The CEO’s role is evolving. Private equity is playing an increasingly influential role in shaping the expectations, performance, and tenure of CEOs. The financial environment is also changing, with influence increasingly moving from public markets to private capital. As private equity grows in importance as the dominant form of value creation, executives who excel at driving EBITDA and delivering outsize returns have become the winners.
In this landscape, CEOs are increasingly being measured by their ability to generate financial returns. But true leadership requires hitting more than financial targets. The most effective leaders understand that long-term success depends on balancing financial acumen with empathetic leadership. Those who fail to adapt risk becoming transactional managers rather than transformational leaders. Understanding this shift and defining ones leadership approach is more critical now than ever.
How Did We Get Here?
To grasp the challenges facing todays CEOs, we must examine the forces reshaping corporate leadership. Over the past few decades, venture capital and private equity firms have evolved from peripheral participants to key drivers of corporate investment. Alongside this shift, executive compensation has moved from salary-based models to equity-driven structures, directly linking a CEOs financial success to company performance. As a result, C-suite decision-making has become increasingly data-driven, prioritizing quantitative analysis over traditional intuition-based management.
However, prioritizing financial capital over human capital creates a leadership challenge: Employees do not share the same motivation for growth and profitability as CEOs. As PwC identified in a study on purpose in the workplace, employees and business leaders prioritize very different things. Employees today are driven more by meaning, community, and impact, while business leaders are motivated by growth, innovation, and differentiation. Human capital intangibleslike meaning, trust, community, respect, and culturedont fit neatly into a spreadsheet, and theyre hard to quantify.
What Teams Really Need
A few years ago, Google researchers put together Project Aristotle to better understand what makes teams successful. They analyzed 50 years of academic research and studied 180 teams within Google to uncover the factors behind high-performing teams. Expecting to find a formula for optimizing employee performance through data, they were surprised by the outcome.
The most significant factor they found wasnt quantitative at all. Instead, it was psychological safetya climate of trust and mutual respect in which employees feel comfortable being themselves. This insight, coming from one of the worlds most data-driven companies, highlighted the human side of leadership. Great teams and great leadership are more than metrics. They are about fostering an environment where people feel safe and valued.
CEOs Feel the Strain
While data-driven decision-making dominates the C-suite, the emotional and human aspects of leadership remain vital. And many CEOs feel the strain of this disconnect deeply.
In our 2025 survey of 150 CEOs, we explored their perspectives on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of leadership. When asked about their top business priorities, 73% of CEOs prioritized growth, and 70% focused on profitability. These are expected answers, in line with the hard metrics driving todays corporate world.
But when we asked what they personally worry about, the responses shifted toward the human side of leadership. CEOs were most concerned with issues like employee morale (65%), burnout and work-life balance (58%), board relations (53%), and ethical dilemmas (48%). These factors are crucial to maintaining a thriving, sustainable business culture.
Balancing Profit with People
Today, CEOs face the challenge of balancing their companys financial performance with their employees’ well-being. This balancing act has never been harder. CEOs are increasingly navigating complex and charged political environments.
Employees notice when their leaders prioritize profit over people or avoid taking a stand on moral or ethical issues. In some cases, the companys reputation becomes so entangled in external politics that it begins to affect employee morale and the perception of leadership.
This leaves CEOs balancing the demands of external stakeholders and their employees’ needs. When CEOs fail to take a stand or are seen as playing both sides, it diminishes their credibility as true leaders.
Integrating Data and Humanity
To succeed in todays business landscape, CEOs must do three things.
First, leaders must navigate this fundamental shift in the CEOs role as private capital increasingly shapes market dynamics. Leaders need to align their leadership style with more quantitative-led private capital expectations.
Second, leaders must better connect financial capital + human capital. There is a real opportunity to implement a leadership approach that measures and values emotional intelligence, and cultural metrics alongside financial metrics.
Finally, leaders need to focus on creating psychological safety to create high-performing teams. Psychological safety across the employee base will increase engagement, collaboration, innovation, retention, productivity and ultimately performance.
In 2025, this balance is not just a nice-to-haveIts the entrepreneurial superpower that will separate the disruptors from the disrupted. CEOs who blend quantitative financial acumen with data-driven team management will cultivate high-performance cultures that excel in times of uncertainty.
