisms to prevent people from squeezing in through the turnstile without paying. It is also possible that offenders simply moved on to a nearby station that hasn’t been retrofitted with these anti fare-evasion designs.
Earlier this year, the MTA began piloting modern, glass-paneled gates at a limited number of stations, combined with gate guards now stationed at more than 200 locations. These efforts helped the MTA collect $5 billion in fare revenue in 2024, up $322 million from the previous year.
The apparent success poses two uncomfortable questions: Should we accept a fortified, unwelcoming subway if it really does deter people from jumping the turnstile? And is there really no better way to get people to pay?
[Photo: Marc A. Hermann/MTA/Flickr]
A worldwide challenge
Fare evasion is a global headache with no standardized solution, and different cities have taken different approaches to stopping it. In Paris, officials have relied on a growing army of fare inspectors and hefty fines. Transport for London, which lost more than $170 million in revenue to fare dodgers in the capital city in 2023, is considering adding AI-enabled, extra-tall ticket barriers to trap offenders. Meanwhile, Queensland, Australia, recently slashed train and bus fares from as much as $6.23 to a flat 50 cents, and fare evasion plummeted.
New Yorks MTA, for its part, has mostly favored enforcement. In 2022, it convened a Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare Evasion to recommend solutions. The panels report suggested promoting the citys Fair Fares program (which offers half-priced MetroCards to low-income residents), partnering with public schools to teach students transit etiquette, redesigning fare gates as part of a 2025-2029 Capital Plan, and posting gate guards to deter evasion.
A spokesperson for the MTA told Fast Company that the agencys aggressive strategy stems directly from those recommendations, but declined to specify whether any education and outreach campaigns have been implemented so far.
For now, the retrofitted gates and guards appear to be working: Subway fare evasion across the entire network dropped by 30% in 2024.
[Photo: STraffic/MTA/Flickr]
How far do we have to go?
The New York City subwayrat-infested and delay-prone as it may beis one of the citys most vital public spaces. It may lack the allure of a park, or the quiet of your local public library branch, but it brings millions of people together across class, race, and borough lines.
The subway is known as a place that generates community, where you see people different from you, sometimes even start conversations, says Setha Low, a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York. Making it into a fearful environment, making it less inclusive, isnt going to help the MTA get people back on the subway.
The spiked walls havent yet reached Lows local station in Brooklyn, but when shown a photo of the spiked sleeves at Barclays Center, she drew comparisons to the kind of barbed wire shes seen across Latin America, where she conducted fieldwork for 15 years.
The problem, she says, isnt just that the measures look hostile, its that they reflect a growing citywide aesthetic. Hostile architecturea term describing exclusionary urban design like spikes on flat surfaces or benches with dividers to deter sleepingfirst spread across New York in the 1970s, when the city was facing budget crises and rising homelessness. Over the past decade, it has multiplied and morphed.
Inside Moynihan Train Hall on Madison Avenue, and in Low’s own subway station in Brooklyn, benches have disappeared altogethera strategic decision from the city to prevent unhoused people from sleeping in public spaces (see also the MTA’s new leaning benches). I walked 30 blocks down Madison Avenue the other day, and there wasnt one place to sit down, Low says.
From the citys perspective, these new subway barriers are efficient. They maintain order, improve safety, and protect revenue. But that logic comes with a cost. I think its legitimate to think about the psychological impact of how we internalize these surveilled, parceled structures all around us, says Jon Ritter, a clinical professor of architecture at New York University. Assuming [the spiked partitions] work as deterrents, it raises the question: How far do we have to go to achieve the public good of fare collection?
[Photo: Wells Baum/Unsplash]
Going beyond infrastructure
Not everyone jumps a turnstile for the same reasons. A 2019 study of the Transantiago system in Santiago, Chile, grouped fare evaders into four types: those who evade as protest, those who do it because the risk is low, those who see no value in paying, and those who simply forget.
Milad Haghani, a researcher and principal fellow in urban resilience and mobility at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has developed his own understanding of the factors at play. These include how difficult it is to physically evade a fare, the quality and reliability of the service, the cost of the fare relative to the local minimum income, and the perceived likelihood of getting caught.
The MTAs current strategytaller gates, spiked partitions, human guardsaddresses only the first factor: physical difficulty. It makes fare evasion harder, Haghani says, but it doesnt address why people choose to evade in the first place.
He adds that when service quality is poor, people often justify evasion as a form of protest. And in New York, where locals regularly complain about unreliable weekend service or aging infrastructure that floods during storms, the MTA is giving them plenty to protest about. (Did we mention the rats?)
