As electric bills keep soaring, Trump has tried to blame clean energy for the higher prices. But new research suggests the public isnt buying itand that clean energy could soon own the affordability argument.
A new briefing from the nonprofit Potential Energy Coalition looks at how to talk about clean energy in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when some advocates have suggested talking less about climate change as a reason to move away from fossil fuels.
Renewable energy is, however, the cheapest form of powerand many people recognize this. In a survey of more than 15,000 Americans, the nonprofit found that 38% already recognize that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. Another 15% think that they cost the same, while 20% say that they dont know. Fewer than a third think that fossil-fueled power has a cost advantage. (When asked an open-ended question about whats causing the surge in energy bills, only 2% mentioned clean energy; the majority blamed corporate greed and politics, followed by weather and inflation.)
Cost-of-living concerns are viewed by many elites as an obstacle to talking about clean energyas a reason to run away or change the topic,” says Will Howard, head of insights and advisory services at Potential Energy Coalition. “But the reality is, shying away from the topic is the last thing we should do. Plenty of people already see the cost benefits of clean energyand with the right message, many more do, too.
The group tested various messages, including one that talked about rising demand for energy and the fact that clean sources are the most affordable way to get it. After seeing that message, the belief that clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels jumped up by 27 points.
Our messaging in the test was able to significantly increase the perception, which I think speaks to the fact that while there may historically be a green premium that people perceive, a really large amount of this is pretty movable, says Howard. People don’t come to this with a really firm understanding or a high level of confidence of their own understanding of the issue, and it’s fairly malleable. If you show them the right message, they can actually shift the way they’re thinking about these energy sources and the costs associated with them.
The nonprofit also tested messages about climate. Since Trumps election, both business and politicians have moved away from talking about climate change. Some climate startups quickly pivoted to rebrand their products as focused on national security. A recent Searchlight Institute report suggested that the first rule in solving climate change is “don’t say climate change.”
But Potential Energy Coalition’s research suggests that climate messages were equally effective, and respondents in their surveys were still as concerned about climate as they had been in the past. “If you’re looking at how much did you persuade people to take action on climate, or how much did you persuade people to transition to clean energythose two metrics specificallya message about the urgent consequences of climate change is just as effective or more effective than talking about affordability,” says Howard.
The research suggests climate advocates should weave in key attributes that resonated in the tests, including the fact that clean energy is local, unlimited, and proven. One mistake, Howard says, is that some messages talk about clean energy as new or innovativesolar and wind power have been around for decades.
“There’s a price tag that comes with being new, and it’s [also] the opposite of proven,” he says. “What we saw in the testing is that being provenwe’ve been trying to do solar for 50 years or moreand the fact that prices have come down so much over the last 25 years on these clean energy sources, is actually much more reassuring and drives affordability perception much more.”
Another challenge is that people sometimes balk at the idea of building new infrastructure because of the upfront costs. But because of the surge in demand for new power, the choice isn’t between building renewables or just leaving fossil plants in placeit’s building renewables or adding more fossil fuels that have volatile, increasing costs. “The first step is getting them out of that binary and leveling the playing field of like, okay, hold on, we have to build something. So what should we build?” he says.
The nonprofit, founded by a former corporate marketing executive who wanted to help tackle the problem of climate change, sees clean energy as a brandnot in the traditional sense of a company’s brand, in the sense that the phrase “clean energy” evokes a certain feeling and a shared public understanding. That brand is strong, Howard says.
“The clean energy brand is better than we think, and it’s easy to strengthen it further if we’re disciplined about emphasizing the right attributes,” he says. “Specifically, not being afraid to position clean energy as the cheaper, better choice because it’s local, an unlimited resource, and a proven technology.”
Visitors to dozens of Starbucks stores across more than 40 cities may be greeted with picket lines today as Starbucks baristas go on strike.
And its a strike that couldnt come at a worse time for Starbucks, as today is the companys annual Red Cup Day, which kicks off the Seattle coffee giant’s holiday sales season. Here’s what to know:
Whats happened?
Today, unionized Starbucks baristas went on strike at more than 65 Starbucks locations across 42 cities.
The baristas are members of the Starbucks Workers Union (SBWU), a collective that says it includes over 12,000 Starbucks workers across 550 unionized stores. The union says it has been in stalled negotiations with Starbucks over three primary issues.
Those issues include better working hours to improve staffing in Starbucks stores, higher take-home pay, and a resolution to hundreds of unfair labor practice charges for union busting.
The stalled negotiations are the main driver for the unions strike actions kicking off today. Both Starbucks and the Starbucks Workers Union blame each other for the stalled negotiations.
It should also be noted that Starbucks disputes SBWU’s claim that the union represents 12,000 members. Starbucks says the union represents “approximately 9,500 partners in 550 coffeehouses.”
The strike actions will initially involve around 1,000 unionized baristas, but SBWU says those numbers could grow as the strike progresses. And it is a strike designed to put maximum pressure on Starbucks leaders.
The strike kicks off today, a day that Starbucks designates as Red Cup Day, which kicks off its annual holiday sales. Customers can get a free reusable red cup with the purchase of a holiday-themed drink at a Starbucks store.
What does the Starbucks Workers Union say?
In a press release announcing the strike, SBWU representatives blamed the stalled negotiations on Starbucks.
Were turning the Red Cup Season into the Red Cup Rebellion. Starbucks refusal to settle a fair union contract and end union busting is forcing us to take drastic action, a Starbucks barista and SBWU member said. Were striking for a fair union contract, resolution of unfair labor practices, and a better future at Starbucks.