It took Duolingo more than a decade to grow its owl mascot, Duo, from a cute cartoon character into a social media star with tens of millions of followers. Then Duolingos marketing team did the unthinkable: It killed him off.The decision turned out to be the companys most successful social media play everand likely one of the widest-reaching social campaigns of all time, by any brand. Duo was originally created as logo in 2011, the year that Duolingo was founded. In the years since, the friendly (if occasionally menacing) green owl has grown into a layered character with friends, enemies, motivations, even a potential lover, and legions of fans. But on February 11, Duolingo announced that Duo was deadhit by a Cybertruck, fans later found out.This brand stunt was originally meant to roll out as an update to the apps icon (the cartoon owl appeared dead with his eyes crossed out), accompanied by a series of three videos for Duolingos social channels. Duolingo, after all, has a track record of building daring social media campaigns around its owl. Last year, the company rolled out a production-heavy April Fools prank promoting Duolingo on Ice, a fake musical for which the company made several very real music videos. This December, Duo starred in a collab with the the Netflix show Squid Game that saw him transform into a K-pop idol.But Duos death struck a deeper chord with users than these previous stunts. As the death notice began taking off on TikTok, it garnered thousands of comments from concerned fans, video responses from other brands, and even callouts on national news stations. As the reaction grew, Duolingos social media team saw the opportunity to build Duos untimely passing into something much bigger. Within a matter of days, theyd met with marketing, product, and engineering teams to spin the concept into a campaign of global proportionscomplete with localized ads, in-app integrations, merch, and brand partnership tie-ins. Candidly, we had three posts, and we were gonna post them and be chillingjust another day at Duolingo, says Zaria Parvez, Duolingos senior social media manager and the mastermind behind its TikTok strategy. The first post we did was a fake press release about Duo being dead. When we posted that, we saw that the user engagement was popping off. It was a number of impressions that wed never seen before. Then we were like, Okay, like theres a huge wind here. We need to build this narrative out even more.'In the two weeks between Duos death and the reveal that hed actually faked his demise, the Dead Duo campaign raked in a record 1.7 billion impressions across Duolingos socials in just two weeks. According to Duolingos market research, there was twice as much social media conversation around Duos demise as any of 2025s top 10 Super Bowl ads, which had aired just days before on February 9. Though the campaign was unprecedented in many ways, it followed a social media marketing recipe that Duolingo has perfected over the years: Combine a healthy dose of risk-taking with speed, agility, and, most importantly, a deeper brand story. For many companies, a mascot faking his own death would feel out of character or desperate. But for Duo, its right on brand.[Image: Duolingo]From Sick Duo to Dead DuoIn the past few months alone, Duo the owl has been roasted on a grill, shredded in a blender, and plagued by a terrible diseasebut this is the first time hes actually died. Duos recent ailments are part of the unhinged persona that has become his calling card online. In Duolingos early days, the company started using the owl to send push notifications to users, begging them to continue doing their lessons, often in a guilt-tripping tone. The internet spun Duos passive-aggressive personality into a meme (including one much-circulated image of him holding a gun).The company quickly embraced fans interpretation of Duo, building him into a much larger figure on the brands social media with his own cast of side characters. Duos defining characteristic is that he will do anything to get users to complete their lessonsincluding kidnapping their families and holding the Duolingo office dogs hostage. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn told Fast Company in November that he reviews anything where the owl is going to be in the product, and his feedback usually is, Can we make it weirder?This strategy has unlocked a new level of visibility for Duolingo on socials: The brands TikTok account added more than 6 million followers over the past year, while total social media impressions grew 80% year over year. Duos internet stardom is so significant that, in an interview last year for the Acquired podcast, von Ahn assessed the owls value at hundreds of millions of dollars.Duolingo is now bringing more of Duos social media personality into brand partnerships and onto the app itself, building out his lore along the way. Part of this strategy has involved occasionally swapping out the apps default icon (a picture of Duos friendly visage) for something unexpected that reflects Duos desperation for learners to come back to the app. For a brief period in late 2023, Duos face appeared to be melted, startling users. An for two weeks in September 2024, the Duolingo icon showed a sickly looking Duowith snotty nose and red-rimmed eyesinciting both disgust and concern from fans. In an email to Forbes at the time, a Duolingo spokesperson explained the birds illness: Duo is quite literally sick of reminding everyone to do their lessons, they wrote. But dont worry. His symptoms arent contagious, as long as learners