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During one of the hardest nights of Rachel Plattens lifeamidst postpartum depression, debilitating chronic pain, and mental health challengesshe glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel. I was in my studio and reached the apex of I cant take it anymore, she says. The bottom wasnt there. I just kept falling. In that moment, this wail came out of me that turned into a song. I was crying, mercy to anyone who would hear me, to whatever God that was out there. Something was writing through me, she continues. I realized: Is there a purpose or meaning in all of this suffering? Am I being dragged down, like I was with ‘Fight Song,’ letting my roots go deep so that my rise can be tall again? I was in just as much pain the next morning. But that little seed of hope was planted that maybe theres a future ahead of me that Im living right now. Today, that seed has flourished into Plattens first album in seven years, I Am Rachel Platten, as well as an inspired mission of mental health advocacy. An award-winning singer-songwriter, Platten and her music is celebrated as a beacon of resilience, most notably with “Fight Song,” which has been streamed over a billion times. Her latest album captures her experience of parenthood, mental health, depression, and the strength discovered in the rising. She continues to bravely share her story through her North American Set Me Free tour, which began on March 17. Here, Platten shares how she alchemized pain into purpose, developed tools to gain agency over mindset, and discovered the question that transformed her creative process. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was illuminating to listen to Set Me Free and discover that its about self-liberation. What did you free yourself from and how do you keep doing so in your art and life? First, what is funny to me, is that I wrote that way before I could ever know what it felt like. My songs are often glimpses of what will be. Its almost like I prescribe myself the medicine that I’ll need in the future or the feeling that I’ll feel. So, I didn’t know what that felt like at the time. I felt a little bit like an imposter. It’s almost like the song, when I wrote it in 2020, should have been: I dont really care what you say or think about me She says, caring deeply. Now I actually feel that, and that took an insane mental breakdown to get to. Freedom to me feels like exactly that: Knowing who I am and being in a place where I can speak my truth. I don’t feel like I have to hold back. I know how to have boundaries, protect my inner child, and carry myself in the world where I’m not apologizing for my existence. Its not going along with what you say I should care about or what makes a happy life. That was a major wake-up for me. Think about how you feel when you get an award, approval, or recognition. For me, that feeling is buzzy, excited, and a little unstable. Think about how you feel when you are deeply proud of yourself. When you can recognize, put a hand on your heart and say, I approve of you and I’m proud of you just for being you. That feeling is calm and steady, solid, and stable. Why are we taught that we should chase the first one, when the second one is so much better? That’s my goal now: How do I get more and more of that second feeling? In discussing this album, you said: I dont need my beautiful body of work to be anything other than what it is. How do you create from an intuitive space and silence the internal and external voices? My second record on Columbia Records was very much the latter and informed by how I wanted to change people’s minds about who they thought the Fight Song girl was. I was trying to prove something in the art. Other than a couple of songs on that record, I didn’t get to write from that freedom. I slowly stopped writing from a place of: What does anyone need from the Fight Song girl? I changed from that to: I’m hurting so much. How can my music serve me, the way it serves so many other people? When I wrote from that place, it removed any kind of outside expectation, because I was like a starving soul in there, desperate for some soothing. The music and creativity became like filling a dry well. It changed from a laborious process of overanalyzing the words or rhymes and became an intuitive songwriting where it flowed more. That hadnt always been the case; Fight Song took me two years to write. I labored over that second verse so much. I wrote 10 different verses until I got the one that you hear on the radio. Now, I do create from a place of joy and freedom. Asking yourselfWhat do I need from my art?and notWhat does the world need from my art?is the question that really shifts it. Robert Henri said, The object isnt to make art. Its to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. What is that state for you? Do you do anything differently now that enhances your creative inspiration? Music is funny, because it goes from a deeply inward, private place to a very outward, extroverted place. We phase in between them. That’s what I do. Right now, I’m in the outward place and the creativity isn’t flowing like it was. But, I am also not asking it to. I know where I’m at in my cycle. I feel like Im a volcano in a way. I erupt with creativity. Then, I’m dormant. I used to judge the dormancy and feel like there was something wrong with me if songs weren’t flowing. I have taken all the pressure off my creativity and songwriting. I know that I am privileged to do that because I had success that supports me and my family. I understand that when I was in my twenties, and struggling to come up as an artist, it might not have felt like that. But, I wish that I could go back to that girl who was suffering and trying so hard and say to her: Enjoy it a little more. Try to trust the wave and ocean of creativity and how it’s going to come and go. Don’t push it when it’s not. Id certainly be disciplined. But, I’m a lot more patient with it. I trust now that if the muse wants to come, then I’ll start writing. You shared that to actually change something has to start with radical acceptance