Michelle Eisen, a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, added, Starbucks knows where we stand. Weve been clear and consistent on what baristas need to succeed: more take-home pay, better hours, resolving legal issues. Bring us NEW proposals that address these issues so we can finalize a contract. Until then, youll see us and our allies on the picket line.
The union says it would cost Starbucks less than one days worth of sales to finalize a fair contract with its workersbut that is something the multibillion-dollar coffee chain has so far failed to do.
What does Starbucks say?
Jaci Anderson, director of global communications at Starbucks, told Fast Company in an email that despite the strike kicking off today, the company was currently seeing “minimal impact” across its stores.
Anderson went on to say that the company was disappointed that SBWU called for a strike instead of returning to the table for negotiations.
“Weve been very clearwhen the union is ready to come back to the bargaining table, were ready to talk,” Anderson said, adding, “Any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks offers the best job in retail, including more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits for hourly partners.
Starbucks also pointed to a November 5 letter published by chief partner officer Sara Kelly. In that letter, Kelly criticized some of SBWU’s proposals, including immediate pay increases of 65% as well as additional payments for other aspects of work.
“Some of the proposals would significantly affect store operations and customer experience, including the ability to shut down channels like Mobile Order when there are just five orders in the queue,” Kelly wrote. “These arent serious, evidence-based proposals.”
The company has also disputed SBWU’s assertion that it would cost the company just one day of sales to finalize the union’s contract demands.
When is the Starbucks barista strike?
The Starbucks barista strike begins today, Thursday, November 13.
How many stores will be on strike?
To begin with, more than 65 stores will see baristas taking part in strike action. However, that number could expand in the future. The Starbucks Workers Union represents 550 Starbucks stores across the country.
Where will the strike take place?
Initially, the Starbucks barista strike will take place at more than 65 Starbucks locations across 42 cities. The website No Contract, No Coffee has a full list and map. The cities are:
Anaheim, CA
Long Beach, CA
San Diego, CA
Santa Clarita, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Scotts Valley, CA
Seal Beach, CA
Soquel, CA
Colorado Springs, CO
Lafayette, CO
Des Plaines, IL
Evanston, IL
Geneva, IL
Alpharetta, GA
Roswell, GA
Chanhassen, MN
Minneapolis, MN
Saint Louis, MO
Brooklyn, NY
New York, NY
Columbus, OH
Lewis Center, OH
Reynoldsburg, OH
Upper Arlington, OH
Worthington, OH
Beaverton, OR
Damascus, OR
Eugene, OR
Gresham, OR
Portland, OR
Dickson City, PA
Lancaster, PA
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Austin, TX
Dallas, TX
Denton, TX
Farmers Branch, TX
Mechanicsville, VA
Richmond, VA
Redmond, WA
Seattle, WA
When will the strike end?
That likely depends on how long it takes Starbucks and SBWU to come back to the table.
With no set end date to the strike, baristas across more than 550 current union stores are prepared to continue escalating to make this the largest, longest strike in company history if Starbucks fails to deliver a fair union contract and resolve unfair labor practice charges, the SBWU warned.
This story is developing…
President Donald Trump signed a government funding bill Wednesday night, ending a record 43-day shutdown that caused financial stress for federal workers who went without paychecks, stranded scores of travelers at airports and generated long lines at some food banks.The shutdown magnified partisan divisions in Washington as Trump took unprecedented unilateral actions including canceling projects and trying to fire federal workers to pressure Democrats into relenting on their demands.The Republican president blamed the situation on Democrats and suggested voters shouldn’t reward the party during next year’s midterm elections.“So I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this,” Trump said. “When we come up to midterms and other things, don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”The signing ceremony came just hours after the House passed the measure on a mostly party-line vote of 222-209. The Senate had already passed the measure Monday.Democrats wanted to extend an enhanced tax credit expiring at the end of the year that lowers the cost of health coverage obtained through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. They refused to go along with a short-term spending bill that did not include that priority. But Republicans said that was a separate policy fight to be held at another time.“We told you 43 days ago from bitter experience that government shutdowns don’t work,” said Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “They never achieve the objective that you announce. And guess what? You haven’t achieved that objective yet, and you’re not going to.”
A bitter end after a long stalemate
The frustration and pressures generated by the shutdown was reflected when lawmakers debated the spending measure on the House floor.Republicans said Democrats sought to use the pain generated by the shutdown to prevail in a policy dispute.“They knew it would cause pain and they did it anyway,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.Democrats said Republicans raced to pass tax breaks earlier this year that they say mostly will benefit the wealthy. But the bill before the House Wednesday “leaves families twisting in the wind with zero guarantee there will ever, ever be a vote to extend tax credits to help everyday people pay for their health care,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would not give up on the subsidy extension even if the vote did not go their way.“This fight is not over,” Jeffries said. “We’re just getting started.”The House had not been in legislative session since Sept. 19, when it passed a short-term measure to keep the government open when the new budget year began in October. Johnson sent lawmakers home after that vote and put the onus on the Senate to act, saying House Republicans had done their job.