In July, the MTA celebrated a small victory after its spring survey reported 57% subway rider satisfactionits highest since 2022. What was left unsaid, however, was that more than 40% of riders remain dissatisfied. If the goal is genuinely to reduce fare evasion, says Haghani, physical enforcement has to be paired with improving service and restoring trust. Passengers are far less likely to avoid paying when they believe the fare is fair.
Until the MTA finds a way to improve its service and restore trust, the spikes might have to do. But if they also stop New Yorkers from feeling like the subway is a safe and inclusive space for everyone, there might be an even bigger price to pay.
As a mother of two little girls, I expected that puberty would be a tempestuous time for our family, full of emotional roller coasters and bodily changes. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
When my oldest daughter turned 9, her pediatrician said she could get her period within the year. I was blindsided: When I was growing up, girls expected to get their periods around the age of 13. I rushed out to buy a pack of menstrual pads to keep in her backpack, in case she gets her first period in school, and ordered The Care and Keeping of You, the iconic puberty guide that has sold 8 million copies since it debuted in 1998.
I’m far from the only flummoxed parent. Generation Alpha girlsthe oldest of whom are just entering middle schoolare expected to go through puberty between six months and two years earlier than their parents. But don’t panic. Help has arrived in the form of Less Awkward, a company that provides resources that allow children, parents, and schools to better navigate puberty.
Less Awkward is the brainchild of a pediatrician, Cara Natterson, who has written extensively about puberty (including serving as the medical consultant on The Care and Keeping of You), and a puberty educator, Vanessa Kroll Bennett, whose career has been devoted to helping girls build self-esteem.
In the past, parents could look back at their own adolescence as a guide for what might happen to their children, but today’s kids are experiencing adolescence differently than any previous generation. And while there’s an abundance of resources for early childhood, it’s far harder to find reliable information about how to navigate this brave new world of puberty.
Many parents today are looking for reliable parenting information beyond books, and through other forms of media such as apps, podcasts, Instagram, and TikTok. Dr. Becky Kennedy, a guru for parents of young children, has mastered the art of speaking to Gen Z and millennial parents on social media and through her new AI-powered app that provides parents with answers tailored to their specific problems. Natterson and Bennett are following a similar playbook, picking up where Dr. Becky leaves off, and guiding families through the transitions children will face between the ages of 8 and 18. It’s an approach that seems to be resonating with parents, who are willing to pay to use these services.
Natterson and Bennett started Less Awkward in 2021 as a podcast called This Is So Awkward. And as their audience has grown to more than 2.5 million listeners a month, so have their ambitions.
They recently turned Less Awkward into a full-fledged resource for parents with puberty-aged children, including a $10 a month hub that gives them access to videos, workshops, and even an AI chatbot that allows parents to ask specific questions and receive answers trained on Less Awkward content. And this year, they’re expanding into schools with a curriculum meant to improve the way kids learn about puberty.
Given the relative lack of resources for parents of tweens and teens, Natterson and Bennett want to provide trustworthy, evidence-based advice that is tailored to the very unique circumstances today’s kids are facing. But it turns out, this is also a recipe for a new kind of parenting business. “There is this wide open lane,” Bennett says. “We wanted to fill it quickly because we believe we can change a child’s trajectory if we can surround them with empathy and community during these years, rather than ignoring or judging them.”
The Brave New World of Puberty
Over the past five years, the media has been flooded with unsettling stories about how puberty is shifting earlier. In 2022, The New York Times reported that girls were developing breasts as young as 6. Last year, NPR described how more girls were getting their periods before the age of 9. Parents everywhere began to panic.
Doctors have been observing this trend for several decades now. In 1997, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician’s associate in the pediatric department at Duke University Medical Center, published a longitudinal study of 17,000 girls, which found that they were hitting puberty at the age of 10, a year earlier than girls in the 1960s. Many studies since have found that all over the world, puberty in girls has dropped by about three months per decade since the 1970s. We see a similar pattern, though less extreme, in boys.
Researchers don’t fully understand why this is happening. But newer studiesthe ones which newspapers have covered in recent yearssuggest that earlier puberty may be the result of obesity, childhood stress, and the use of hormone-disrupting chemicals in our personal care products. All of this set off alarm bells.
As puberty experts, Natterson and Bennett are very familiar with these studies. But as they saw the panic this news provoked among adults, they were concerned about how little attention people were paying to the kids going through this new experience of puberty. “There was so much Monday morning quarterbacking about what’s causing this earlier puberty,” Bennett says. “What we cared about was the 45 million kids going through puberty right now. They need reliable information from adults who aren’t freaking out.”