keep their streaks going. Sick Duo content ended up generating 30 million impressions across Instagram and TikTok. The success inspired the product team to push the envelope even further with their next icon update. [Image: courtesy Duolingo]Move fast and break Duo In early January, the Duolingo product team began exploring ideas for an app icon change, looking for something next-level that would grab users attention. After a few weeks of brainstorming options, Gregory Hartman, Duolingos head of art, had a radical idea: What if they just killed Duo?Hartmans mock-up of a Duo with Xs over his eyes went into audience A/B testing alongside several other icon options, including an anxious, sweaty Duo and a chubby Duo. According to Osman Mansur, Duolingos senior product manager specializing in reengagement, the results of the test were relatively inconclusive: The icons performed similarly in getting inactive users to return to the app. So Mansur took the results to Parvez for her input.We really liked Dead Duo because there was more lore, more narrative, more story we could tell about that, Parvez says. We particularly notice that when an app icon change has a strong emotion or a characteristic that people can relate to, it creates more buzz.With Parvezs blessing, Mansur brought the Dead Duo concept to Duolingos senior leadership teamincluding von Ahnand explained that both the product and marketing teams had a strong intuition about the potential icon swap. Von Ahn approved the selection, instructing the team to Dead the shit out of it. Parvezs team had just six days to craft the content that would announce Duos death. We value speed at Duolingo, Parvez says, so our biggest goal as a marketing team is how do we get things the quickest from ideation to post?A Cybertruck crimeThe news of Duos death came in the form of a somber black-and-white press release posted across socials, set to Sarah McLachlans Angel. It proclaimed: Duo, formally known as The Duolingo Owl, is dead. The following day, a post revealing Duos cause of death showed him getting hit by a speeding Cybertrucka timely jab at Elon Musks Tesla, which has been on a downward financial spiral as Musk has become increasingly involved in the U.S. government. Three days after Duo died, the official X account tweeted, All birds go to heaven, with images of the former Twitter logo and Dead Duo. Duolingo responded, both killed by a Cybertruck. RIP. both killed by a CybertruckRIP https://t.co/578dWAWsWo Duolingo (@duolingo) February 14, 2025The choice of a Cybertruck as the instrument of Duos murder worked exactly as Duolingos marketing team intended. We wanted to find social-first ways to get the internet excited and drive conversation about these different parts of Duos death, Parvez says. Cybertrucks look funky. And it was like, This seems like something that would happen to Duojust getting hit by a truck.In a third video announcing Duos untimely passing, two of Duolingos other characters mournfully deposited Duos coffin onto the bed of a pickup truck. The videos caption read, Btw im deaf so i hope this is a sad song, while the sexually explicit lyrics of the song Good Lookin by Dixon Dallas played in the background. Those three posts were supposed to be the extent of the Dead Duo campaign. But the internet had different ideas. As news of Duos death reverberated across TikTokthe Cybertruck video raked in 25.7 million views and the Good Lookin video garnered another 66.3 million, making it the companys second most-viewed TikTokmajor brands like KitKat, Subway, BuzzFeed, Hilton, and T-Mobile jumped into the comments to offer their condolences. The worlds most popular YouTuber, Mr. Beast, made his own TikTok about Duos death (it now has 96 million views.) Traditional media, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, weighed in as well. [Image: courtesy Duolingo]Duos death also led to one of the companys most sought-after achievements: an acknowledgment from the pop star Dua Lipa. For years, a cornerstone of Duos lore has been his one-sided love for the singer. But just before Valentines Day, Dua Lipa responded to Duos death with a tweet that read, Til death duo part. To commemoratethe occasion, James Kuczynski, senior creative director, says Duolingo sent Dua Lipa a gift basket which included a box of Duos ashes (a packet of matcha powder). [Screenshot: courtesy Duolingo]Inside Duolingo, the team was ecstatic. Parvez received a Slack message from von Ahn: Dua fucking Lipa tweeting about us. That same morning, von Ahn also sent a company-wide Slack that read, It is with a heavy heart that I announce the retirement of the entire marketing team. As they said, theres nothing left to accomplish.Duo dies 100 deathsAs it turns out, the marketing team was just getting started. With the original Dead Duo videos taking off online, the Duolingo team decided to capitalize on the moment by building out a much wider campaign. The company began systematically killing off its other characters on TikTok. Within a couple of days, it had worked with its merch partners to launch limited-edition plushie versions of the dead characters, which came in coffin-shaped packages. Duos death also went international. The company leveraged its 13 localized social media accounts to create region-specific narratives around the owls passing, engaging global audiences. In Germany, Duos death had a creepy, cult-inspired twist: After his death, a group of smaller Duos resurrected him through occult practices and initiated him as their leader. And in Japan, where theres a higher cultural sensitivity around death, Duo never diedinstead, he became stronger than ever.