What’s in the bill to end the shutdown
The legislation is the result of a deal reached by eight senators who broke ranks with the Democrats after reaching the conclusion that Republicans would not bend on using a government funding to bill to extend the health care tax credits.The compromise funds three annual spending bills and extends the rest of government funding through Jan. 30. Republicans promised to hold a vote by mid-December to extend the health care subsidies, but there is no guarantee of success.The bill includes a reversal of the firing of federal workers by the Trump administration since the shutdown began. It also protects federal workers against further layoffs through January and guarantees they are paid once the shutdown is over. The bill for the Agriculture Department means people who rely on key food assistance programs will see those benefits funded without threat of interruption through the rest of the budget year.The package includes $203.5 million to boost security for lawmakers and an additional $28 million for the security of Supreme Court justices.Democrats also decried language in the bill that would give senators the opportunity to sue when a federal agency or employee searches their electronic records without notifying them, allowing for up to $500,000 in potential damages for each violation.The language seems aimed at helping Republican senators pursue damages if their phone records were analyzed by the FBI as part of an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The provisions drew criticism from Republicans as well. Johnson said he was “very angry about it.”“That was dropped in at the last minute, and I did not appreciate that, nor did most of the House members,” Johnson said, promising a vote on the matter as early as next week.The biggest point of contention, though, was the fate of the expiring enhanced tax credit that makes health insurance more affordable through Affordable Care Act marketplaces.“It’s a subsidy on top of a subsidy. Our friends added it during COVID,” Cole said. “COVID is over. They set a date certain that the subsidies would run out. They chose the date.”Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the enhanced tax credit was designed to give more people access to health care and no Republican voted for it.“All they have done is try to eliminate access to health care in our country. The country is catching on to them,” Pelosi said.Without the enhanced tax credit, premiums on average will more than double for millions of Americans. More than 2 million people would lose health insurance coverage altogether next year, the Congressional Budget Office projected.
Health care debate ahead
It’s unclear whether the parties will find any common ground on health care before the December vote in the Senate. Johnson has said he will not commit to bringing it up in his chamber.Some Republicans have said they are open to extending the COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits as premiums will soar for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies. Some argue that the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals rather than go directly to insurance companies.Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Monday that she was supportive of extending the tax credits with changes, such as new income caps. Some Democrats have signaled they could be open to that idea.House Democrats expressed great skepticism that the Senate effort would lead to a breakthrough.Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Republicans have wanted to repeal the health overhaul for the past 15 years. “That’s where they’re trying to go,” she said.
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the federal government shutdown at https://apnews.com/hub/overnment-shutdown.
Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown, Associated Press
Your pennies are now collector’s items.
The last penny was minted Wednesday at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, spelling the end of America’s longest-running coin design.
More than Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe or Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, it’s sculptor and medalist Victor David Brenner’s profile of Abraham Lincoln on the humble penny that’s actually believed to be the most-reproduced piece of art in the history of the world: the U.S. Mint estimates some 300 billion pennies remain in circulation. And even though no new pennies will be minted, the coin will remain legal tendergood news for those inclined to give a penny, take a penny at their local gas station.
The penny’s rise to government-issued pop art status begins in 1793 when the Mint’s first one-cent coin went into circulation. That first copper coin showed an image of a long-haired woman representing liberty, a design element that was mandated by law. The Coinage Act of 1792 required coins have an “impression emblematic of liberty,” though it was later changed, paving the way for Lincoln to be featured.
[Photo: National Museum of American History]
The design of the reverse side of the first one-cent coins in 1793 showed a chain of 15 links representing the 15 states in the Union at the time, but the links were swapped out for a wreath in later coins because the chains were misinterpreted for symbolizing slavery, according to the Mint.
The Mint says early coins from before 1909 showed personifications of liberty in the form of a woman rather than showing U.S. presidents in part because some lawmakers thought putting the head of state on a coin was too similar to the U.K. where the monarch is pictured on currency.
[Photo: Lost Dutchman Rare Coins/Wiki Commons]
In 1909, then-President Teddy Roosevelt marked the occasion of Lincoln’s 100th birthday by putting his likeness on the penny. Roosevelt selected the rendering by Brenner, a Jewish, Lithuanian immigrant who was then considered one of the best relief artists in the country, and who had designed a bas-relief of Lincoln based on a photo by Mathew Brady. It was the first time a President’s likeness appeared on a U.S. coin.
Since Lincoln took over, the reverse or “tails” side of the penny has rotated through different designs, including an image of the Lincoln Memorial by Frank Gasparro from 1959 to 2008. After that, the Mint introduced four designs representing Lincoln’s life in 2009 for his 200th birthday, like a log cabin, followed by the Union Shield to symbolize Lincoln preserving the Union in 2010.
[Photo: US Mint]
The Mint says the cost of producing a single penny has risen from 1.42 cents in 2015 to 3.69 cents in 2025, and President Donald Trump said in February he asked the Treasury Department to stop producing new pennies.
With the billions of pennies still in circulation, it will be some time before Brenner’s famed Lincoln portrait will completely be history. Even if you melted down every penny on Earth, you couldn’t get rid of it, because in 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover took one to Mars.
Denying reality is one of the most persistent, successful strategies in Donald Trumps playbook. It helped him inject ambiguity into an electoral defeat in 2020, dismiss his surging unpopularity more broadly, and contend he never said things he actually said on live television.
Some aspects of reality, however, are simply undeniable, such as the amount of money in ones bank account and how far it will go at the supermarket. Nevertheless, since Democratic politicians like Zohran Mamdani won big on November 4 with a message of affordability, Trump has been falsely insisting America has seldom been more affordable than it is right now. Its a messaging strategy that may prove an even bigger miscalculation than Trumps galactically fuzzy tariff math.
The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden, Trump said on November 7 during a summit with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The president has also insisted recently that every price is down, gas is nearly $2, and energy and inflation are both way down.
It should go without saying, of course, that none of this is true. And even some of the presidents historically reality-challenged supporters are taking notice.