When they looked around, they couldn’t find many resources for parents and kids trying to navigate these years. Natterson, who helped write the updated version of The Care and Keeping of You, arguably the most influential puberty guidebook on the market, believed that families were craving more knowledge and guidanceparticularly since puberty itself is evolving. But while there is an abundance of resources about each stage of early childhood, there are relatively few resources for tweens and teens. “The parent industry drops kids like hot potatoes after kindergarten,” Natterson says.
Natterson and Bennett have theories about why this is the case. For one thing, many adults today dealt with the trials of puberty on their own, without much support from their parents or communities, so they assume their job is to distance themselves from their children during these years. There are aso many cultural stereotypes that teenagers are intolerable, prone to violent mood swings, and rude to adults. Even some doctors and psychologists avoid working with adolescents. “It’s an intimidating stage of life,” Bennett says. “It’s unpredictable. And people are scared of dealing with young people’s reactions.”
Dr. Rebekah Fenton, who specializes in adolescent medicine (and has no connection to Less Awkward), observes that many pediatricians are not very comfortable speaking with teens, and she wishes there were more resources for them to learn how to speak with older patients. “When we’re dealing with older children who are seeing changes in their own bodies, we really should be having conversations with them directly,” she says. “But there’s a gap in our training when it comes to learning how to speak with teens.”
Making It Less Awkward
Less Awkward began as a pandemic project. In 2021, in the midst of the lockdown, Natterson and Bennett poured their energies into launching a podcast targeted at parents called This Is So Awkward. They began by covering the basics of puberty today, like when a girl can expect to get her period, how to talk to tweens about sex, and why kids experience emotional swings.
The show quickly developed an audience, racking up hundreds of thousands of listeners, and Natterson and Bennett began to tackle more complex and nuanced questions about the sociocultural impacts of earlier puberty. For instance, even though girls’ bodies are developing faster, they are not more emotionally mature; yet other people might sexualize them because they look older than they are. “When strangers on the street are sexualizing 9-year-olds, this has an impact on their mental health and self-esteem,” Bennett says. “But we don’t need to assume that young girls are going to have these negative outcomes. There are plenty of things we can do to intervene.”
[Cover Images: Less Awkward]
Soon, Natterson and Bennett were flooded with requests to conduct workshops at schools and other organizations. It wasn’t long before they couldn’t keep up with these requests. Their solution was to write a book so they could get their ideas into the hands of more people. In 2023, they published This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. It explains the science of puberty as well as covers their approach to parenting, which is all about staying connected to children during this period and creating spaces for conversation.
Fenton believes it is critical to offer parents and kids more information about puberty and thinks it is good that Less Awkward is creating resources that are easy to digest. “The main resource families have access to these days is books, and many are very research-heavy rather than practical,” she says. “This information needs to be in a form that parents and children will be able to receive it, like social media posts, podcasts, and videos.”
Now, Natterson and Bennett are thinking about how to make their content accessible across even more formats. They’ve spent the last few years building “The Hub,” a website that makes it easy for parents to access all of the Less Awkward content, organized by theme, at a price of $10 per month.
If a parent is trying to help their child deal with acne or a friendship problem, they can search for the topic and find everything from short social media videos to long-form podcasts that address the issue. They’ve also built an AI tool on the site that is trained on all of Natterson and Bennett’s work, allowing parents to ask more specific questions and get Less Awkward-approved answers, tailored to their situations.
This approach is similar to Dr. Becky Kennedy, who became a guru to millennials during the pandemic when she started posting short-form parenting advice videos on Instagram and TikTok. This blossomed into a book called Good Inside, and more recently evolved into an AI-powered app that answers parents’ questions on the go, using Kennedy’s methodology.
Beyond the book
Natterson and Bennett are now taking their content a step further and bringing it to schools. There isn’t a standardized sex education curriculum that schools across the country use today, and there is a lot of variation in terms of what content they cover. But broadly, many educators aren’t being equipped to handle the complexities of puberty in 2025from the fact that it is happening sooner to the ways that technology is impacting childhood.
[Screenshot: Less Awkward]
They’ve launched a school-based health education course called That Health Class that provides teachers with the tools to educate kids from fourth grade to high school. They’ve tailored the content to each age, and go beyond biology to consider the sociocultural aspects of puberty. Fifth graders will learn about physical anatomy and periods, but there are also modules about body image, social media, and consent in relationships. By the time kids get to eighth grade, there is a module about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and how to prevent them. “Sex ed is not reliable if its outdated,” Natterson says. “We’re trying to offer relatable content in whatever form a kid and their trusted adults can best receive it.”