of what is. Real change only happens once you say yes to what is actually here. What helps you choose the path of acceptance? First, I want to attribute that quote to Tara Brach, who is an amazing psychiatrist. She has a practice called RAIN, which is an acronym that helped me so much: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. I dont know if its a choice. Its more of a shrug and dropping in, like: Yes, Im suffering. Yes, Im depressed. Yes, this hurts. This is a witness seat. Rather than the human seat, it’s choosing the seat behind you, who’s watching you, and saying: I’m watching a play. Thats what’s happening with this actor right now. It’s less of a choice and more changing your point of view. So much power and relief can come from that, because then youre not having the second arrow of shame, grief, or guilt about what you’re experiencing. The first arrow is the pain that you’re feeling. The second arrow is the judgment of the experience that you’re having. Its removing the secod arrow and removing half the pain in a way. There is a lyric in Bad Thoughts that says: Just because I think something doesnt make it true. How do you distinguish between the voices in your head? What has been most impactful in changing the dialogue and relationship that you have with yourself? I am a little ninja now when it comes to trying to get into my mind. I imagine myself with goggles and a headlamp, like: Who’s running the show today? There’s all these different competing voices, that’s inside all of usall of these different selves. Here’s the most beautiful part: I don’t need to understand what all the mess is in there. It’s like changing the seat again into the witness. Sometimes, I just need to witness it to remember: If I’m watching it, then I’m not it. I imagine this visual idea of me getting on a bus and in the drivers seat is whichever version of me that shouldn’t be driving. I imagine myself as the bus driver, being like: I’m going to take the wheel. You can still be on this bus, but you have to sit down and get your seatbelt on. You’re too young to drive. I’m calm and resourced. It helps me navigate my mind and remember that those are just waves. I’m the ocean. Mental health has become a driving part of your mission. What role do you want it to play in your life’s work? It feels like a narrowing, but it’s actually an expansion. It feels clear to me that this is where I’m going. Music feels like the vehicle. But, I feel like my life’s work is going to transcend music. Chasing the music industry, Grammys, and approval from tastemaker magazines is a fleeting thing. I’m not writing about how a guy hurt me. I’m writing about my mind and how I’m understanding it, the dark night of the soul, and the hero’s journey. It feels simple to me that I’m not supposed to try to fit in or be approved of by that anymore. I’m going to go in this direction and be of service. A theme of our conversation is the surprises on your journey these last six years, some from pain and others from joy. How do you feel about the surprises? Looking back, I feel a little bit of wonder that the thing that hurt so muchthat I cursed, sobbed, and had panic attacks aboutwas the gift that led to my songs Mercy or Bad Thoughts or being able to speak about mental health in such an informed way. That’s the place I’m in now. If you catch me next week, I might be back in: This Earth school sucks. It really hurts. But right now, for whatever reason, we’re meant to talk on this day when I’m looking back with a sense of gratitude and deep awe at how all of those things that seemed so unfair were actually giftsnot happening to me, but for me.
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If you’re trying to keep an eye on March Madness but you still need to get some actual work done, Google’s Picture-in-Picture Extension feels like a secret weapon. This free Chrome browser extension lets you move any video into a resizable, floating window that sits on top of anything else you’re doing. It’s perfect for keeping the games on in the background while still doing other things on your computer. How to use the Picture-in-Picture Extension Start by downloading the picture-in-picture extension from the Chrome Web Store. In addition to Google Chrome, it also works with most other Chromium-based browsers, including Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, and Microsoft Edge. Once you’ve installed the extension, here’s how to use it: Start playing a video. Click on the puzzle piece icon near the top-right corner of your browser. Click on the Picture-in-Picture Extension button. (You can also optionally click the pin icon so the extension appears right next to your address bar in the future.) Alternatively, you can skip the previous two steps by pressing Alt+P in Windows or Option+P on a Mac. Drag the floating video player to a convenient spot on your desktop, and drag the corners of the player to resize it. To exit picture-in-picture mode, click the “X” or “Back to tab” buttons in the floating window. Watch several games at once Chrome’s Picture-in-Picture Extension works only with one video at a time, which isn’t ideal for March Madness. The work-around is to use more than one web browser, each with its own Picture-in-Picture Extension. For instance, you can use Google Chrome to play one game, Microsoft Edge to play another, and Vivaldi to play a third. You’re limited only by the number of web browsers you’ve installed and how many simultaneous videos your computer can handle. What about Safari and Firefox? Apple’s Safari browser has its own picture-in-picture mode, no browser extension required: Right-click the audio icon on any tab that’s playing video. Select “Enter Picture-in-Picture.” This works only with one video at a time, so you’ll need to use additional browsers to watch multiple games. Mozilla Firefox has as built-in picture-in-picture mode as well, and it even works with multiple videos. Hover your cursor over any video, then click the small picture-in-picture icon that pops up. A word of advice, though: Keep the sound down, or you may have trouble getting anything done.