High prices are getting harder to hide
Grocery prices are up, with record costs for beef and coffee. Gas prices are hovering around $3, having not come close to $2 since March 2020. Electricity bills are up 11%, and inflation in October 2025 was at 3%up from 2.6% a year prior. Also, while Trump keeps touting Walmarts reduced price on its Thanksgiving dinner this year, he refuses to acknowledge the sale is due to the company including less food in this years meal and a higher proportion of products from its Great Value private brand compared to name brands. (When an NBC reporter asked Trump about this discrepancy, he dismissed her question as fake news.)
As the high-spending holiday season approaches, and as people prepare to watch their health insurance premiums rise, its only going to get harder for Trump to maintain his sunny economic forecast without his supporters noticing the thunderstorms just outside their own financial window. It might temporarily help Trumps case that due to the government shutdown the U.S. will have to wait a while to get fresh economic data. Still, plenty of other economic indicators abound.
The labor market appears to be weakening amid slow job growth and massive layoffs. Consumer sentiment has slumped to its lowest levels since mid-2022around the time inflation hit a 40-year high under Biden. The share of first-time homebuyers has fallen to a record low of 21% this year. Even Trumps Treasury secretary, billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, conceded There are sectors of the economy that are in recession, which may or may not have earned him a private tongue-lashing for the ages. And one economic indicator that should especially concern the president is the uncharacteristically adversarial interview he faced on Fox News this week.
A new angle from Ingraham
Laura Ingraham is typically one of Trumps staunchest defenders on the network, where there is steep competition for the title. On November 10, though, she pushed back against the presidents claim that the economy is as strong as its ever been, asking why people are anxious about it if thats the case. Elsewhere, she questioned the wisdom of his recent move to raise the 30-year mortgage to a 50-year one, and threw shade at the constellation of chintzy gold nonsense now festooning the Oval Office, asking whether it came from Home Depot.
Before getting too carried away with the significance of this interview, it should be noted that Ingraham went right back to vehemently defending Trump hours later. Not all Trump supporters will likely have their concerns as easily assuaged, though.
It would be one thing if Trump simply deflected blame for high costs in 2025. He could trot out any flavor of low-effort spin pinning high electricity bills and persistent inflation on those dastardly Democrats, whose unfair and possibly illegal shutdown wrecked an otherwise perfect economy. But doing so would mean acknowledging that his vast and sundry collection of campaign promises about bringing down prices have gone largely unfulfilled.
Faced with the prospect of accountability, he is instead once again denying reality. As of November 11, for instance, the White House was boasting about positive economic data cherry-picked from the inaugural DoorDash State of Local Commerce Report, citing its four-item Breakfast Basics Index with the mic-drop confidence of total vindication.
People of all political stripes will occasionally swallow lies from their leaders like bitter pills, but sticker shock tends to be spin-proof. Although the economic outlook was indeed rosy for Biden in 2024, the former president had a hard time conveying as much to people hit hard by inflation. The reality in grocery stores looked a lot different than what some economic forecasters were reading in the tea leaves, giving plenty of single-issue voters a case of cognitive dissonance.
But if Biden faced a vibecession, Trump could be fomenting a real one. The gulf has widened between what the administration is saying and what people are experiencingand Trumps cratering approval ratings suggest that those feelings are bipartisan. Whenever Trump finally switches gears from denying reality to casting blame, some of his cash-strapped supporters wont buy it.
Believing the president might be something they literally cant afford to do.
How do you explain the laws of physics to a toddler?
A new children’s book, titled Simple Machines Made Simple, wants to demystify mechanical engineering for kids as young as a year old. It recently beat its Kickstarter goal by 700%raising more than seven times its target. It will be available to ship early next year.
But Simple Machines Made Simple isn’t your typical picture book. Instead of drawings, the book features working models that kids can interact with, like spinning a wheel, sliding a knob up an inclined plane, and pushing a wedge into a block that splits into two. The kids may not graduate with a physics degree, but they might come away with a curiosity for the world around them. “Maybe they can’t explain it, but it starts to build intuition for how things work,” says Chase Roberts, a computer engineer who created the book.
[Photo: courtesy Chase Roberts]
Roberts, who spent the better part of a decade making phone apps, moved away from technology in 2021 to more tangible objects that can teach kids basic and useful skills. His first book, Computer Engineering for Babies (2021), used buttons and LEDs to explain to kids how computers think by teaching them basic logic gates like NOT, AND, OR, and XOR. The sequel, Computer Engineering for Big Babies (2023), swapped buttons for rocker switches and introduced more LEDs to challenge slightly older readers.
Roberts was planning a third sequel when he caught one of his three young children catapulting cereal off a spoon one morning. The idea for a book about mechanical engineering was born.
[Photo: courtesy Chase Roberts]
Book vs. machine
Sooner or later, our children will find out they can learn how something works by simply prompting ChatGPT or asking Gemini. What, then, is the point of teaching them how pulleys or wedges or even computers work? For Roberts, it’s about instilling fundamental skills from a young age. “We still learn to add and multiply even though we have calculators,” he says. “My kids in elementary school are learning how to multiply and divide on paper because weve decided it’s still important.”
[Image: courtesy Chase Roberts]
To help both kids and parents look for “simple machines” in their everyday lives, Roberts has included examples for each machine in the book. Wheels appear in scooters, roller skates, and pizza slicers. Escalators and ramps are nothing but inclined planes. Shovels, knives, and axes act as wedges.
[Image: courtesy Chase Roberts]
“Being able to play with these machines, all together in one place, we’re giving it a name and drawing attention to how magical they are,” he says. “It’s pretty amazing that we figured out these ways to leverage the world. Theres this [lever] you can’t turn, but if we add a huge rod to it, it’s not that hard.”