[Image: Duolingo]Rebecca Paramo, Duolingos regional marketing director for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, says her team had all of two days to plan out their localized content and hop on the bandwagon. We pivoted most of the campaigns that we were already working on and partnerships with other brands, and were basically able to create an entire global and international narrative around Duos death, Paramo says.In Brazil, for example, Duolingo had previously lined up a major partnership with McDonalds that was set to drop around the same time that Duo died. There, Duos death was announced in a series of telenovela-inspired TikToks. When McDonalds saw the content, they were initially concerned for the future of the partnership. But Paramos team found a way to merge the two efforts: Duo appeared on a popular local TV gossip show to reveal both the McDonalds partnership and his resurrection. [Image: courtesy Duolingo]Duo rises from the deadDuo was never actually going to stay dead, of course. But as the buzz around his death grew, it became clear that the story of his resurrection would have to justify the hype. The team decided that the campaign needed to connect more directly to the apps language-learning missionand get fans involved.The weekend after the first Dead Duo post, several engineers worked to create a web page that would track the XP (experience points) that users receive when they complete their lessons, each of which are worth 20 to 35 XP. The page promised that users around the world could bring back Duo before its too late by completing enough lessons to rack up 50 billion XP. The site tallied the statistics by country, and ranked each oneenticing users to boost their countries standings. The engineers worked on it for hours over the weekend just to get us to the finish line, Parvez says. That speaks to Duolingo culture: When people started getting excited about it, everyone was like, How can we help? It became a company-wide effort.[Screenshot: courtesy Duolingo]While Duolingo is unable to share exact statistics on how much Dead Duo boosted in-app engagement before its first quarter earnings report on May 1, a spokesperson confirmed that the campaign drove a meaningful lift in new and resurrected users.[Image: courtesy Duolingo]Exactly two weeks after Duo first perished, fans revival efforts proved successful. Duo rose from the dead with a new app icon showing his eyes blazing with light, alongside a hype TikTok set to VVV and Playboi Cartis YEAT. In a subsequent TikTok, he addressed viewers himself: Ive always had two main goals: Get people to do their lesson and get Dua Lipa to notice me, Duo said. Neither was working. I had to do something drastic. So I thought, why not kill one green bird with two stones? [Image: Duolingo]Extreme DGAF brandingThe impact of Dead Duo surprised even Duolingo. The company had set a goal of 70 million impressions for the campaign, according to a spokesperson. In the past, Duolingos largest campaigns generated around 100 million impressions. Not only did Dead Duo achieve nearly 2 billion impressions on the companys own social media accounts, the campaign inspired around 160,000 pieces of user-generated contentabout 25 times the size of fan reactions to past icon changes. Dead Duo is a prime example of something that Fast Company has termed DGAF branding: A form of branding that eschews expectation and tradition in favor of all things wild. Examples include Pop Tarts sacrificing one of its pastries at the Super Bowl and Nutter Butters brain rot-inspired, head-spinning TikTok page. Already, other brands are trying to take a page out of the Dead Duo playbookSour Patch Kids recently announced that it would no longer be sour and would instead adopt the moniker, Patch Kids, before ultimately restoring its sourness days later. Still, Duolingo stands out in that, through its push notifications, brand partnerships, and social media content, its built Duo to feel almost like a real person (or owl) to fans. That level of connection is difficult for other companies to replicate.Duolingo, meanwhile, is taking its own lessons from Dead Duos resounding success. Mansur says its clear that the companys focus on creative speed is working, but the campaign demonstrated that marketing, product, and creative teams could benefit from collaborating more extensively.We have a very strong marketing team at Duolingo, and we have a very strong product team. But for a while, a lot of our work streams were kind of parallel to each other, Mansur says. This a really unique case where something that was within the product also had a larger marketing component to it, and required close collaboration. Were testing new things to strengthen this muscle of collaborating across different teams at Duolingo.For now, the team is still basking in the afterglow of Dead Duos successand taking a break from fielding countless questions from friends and family about Duos fate. From an outside perspective, its difficult to imagine where Duo could go from here. After all, there arent many moves more extreme than killing off a mascot worth millions of dollars. Parvez sees things differently. Obviously, as a marketer, theres always that fear of, like, Will we ever be able to one-up ourselves again? she says. But its also exciting. Its proof that, even five years into creating unhinged social content, weve been able to elevate it to literally a global scale where everyone was invested. I think the best is yet to come.