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E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Just a few years ago, iRobot, best known as the maker of the Roomba, was riding high, with annual revenue topping $1 billion; Amazon bid $1.7 billion to add it to the e-commerce giants home technology business. But that deal fell through, and now the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company has reported plunging revenue and steep losses, and recently warned investors of substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. With its share price down drastically, its now worth about $100 billion. How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuumwhich has sold more than 50 million unitsget into this mess? Although theres of course more than one answer to that question, a major factor seems to have been an ill-fated focus on dreaming up ways to move beyond the vacuum into new product categoriesall the while failing to keep up with new competitors in its core business. Sometimes, those rivals competed on price, but Chinese brands like Roborock developed cutting-edge models praised for advanced technology such as a LIDAR sensor (generally recognized as more accurate than camera sensors) and other obstacle-avoidance and spatial-mapping tech. In short: as iRobot matured, it seems to have emphasized the wrong sort of innovation. (The company declined to comment beyond public statements about its earnings and recent new product announcements.) Founded in 1990, iRobot released its first Roomba model in 2002, essentially inventing a new robotic floorcare category: a relatively affordable robotic vacuum that whirred around on its own, sucking up dust. It was nobodys vision of the future, but it caught on; some fans gave their Roombas names, treating them almost like techno-pets (and making endless cat-riding-a-Roomba memes). While it quickly attracted competition, the Roomba was long the clear leader, its name becoming a borderline-generic term for all robo-vacs. This popularity reached a peak in the COVID-19 lockdown era, when many consumers had way too much time to obsess about their domestic environments. By then iRobot had begun exploring (and pouring R&D into) new products, most notably a robo-mop, but also a lawn mower, air-purifying devices, and educational products. The company still looked like an innovator and its share price soared beyond $130 in early 2021, briefly giving the company a valuation of more than $4 billion. But the new experiments mostly didnt catch onwhile the robo-vac competition did. Several of the fastest-growing robotic-vacuum businesses are based in China, such as Anker, Ecovacs, and Roborock, all of which have eaten into iRobots share of the market. Lower prices were part of the equation, but competitors also brought design and technology innovations to the category, improving core functionality. While the whole category declined post-COVID, its growing again (in excess of 20 million units were distributed last year, up 11.2%)but iRobots global share has shrunk to 13.7%, compared to 22.3% for Roborock. Amazons 2022 acquisition offer looked like a lifelinebut the deal fell apart in January 2024 under regulatory pressure over competitive and privacy concerns. Cofounder Colin Angle stepped down as CEO, replaced by Gary Cohen, appointed to oversee a recovery-and-turnaround mission. Since then, the company has scrubbed most of those new-category initiatives and cut staff by 50%. Fourth-quarter revenue dropped from $308 million to $172 million, with a loss of more than $44 million; sales fell 47% in the U.S. and almost as drastically in its various international markets. Full-year revenue for 2024 was down 23%. (Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has criticized regulators treatment of the deal, essentially blaming them for iRobots subsequent woes.) In its effort to save itself, the company has shifted focus (and more of its slimmed-down R&D resources) back to its core Roomba products. Earlier this year, iRobot said it expected to grow revenue through new (vacuum-focused) product launches, and has stated it is negotiating with lenders and actively exploring other options. This past week, it released eight new Roomba models, including mop-combo unitsand its first versions equipped with LIDAR and AI technology. Prices, ranging from $300 to $1,000, seem more competitive with Chinese rivals. But as the company acknowledged in its earnings release, the fresh generation of Roombas isnt guaranteed to save the day, depending on consumer demand, competition, macroeconomic conditions, and tariff policies. If the robovac pioneer cant figure out how to navigate those obstacles, it may just get swept away.
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E-Commerce
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