Making engineering fun
Roberts’s books appear to have struck a chord. “I get emails from people all the time saying ‘This is my daughter’s favorite book, he says, even though his actual target audience is less the kids but the adults who buy the books for them.
[Image: courtesy Chase Roberts]
More often than not, his target audience is made up of engineers. In fact, Computer Engineering for Babies went viral after Roberts posted about the book on Reddit, specifically the Arduino subreddit, where people discuss everything related to the popular microcontroller that Roberts used in his first book. “I thought, Those are my people. If anybody’s going to appreciate it, it’s these guys.”
According to Roberts, his books tend to resonate with engineers not only because they speak the same language but also because they manage to repackage complex systems into something fun that engineers can finally share with their kids.
As it turns out, the best way to teach kids how things work is to play with them.
Data is an omnipresent facet of modern existence, yet the current discourse around it is often too technical, academic, and inaccessible to the average person. Speak Data, the book I’ve just published with my coauthor Phillip Cox, emerges from more than 15 years of living and working with data, both as designers and as human beings.Instead of a textbook or how-to manual for designers, we imagined a more accessible exploration of the human side of data, enlivened by the perspectives of experts and practitioners from many disciplinesfrom medicine and science to art, culture, and advocacy. In an era when we are all talking about AI, the climate crisis, surveillance and privacy, and how technology shapes our choices, we wanted to reframe data not as something cold or distant, but as something deeply personal: a tool we (as human beings) can wield to understand ourselves and the world better. The book explores what we call Data Humanism, an approach that brings context, nuance, narrative, and imperfection back to the center of how we collect, design, and communicate data.
In this excerpt, organizational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant reflects on how we interpret and communicate data, especially in moments of uncertainty, and why stories and emotions are just as essential to understanding information as statistics themselves.
Adam Grant is the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management and Professor of Psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Yet that impressive title barely covers the full breadth of his activities. Adam is an academic researcher, an award-winning teacher, a best-selling author, a podcaster, and a public intellectual. Hes interested in big human topics like motivation, generosity, rethinking, and potential. Hes also the author of six books, including the best-selling Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know. In this conversation, Adam talks about learning lessons from the pandemic; datum versus data; and how abstract numbers can lead to very real human outcomes.
[Photo: courtesy Pentagram]
As a psychologist studying organizational behavior, data is a tool that you use every day. What do you think people get wrong about data the most?
People often have a very hard time accepting data that challenge their intuition or experience. I always want to tell them that if the evidence disagrees with your experience, you shouldnt immediately say the data are wrong. It might be that youre an outlier, that your experience is not representative, and the data are actually revealing a trend that you simply dont fit.
A lot of my work relates to how people interpret social science research, because thats where I confront the general public. One thing I see a lot is people reading a study and then figuring, well, that study was done with a sample of only a few thousand people in this industry or that country, and dismissing the results because of that. This is basic confirmation bias and desirability bias. You shouldnt trust your personal opinion over rigorous evidence gathered across many people.
[Photo: courtesy Pentagram]
In an article you wrote for The Guardian, you describe arguing with a friend on the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. You wrote, I had fallen victim to what psychologists call binary bias. Its when we take a complex spectrum and oversimplify it into two categories. If we want to have better arguments, we need to look for the shades of grey. This is more or less what youre talking about. With all that in mind, what is the utility of data?
The analogy I use is medicine. Today we have evidence-based medicine, but once upon a time, medical professionals tried to solve problems via bloodletting and lobotomies. Thanks to randomized controlled trials and careful longitudinal studies, we now have much safer and more reliable treatments. With evidence-based medicine, people are living longer and are healthier.
So now look at how we interpret data from medicine. If you were to summarize all the randomized controlled trials of the average effect of ibuprofen on pain reduction and express the findings in the form of a correlation from -1 to +1, most people would think the correlation would be 0.7 or 0.8. After all, we have a lot of Advil in the world. But in actuality, an analysis showed that the average correlation was 0.14. Thats shockingly low to a lot of people, but the fact that its a small effect doesnt mean its insignificant. Thats the first lesson: Patterns in data do not have to be large to be consequential. You play that effect out over millions and millions of people, and a lot of people will benefit. And that benefit will be widely distributed.
Secondly, the treatment doesnt have the same effect on everyone. There are contingencies. So instead of asking whether Advil is effective, we want to ask: For whom is it effective? When is it effective? This question of when and for whom allows us to look at the data and say: This is real, but only under certain circumstances. Now we need to know how widespread those circumstances are. This is real for some people. What are the commonalities of those people?
The last lesson from medicine is that whats effective evolves over time. The problems were trying to treat can change. We need to update our evidence and ask: What are the best available data on any given question or for solving a given problem? Is there a reason why what was true 10, 20, 30 years ago may not apply today? I would still rather base my opinions on strong evidence thats old than no evidence at all, but we need to keep an eye on how things evolve as our contexts change.
Exactly. Whats the context? What are the nuances? Data is a snapshot in time. Tomorrow, or in a month, things might be different. Espcially when we see data represented in a very definite and defined way, we assume it has absolute power to always represent a situation. This became a problem during the pandemic, of course.
I think the biggest pandemic takeaway regarding the role of data is that experts and public officials did a remarkably terrible job communicating about uncertainty and contingency. I should have known it was going to happen. Chapter 8 in my book Think Again, which I wrote before the pandemic, was about how you dont lose trust when you say, More research needs to be done, or Here are the initial conclusions, but there are conditions under which they may not hold, or Here is what our initial trials suggest. Once weve done more trials, well update our conclusions. And let people know what that process looks like and how the scientific research is not only done, but accumulated.