F. Scott Fitzgeralds masterpiece The Great Gatsby conjures up images of gilded Art Deco opulence: cloche hats and shimmering flapper dresses; a freeflow of French 75s and festivities. And thats thanks, in part, to kaleidoscopic films like Baz Lurhmanns 2013 adaptation of the novel.
But when you read Gatsby, you discover a less glamorous narrative that has perhaps been overshadowed by contemporary Jazz Age visual clichésone that is essentially a dark portrait of its times with a bit of rot at its core, thanks to the titular swindling bootlegger Jay Gatsby. And thats what luxe publisher The Folio Society sought to reflect in its brilliant limited-edition illustrated edition of the novel, which is out today on the centennial of the books initial publication.
[Photo: courtesy The Folio Society]
[We] wanted to move away from the sort of prescribed images that have been cemented in our consciousness, Folio Head of Editorial James Rose says. 100 years on, I think it’s Fitzgeralds look at the American Dreamand the abandonment of the American Dream.
NEW ILLUSTRATIONS CAPTURE THE BOOK’S DUALITY
Folio is known for its embrace of art, design, and high-end production, and for this edition they commissioned New Yorkbased Japanese artist Yuko Shimizu to bring the book to visual life. Rose says the publisher has worked with Shimizu before, and she has an innate ability to interpret a text and make it her own, as well as suss out hidden meanings and take an unconventional approach. Given that unconventional is exactly what Folio was going for with its interpretation of one of the most famous and well-trodden novels of all time, Shimizu was an ideal fit.
[Illustration: Yuko Shimizu 2025, from The Great Gatsby/courtesy The Folio Society]
Yuko got that instantly, Rose says. She didnt view the novel through the lens of the glamorous, glitzy jazz parties and flapper girls the period is known for, according to Rose. Once you peel back those layers, underneath it’s really quite horrid. [] She wanted to bring that out and actually show that behind all of this surface veneer of money and success, there’s actually a very dark undercurrent.
As the gilded first impressions fade, readers discover that the mysterious millionaire Gatsby is in fact a charlatan. The antagonist Tom Buchanan breaks his mistress nose. Then there’s the fatal car crash and the climactic murder. Rose says Folio gives its artists a large degree of autonomy, and Shimizu came up with a list of scenes to illustrateultimately bringing all of those above and more to life across 13 pieces.
When they came in, I think we were all stunned by them, Rose says. In her style theyre gorgeous yet tragicwhich strikes at the heart of the book at large.
[Illustration: Yuko Shimizu 2025, from The Great Gatsby/courtesy The Folio Society]
GAZING UPON THE AMERICAN DREAM
The Great Gatsby in the most literal sense of the cliché needs no introduction. So, Folio elected to commission an afterword instead of a foreword, especially since analysis of the novel could end up spoiling its biggest moments.
Who could you bring in to deliver an unexpected take on an unexpected edition?Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. Though theres more connective tissue there than you might think.