The curriculum comes with decks and videos that teachers can use in the classroom, as well as professional development content for the educators. And it also gives access to The Hub, so parents can view parallel lessons, allowing them to understand what their childrenare learning and engage them in conversations. “The kids need to be educated about modern puberty, but so do teachers who are teaching them,” Natterson says.
While Fenton applauds Less Awkward for helping to spread knowledge about puberty and make the concept less terrifying, she hopes theyand other puberty educatorscontinue to make a lot of their content free. “I’m always a little worried education is available to parents who have the resources, even though every parent needs it,” she says. “We should be trying to make as much high-quality, reliable information as possible free.”
If there’s one message that Bennett wants people to take away from the whole Less Awkward approach, it’s that puberty doesn’t have to be such a difficult time for children, parents, and their teachers. In her experience, it can also be a very rich time of connection between children and their parents, laying the foundation for a deeper lifelong relationship. But to get there, we need to rewrite the cultural narrative about puberty. “We all have baggage and trauma from these years,” Bennett says. “But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can rewrite the script.”
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is ready to spill the tea in a new newsletter.
Called The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, the revamped newsletter for the popular morning show on the network that will soon be called MS NOW (the name change is official on November 15, the network says) took its inspiration from the world of print magazines. It’s designed to be part of a larger flywheel to grow and connect with the show’s audience.
We wanted something that was visually arresting, that was simple, elegant, and that people could read and get insight from, Scarborough tells Fast Company.
[Image: courtesy The Tea]
The newsletter will be sent in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, and feature daily, original illustrations from illustrator Natalie Sanders. Scarborough says if the secret to Julia Child’s cooking is butter, butter, and butter, the secret to the newsletter will be white space, white space, and white space. This isn’t meant to be a dense newsletter.
I dont want picture, block of text, picture, block of text, picture block of text, Scarborough says, adding that editor Graydon Carters work at Vanity Fair and the newsletter Air Mail was a bit of an inspiration for me.
I liked how he still focused on the visual, he says.
As MSNBC’s outgoing parent company, Comcasts NBCUniversal, splits into two, its cable portfolioconsisting of MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, E!, SyFy, and the Golf Channelis becoming an independent company called Versant. That means for the first time in its 30-year history, MSNBC is operating independently from NBC News.
Per the breakup agreement, the liberal-leaning cable news and opinion network has to drop the “NBC” from its name, hence the rebrand to MS NOW, an acronym for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.” It has built out its own Washington bureau for news gathering and signed a multiyear deal with the London-based Sky News for international coverage, and the shows are adapting to a future in which an increasing number of people watch clips online instead of on traditional TV.
Standing on its own also means MS NOW shows will need to build deeper relationships with their audiences and find new revenue models at a time when cable subscribers continue to cut their cords. Already, the network is building a live events business as a new revenue line, and the Morning Joe newsletter shows how it’s building new digital products to be integrated with the show.
The Tea extends the Morning Joe brand into the afternoon, with each issue including one daily video from the morning’s show, and it also gives the hosts a direct line to their audience.
Subscribers will get exclusive invites to virtual town halls with Scarborough, cohosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, and others, and each issue will include a form for reader questions that the network says will be answered in future issues or shows.
Scarborough says the look of the newsletter is a bit more avant-garde than any cable news show, and considering he’s no longer working for a traditional TV news conglomerate parent company, like GE or Comcast, he’s rethinking the tone and approach he can take with the newsletter.
Scarborough says he told MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler that we’re going to be taking chances, and I can’t have people freaking out every day. He tested the network’s front office in a mock-up prototype newsletter that dropped an f-bomb in the daily quote section. The only questions they got back from the mock-up issue were technical, like about wrapping the text around the images, but there were no qualms about the expletive.
That is like, whoa, we’re not in Kansas anymore, baby, Scarborough says. I do want something that is going to be culturally relevant, politically relevant, wherever that may be, and they’re giving us freedom to do that.
He describes the mentality of Versant as that of a startup and says it’s radically different than what we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
When considering names for the newsletter, Scarborough says he and his team considered names that played off Morning Joe, like The Press, but The Tea seemed to better capture the tone he was going for.
Everybody said, Oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. It’s not serious enough.’ I go, ‘Exactly, Scarborough says.