This is probably the most useful thing Ive said to a friend of mine who is very skeptical about vaccines after three-plus years of debate. He would say to me, One study says this and one study says the opposite! My response is that you shouldnt weigh both sides equally. You should weigh strong evidence more heavily than weak evidence.
We need to be much more nuanced in how we communicate. We need to clarify where theres uncertainty. We need to highlight where there are contingencies. We need to be as open about what we dont know as about what we do know. One of the things we saw during COVID-19 is that source credibility dominates message credibility. People will believe a weak argument from someone they trust much more readily than a strong argument from someone they dont trust. One of the ways you become a trusted source is by very clearly admitting your uncertainty, showing intellectual humility, and expressing doubt where appropriate. I hope we dont have to keep relearning that lesson over and over again.
Whats your personal definition of data?
Data are information gathered through systematic and rigorous observation.
We love that you say data are. To us as well, data is plural.
A datum, or a data point, is one piece of information. Data are the collections of those observations.
[Photo: courtesy Pentagram]
To change the subject slightly, youve spoken in the past about the relative power of data versus stories to influence people and change minds. This is also something we think a lot about in our work. When do you think a really powerful statistic is appropriate, versus when a human story is going to be more effective? And when can they be combined?
Its a false dichotomy to say they cant be combined. My point of view on the responsible use of stories is that we should start with the data and then find stories that illuminate the data.
Stories are often more effective at evoking emotion. They allow us to distance ourselves from our own perspectives a bit. In addition to immersing ourselves in the narrative, they immerse us in a character. We get transported into stories, and we tend to experience them more than we evaluate them. Sometimes that can make people less rigorous in scrutinizing data, and that becomes a problem when the stories arent guided by data.
The more surprising data are, the more likely they are to capture attention. If you have data that challenge peoples intuition, youre much more likely to pique their curiosity. But you have to be careful, because, as the sociologist Murray Davis wrote in his classic paper Thats Interesting!, people are intrigued when you challenge their weakly held intuitions, whereas they get defensive when you question their strongly held intuitions. So theres nuance there.
From a visual perspective, we try to anchor stories in more aggregated data, but then disaggregate them by pulling out a couple of data points that can explain the context. By doing this in a narrative way, it can become more accessible, like a plot of a book. Thats really fascinating.
Another way to tell a story about data is to start with what people would expect, then lead them to overturning their assumptions. People often find that journey revealing and enlightening, and it can become an emotional arc.
Yet another thing Ive learned is to present a surprising result and then ask people how they would explain it. It opens their minds quite a bit: they generate reasons they find persuasive, and thus become active participants in the dialogue. Instead of preaching your view or prosecuting theirs, you engage them in the process of thinking like a scientist and generating hypotheses. I quite enjoy that.
Motivation comes and go, but consistency is what will get you the results. That’s a principle I’ve tried to live by for as long as I can remember. For the most part, it has served me pretty well. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that being consistent while being unmotivated can be energy draining. And when mental and physical energy is lacking, it can be difficult to be consistent.
Earlier this year, I found myself in a bit of a motivation rut. I’d had a very busy six months of work. As a freelancer, this is something that I’m definitely grateful for and don’t take for granted. When things started to slow down for a little bit, I figured that I would finally have the headspace to get started on some side projects and goals that had been brewing in my head. Yet despite being excited about them all, I struggled to find the energy (and motivation) to take consistent action.
Identifying the source
After a little bit of introspection, I suspected that two things were getting in my way.
First, my emotional attachment to the goals gave me too many excuses not to start. I wanted my side projects to succeed, so I could find all sorts of reasons as to why it just wasn’t quite the right time to start. And this led to the second point: I struggled to break down the goals into smaller steps, because I couldn’t stop ruminating on what might happen if the first step didn’t work out.
The solution was simple. I needed to be less emotionally invested in the outcome, and take those small steps consistently. But what’s simple isn’t always easy. After years of writing and editing about productivity, I’ve learned that sometimes you need to take the long way to get somewhere. In the past, I experienced many flow-on benefits from taking on a challenging and scary physical goal.
So I committed to training for my first boxing fight.
Establishing a routine and confidence
The fight I signed for required me to commit to a 12-week training camp, where I trained alongside other fighters of similar level (which in my case, is extremely novice as I’d only started boxing seriously for about six months prior). For the first four weeks, I didn’t have the energy to do anything else beyond training and my freelance work. It took a little bit of time to get my body and mind to adapt to the physical load, dial in my nutrition, and understand how to recover. All so I can do it all over again the next day.
But halfway through the training camp, my mind and body started to adapt. I noticed that I started to have more mental energy to work towards the side projects I’d been putting off. First, I was able to break down my goals into tiny, little, doable steps. Once I did that, I could finally start to take small actions. I also stopped overthinking about what would happen.
The flow-on effects of setting a low-stakes goal
I was familiar with the concept of habit-stacking, a term that means stacking new behaviors to existing habits. For example, say you have a habit of eating dinner at 6 p.m. You can “stack” going for a walk after your meal if you wanted to add some more physical activity to your day.
But I wondered whether there was a similar rationale when it comes to goal-stacking. I was especially curious about the impact that setting a low-stakes goal can have on working towards a higher stakes one.
Dr. Gina Cleo, habit researcher and author of The Habit Revolution, said that there is.
“When we take on a low-stakes goal, like training for a boxing match or learning a new skill just for fun, it can reignite our sense of agency,” she says. “We experience progress, mastery, and momentum in one domain, which spills over into others.”