Chuck’s one of the foremost American novelists at the moment, and his books deal with that undercurrent of violence, Rose says. Particularly if you look at Fight Club, it is essentially about the male gaze on the American Dream. And this is just a continuation of exactly what F. Scott Fitzgerald was doing 100 years before.
[Illustration: Yuko Shimizu 2025, from The Great Gatsby/courtesy The Folio Society]
Rose says he wasnt sure what exactly Palahniuk would turn inbut he hoped it would offer a look at the book from a fresh angle, and thats exactly what the author did, exploring it almost as a morality tale, and (humorously, naturally) drawing parallels to everything from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to Rosemarys Baby.
We shoul all be able to lament as beautifully as [Fitzgerald] did, Palahniuk writes in the afterword. Regardless of shaping the future, we should all be able to revisit our past with such skill and humility.
[Illustration: Yuko Shimizu 2025, from The Great Gatsby/courtesy The Folio Society]
BOTH TIMELY AND TIMELESS
True to Folios output and its fan-favorite limited editions, the production is appropriately opulent.
Shimizu illustrated the exterior, as well, which features the green light at the end of Daisys dock, a signature thematic element of the novel. The book is bound in goatskin leather, with green foil and gilded edges. Its printed on Dolce Vita Ivory paper, with Sirio Pearl Cocktail Blue Moon endpapers (which is just the best name for any paperand I dont know why, it makes me think of Jazz Age cocktails, Rose notes.)
Each book is signed by Shimizu and Palahniuk, and housed in a custom cloth box that is screenprinted with a design by Shimizu in gold foil, featuring custom lettering by Atelier Olschnsky Grafik und Design OG in Vienna. The project was also printed and bound by Graphicom in Italy, which is renowned for its sheer craft and eye for detail.
[Photo: courtesy The Folio Society]
To keep things truly limited, Folio is only producing 500 of the books, which sell for $500 each.
We will never do a 100th anniversary, centenary edition of Great Gatsby ever again, Rose says. So for us, we need to be very forensic about the materials that we use and get them just right. We’ve got one chance to get it absolutely perfect.
Its a remarkably gorgeous objectand yet indeed contains illustrated horror right there on the case itself (those headlights . . . ), bringing the concept full circle.
A century on, why are we still so entranced by Gatsby? Rose says the class and social divides at the heart of the book persist to this day. These are timeless themes . . . so I think Gatsby has an unlimited ability to find its way into a new generation, he says. It’s not just relevantI think it’s slightly prescient for America today. Alarmingly so, perhaps.
The commercial starts with an actor sitting in front of a TV, remote in hand. Suddenly the world around her changes, and she changes, too, as makeup artists transform her from a couch potato to a Victorian-era lady to a skeleton buried in dirt. The time-lapse filming looks like AI, but its exactly the opposite. In fact, the 90-second commercialshot for BritBoxs first ever brand campaignis the product of a single, continuous shot that took 14 hours, 45 minutes, and 31 seconds, and was filmed with 11 different sets, at one frame per second using a precision motion control unit.The British streaming service is aiming to woo potential subscribers with its attention to detail and craft. Its new spot also feels like a protest or counterpoint to the waves of AI experimentation hype in film production we see flooding our feeds each day. The Brits are comingDiana Pessin, chief marketing officer of BritBox, says that while the platform has done a great job of growing its core audience of British expats, Anglophiles, and people who generally enjoy British content, now its time to broaden the scope. The streamer has topped the 4 million subscriber mark across the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Nordic countries. It reported 25% year-over-year growth between 2023 and 2024, and so far is seeing double digit growth between this year and last.Were at a point now where we really want to attract people that may not self-identify as liking British content, but they just like great content, says Pessin, who joined BritBox in 2023, after a long career at Warner and HBO. So much streaming marketing is clip-based, playing highlights from upcoming shows and movies, but Pessin says this campaign aims to avoid that.If we want to grow even a little bit, were going to have to make more of an impact and create sort of that intrigue and excitement, she says. We need to take a step back and really create a reason for people to pay attention because theres so much sameness out there. And so in some ways that clutter and sameness benefits us as a specialty streamer.