“This happens because success triggers a release of dopamine, the brains motivation and reward chemical. Once that circuit is active, it improves focus, confidence, and willingness to take on challenges elsewhere. So a seemingly small or playful goal can become a catalyst for renewed energy and drive in the areas that feel ‘heavier’ or higher-pressure,” she goes on to say.
The power of taking small actions
The idea of mastery in boxing feels a long, long way away. But as a novice fighter, I’m acutely aware of every incremental and tiny progress. I’m still a few weeks away from my fight, but stacking a series of small improvements week by week has triggered a sense of momentum. I could then leverage that to take action in other parts of my life, like starting my side projects. Dr. Cleo explains, “Progress creates what psychologists call a ‘success loop.’ As you start ticking off small wins, your brain registers that youre capable, and that confidence fuels motivation for other goals.”
It was a powerful reminder that sometimes, all it takes is a series of small actions to trigger bigger ones. This is a practice that Leo Shen, engineering graduate turned elite amateur boxer (and my boxing coach), implements in his own life.
For him, the foundational goal is finding small ways to control your environment. That might mean putting your running shoes and socks by your bed so that it’s easier to go for a run. Or it could look like eating a nutritious breakfast that nourishes you so you’ll continue to do the same for lunch and dinner.
He says, “You create the environment where youre more likely to be disciplined, and then everything falls into place. Once you control the environment, then it becomes a habit. You have to stack the dominoes before you can push them over.”
Building a strong foundation
Pursuing a challenging physical goal has forced me to do exactly thatcontrol my environment so that I can train and recover to the best of my ability. In turn, those healthy practices have given me the mental and physical energy to make small progress on my professional goals.
I know that regardless of what happens on fight night, I’ve built a foundation and a routine that I can rely on. And as a result, I’ll have the energy (and motivation) to take consistent action towards something that once felt too overwhelming to start.
Delegation is supposed to get easier the higher you rise. In reality, it becomes challenging in a different way,
Common delegation advice is helpful for first-time managers, who typically have trouble letting go. But for senior leaders, effective delegation looks different. Its not about handing off tasks. Its about leading through a paradox. They need to stay close enough to align and coach, but they also need to step back enough to empower and grow others.
At this level, for many, the risk isnt micromanagement, but over-detachment. When youre too removed, you miss chances to align strategy, spot risks, or coach your leaders.
Delegation is about managing a polarity
These risks dont happen by chance. Theyre likely to happen when we dont see what delegation really is: a polarity to manage. Its a continuous balancing act of two interdependent poles, involvement and autonomy. Both are valuable. And there are downsides to doing too much of both.
That is the essence of polarity management, which Barry Johnson first described in his 1992 book, Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems. Yet it remains more relevant than ever for leaders today. Polarities are paradoxes and tensions you cant solve, but only manage, over time. Think speed and quality; short-term and long-term; stability and change. Two poles of a polarity are interdependent, so you cannot choose one as a solution and neglect the other, just like involvement and autonomy. To get the benefits of one, you need to attend to the other.
Senior leaders live in this paradox every day, but few think about delegation as the polarity it actually is. Its not about choosing between involvement and autonomy, control or letting go, but about continuously managing the tension between the two.
The trap of the pendulum effect
Most leaders have a natural preference. Some stay deeply involved, others pride themselves on giving their people wide latitude. Both preferences workuntil they dont. When theres too much autonomy, it can lead to organizational misalignment, missed risks, and late-stage pivots. But when theres too much involvement, that creates decision bottlenecks at the top, and team members can feel micromanaged and disempowered.
The actual trap is the pendulum effectleaders swinging from one pole to the other. If too much autonomy leads to drift, they jump back in and get more involved, potentially exerting too much control. When that frustrates and disempowers their team members, they swing back to being hands-off. And the cycle repeats.
Breaking the cycle requires a different mindset. Leaders need to see delegation as a polarity to balance. That means recognizing the pattern, anticipating the shifts, and proactively balancing the upsides of both poles before the downsides start to emerge. The art of high-impact delegation at senior levels, therefore, lies in cycling between involvement and autonomy. You need to be able to switch between the two depending on the stakes and context of the work, and trust in the relationships and capabilities of your team members. There is no perfect and stable point of balance. Its a continuous practice of adjustment.
How to show up differently
A tech company Ive worked with trained all its senior leaders to look at delegation through a polarity lens, while emphasizing that involvement was an integral part of their culture. Leaders mapped out their tendencies, learned to recognize early warning signs of leaning too much into one pole, and experimented with new ways of showing up.
A few big shifts stood out:
Where they showed up changed
They realized involvement wasnt about hovering everywhere. It was about leaning in with more focus and attention when the stakes were highest. This means critical work like high-stakes or unusually complex projects, when they need to coach, support, or provide people with stretch opportunities. This was also crucial during strategic moments when they needed perspective to align across the organization.
How they showed up changed
Instead of inserting themselves or taking over, leaders leaned on dialogue. They were:
Asking big-picture questions about context, impact, or purpose, like Why are we doing this? or Who else will be impacted?
Helping teams zoom out to see risks, interdependencies, and strategic connections.
Clarifying expectations and roles upfront, and using check-ins for alignment, problem-solving, and coachingnot just updates.
The result? Leaders werent doing more of the work themselves, as many had feared. They were actually influencing the work, bringing perspective, context, and coaching in ways that elevated their teams. Through modeling deeper thinking and strategizing, their teams started internalizing those behaviors and applied them independently, even when the leader wasnt present.
And once leaders got comfortable with polarity thinking, they started applying it elsewherecandor and care, stability and change, results, and relationships. They stopped asking which side was right and started asking how to get the best of both. That development shiftfrom either/or choices to both/and leadershipis what unlocks deeper effectiveness, not just in delegation but in leading in complexity.
Leading with the paradox
So how can you put this into practice? You can start by doing the following:
Reflect on your patterns. Notice when you overdo autonomy or involvement. Watch for the early warning signs: drift, misalignment, bottlenecks, and disengagement. Ask yourself the following questions: How do you intentionally cycle between the two poles, depending on context and capability? How do you ensure your involvement adds value without disempowering? How do you ensure autonomy doesnt become detachment?
Align expectations upfront. Be clear on outcomes, roles, responsibilities, and decision boundaries. You should also discuss and align around your work styles and preferences for updating and keeping each other informed.
Continuously calibrate. Contexts shift. Projects evolve. People grow. Ask yourself: What requires my attention right now? Where will involvement matter most? Where can I step back to create space? Trust your intuition and check in with your teams.
This cycle of reflection, alignment, and calibration allows you to balance both poles of the delegation paradox over time without getting stuck in either.
Delegation at senior levels isnt about handing off tasks and hoping for the best. Treating delegation as a polarityrather than a skill to masterhelps leaders embrace it as an ongoing practice.
Leaders who do this well dont ask, Am I delegating enough? They ask, Am I balancing involvement and autonomy in a way that serves the whole organization, my teams, and the individuals I lead?
College across the country may soon start seeing a much older demographic roaming their campuses.
According to a report from the higher education publication Best Colleges, at least 84 public or nonprofit colleges have announced they would merge or close over the past five years. Almost half of those are outright closures, as small colleges struggle to keep up with rising costs amid falling enrollment. In many instances, the shuttering of a college means the mothballing of its campus.
But while some campuses are being left idle with no future plans, a growing number are finding new life in the form of senior living facilities. That doesn’t mean just moving seniors into old dorm buildings. Some adaptation projects are showing that college campuses have room and opportunity for building reuse and building redesign to accommodate the special needs of senior residents.
[Photo: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO]
“College sites are absolutely prime because they have a slightly larger scale, they have infrastructure running to them, and they have open space that can be utilized,” says Sargent C. Gardiner, partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, who has worked on multiple college campus adaptation projects.
One of the firm’s most recent projects is the Newbury of Brookline, a luxury senior living community in Massachusetts built from and around the former buildings of Newbury College, which shuttered in 2019. Located just outside Boston, the campus centered around a historic mansion and had been used by the college since the early 1980s.
[Photo: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO]
Now, that historic mansion has been joined by a newly constructed six-story building that holds 159 units of independent, assisted, and memory care living facilities for seniors. Amenities include an indoor saltwater pool, a fitness center, art rooms, and a rooftop bar. Operated by Kisco Senior Living, the Newbury of Brookline has monthly rents that start at $10,000.
This project is part of a trend in higher education, particularly at smaller colleges, which are turning to real estate development as a way of buttressing their bottom line, or, in the case of closed colleges, finding entirely new lives. In dozens of projects across the country, colleges are turning over parts of their campuses for redevelopment as housing, and often senior housing.
[Photo: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO]
Old buildings, new use
On the campus of the State University of New York’s Purchase College, a new senior living facility recently opened that includes 174 independent living apartments, 46 villas, 36 assisted-living residences, and 32 memory care suites. In Denver, the closed Johnson & Wales University is now home to 154 units of affordable housing. More are likely on the way. Wells College in Aurora, New York, closed in June and one of the proposals for the property includes housing. Meanwhile, senior housing is also on the table for the campus of the College of Saint Rose, in Albany, New York, which closed in 2024.
On the campus of the former Newbury College, Gardiner says the project was carefully designed to fit into the campus and mesh with the existing facilities. It was also important to blend the architecture with the surrounding community, which has many historic buildings and classical building styles. “There are a lot of people embedded in the neighborhood that really care about the neighborhood, and really care about the architectural character. They don’t want to see it ruined,” Gardiner says. “It was very clear from the very beginning that they needed somebody that could talk the talk of regional architectural languages.”
[Photo: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO]
Robert A.M. Stern Architects, one of the foremost classical architecture firms in the U.S., has deep experience designing new buildings that fit their context. But while the central building of the former college campus is a historic mansion, the site itself has been a college for decades. That gave the architects the leeway to design a building with the look and feel of the historic structures in the area, but at a more institutional scale.
Uniquely, the building is much taller than its neighbors. “The central portion of it rises to six stories, which is unheard of in many senior living areas, especially in a suburban neighborhood,” says Gardiner. “But going up was the key to this project.”
It was able to accommodate a significant amount of units while preserving open space and a stand of old growth trees. “That allowed the project to just nestle in and sort of feel like it was always here,” Gardiner says.
[Photo: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO]
The height also opened up another unique amenity for the project, creating room for a rooftop deck attached to the building’s bar, where residents can go for an evening drink and take in views of downtown Boston in the distance.
All of thisalong with its tony locationis why there’s such a relatively high price point for residences at the Newbury of Brookline. It’s part of the appeal and the business logic of turning a former college into this new sort of campus.
But the concept won’t work just anywhere, Gardiner says. A big campus far removed from urban amenities or, importantly, good healthcare, may not pencil out as well as a campus that’s better connected or even in a city center. “The green acre sites may get gobbled up by some other use,” he says. “It’s these in-between, irregular sites where you can sort of squeeze the caulking in.”
As more colleges in these areas struggle to survive, this kind of rebirth may be just what their campuses, and older adults, need.