[Image: Uncommon Creative Studio]The pitchThe brand campaign launches in time for a slate of anticipated series coming soon to the service, including the season finale of Ludwig, a detective comedy starring David Mitchell that broke U.K. viewership records, and premiered in March on BritBox in the U.S. and Canada. Theres also Towards Zero, a new Agatha Christie adaptation starring Anjelica Huston and Matthew Rhys, premiering on April 16. Created with agency Uncommon, the campaign includes national TV, broadcast, and cinema, as well as several billboards in Times Square, a takeover in the Moynihan Train Hall in NYC and The Grove in LA. Theres also IMDB takeovers, sponsorship of The New York Timess Wordle, and four custom cartoons with The New Yorker.Nils Leonard, Uncommon cofounder and chief creative officer, says that the goal was to do something purposely difficult in order to bring attention to what BritBox offers. We were really keen to make sure it was something that people saw, and from that moment on know theyre in the business of film and creativity and story, says Leonard. Were in an age where everyones talking about AI and how its gonna replace stuff, or about Apple and how amazing they are, and how much money they spend. So with this, we really wanted to try and do something different. Not out of vanity, but because it made it special, and we had one go at it.The one-take scene concept is having a bit of a moment right now, between the Netflix hit Adolescence, and Seth Rogens The Studio. Its filmmaking at its most intense. Here, Britbox is making it central to its pitch for new viewers who appreciate that intensity. We really wanted to take the brand to a more emotional space and tap into something unexpected, says Pessin. Something people will see as worth trying because they actually may find a lot of hidden treasures.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is getting nationwide pickup.
While cutting government has long been a goal on the right, DOGE has given that impulse a stickier, meme-inspired, brand name it hasn’t had in the past. Now, copycat efforts named after billionaire Elon Musk’s initiative to cut the federal government’s workforce and spending for President Donald Trump have appeared in more than a dozen states, according to a CNN tally.
Republican governors in Iowa and Florida both created task forces named after DOGE in February to cut government, while other elected officials adopted the term to describe their agenda, like Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor who described the state’s “Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025” as “Georgia does DOGE.” The Wisconsin Assembly’s Committee on Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency (GOAT) held its first meeting in March. While it’s not “DOGE,” its goal is similar and its name is also inspired by a meme.
BRAND BUILDING VOLATILITY
Drawing comparisons between state efforts to shrink government and DOGE might help Republicans at a local level nationalize state issues, but it also ties their efforts to a volatile national political brand.
A March NBC News poll found registered voters like DOGE more in theory than in practice. A 46% plurality think DOGE is “a good idea,” compared to 40% who think it’s a bad idea and 14% who aren’t sure, and there’s not a clear consensus among respondents about whether it’s doing a good job. The poll found 33% of registered voters believe Musk and DOGE have been “reckless and should stop now before more damage is done” and 28% believe they should “slow down to assess the impact,” compared to just a third who think DOGE should continue as is. A March Quinnipiac poll found 60% disapproved of how Musk and DOGE dealt with federal workers.
Politicians in majority-Republican states that franchise the DOGE brand for themselves could find the affinity politically useful. For those in competitive states or that represent communities especially affected by DOGE cuts, though, hitching their wagon to Musk’s efforts could be a decision they come to regret. If attitudes toward DOGE deteriorate, the political capital associated with the phrase could fall faster than the aftermarket value of a Cybertruck or the stock market after Trump’s tariffs.
Camb.ai is on a mission to disrupt the dominance of English in global media. Founded in 2022, the AI-powered platform specializes in real-time translation that retains a speakers emotional resonanceprocessing content up to 20 times faster than traditional dubbing services.
Major League Soccer now uses Camb.ais technology for live broadcasts. But the company has also found unexpected demand in markets like video advertising and the localization of interactive smart toys.
To power its growth, Camb.ai has raised $15.5 million to date. The platform now supports translations in more than 150 languagesincluding Maleku, spoken by just 500 people.
CEO Avneesh Prakash, who previously helped build Indias Aadhaar biometric ID system used by more than a billion people, cofounded the company with his son, Akshat Prakash. The younger Prakash, Camb.ais CTO, is a computer scientist and former AI/ML engineer on Apples Siri team.
Avneesh Prakash envisions a future where English is no longer the default language for media productionand where global audiences can access any content, in any language, on demand.
Fast Company spoke with Prakash about AIs potential to reshape global media, the complexities of preserving emotional nuance across languages, and why rare languages remain central to Camb.ais mission.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What misconceptions do people have about AI voice technology, and how do you address those concerns?
People are concerned about inaccuracies when using AI, but they often overlook that even human translators have flaws. When evaluating AI, people try to find that moment of Oh, it went wrong there. Often these are subjective opinions, and such analyses do not use a comparative benchmark of how human translators would do on the same piece. The best approach is to enable human translators with AI like ours so they can be 50 times more productive and help cover a large body of work that today remains locked up in one to two languages, like English.
What metrics do you use to measure success beyond traditional business growth indicators?
One way we measure success is the number of languages we can translate into. Our mission is to redesign the internet for speakers of every language. Thats why weve also put a lot of effort into our capability to translate rare or endangered languages like Icelandic or Indigenous languages like Maleku. We already support more than 150 languages for speech-to-speech translation and our goal is to grow this number three to four times over the next two years.
What advantages do you have in competing against large tech players and giant AI companies, and what are the biggest hurdles for you to overcome?
Compared to the household names in AI, we can make models that are hyperfocused on being the best at translation and dubbing. We are also focused on the open-source community and can use its feedback to iterate and develop faster.
The biggest challenge we face is one plaguing the entire AI industry: access to the computing power necessary to continue innovating. To remain competitive, we have prioritized building smaller models capable of being run on a users device, rather than the race to the biggest model in Big Tech.
Your recent partnership with Legible focuses on books. What other content types present the most compelling opportunities?
One unexpected opportunity were capitalizing on is translating advertisements (both picture and video). With traditional translation tools, its very difficult to translate ads in a way that makes sense culturally. A lot of advertising relies on metaphors, analogies, and cultural references. In the past, if you were to translate ads directly, a lot of the context would get lost in translation. Our models can overcome that hurdle.
What do you envision happening to translators as AI dubbing technology advances?
I envision a future where content creators and translators work alongside AI rather than work against it. AI will be able to provide a first draft translation, but there will always be scenarios (especially in literature and poetry) where a human touch is needed.
What’s a common assumption about the future of global content that might be flawed?
Most people assume content will continue to be English-first. While a majority of the global content is currently produced in the U.S., in English, with demographic and technology shifts, I see a future where a majority of the worlds media is originally produced in languages other than English.
Which unexpected industries or sectors have shown the most interest in your technology?
One interesting use case has been in the smart toy industry, where more and more toys are becoming interactive and AI-enabled. Localization in this context has the incredible potential of teaching children their own culture and language; this gets increasingly lost in the modern world.
Looking ahead five years, what do you expect to be the most significant change in how we consume cross-language content?
We will see all content available in all languages. If you go on Netflix or YouTube right now, youll see some content being translated or captioned into a limited number of languages. In less than five years, I expect we will be able to view that same content in tens or hundreds of languages on demand.
How does AI-powered dubbing/live translation fundamentally change the economics of global content distribution compared to traditional methods?
With AI translation, markets and audiences that were previously considered financially unviable now become accessible.
AI translation rapidly increases the speed at which content can be spread around the world. Weve seen our technology dub content up to 20 times faster than traditional dubbing agencies, so content can be released worldwide simultaneously.
Beyond cost savings, what unexpected benefits do you see for AI live translations?
Certain cultures have populations greater than that of the U.S. For example, the number of Bengali speakers is larger than the populations of many countries combined. In many such cultures, sports/content/media has the opportunity to reach everybody and unlock a new generation of accessibility and viewership for businesses.
Critics argue AI-dubbed content lacks the soul of human performance. How do you address this perception, technically and philosophically?
With our models, preserving emotion and soul has been the number-one priority. By training our models on both text and raw audio, the model learns how different words, punctuation, and context relate to various emotions and expressions.
For us, translation is a way to share human expression across cultural boundaries, and ensuring that we maintain the emotional meaning of speech is the essence of what we do.
Camb.ais mission is to let “every story be told in every language.” How might this reshape cultural power dynamics? Could a Gambian filmmaker compete more effectively against someone benefiting from Hollywoods global influence?
Exactly. Thats our vision. As technology like ours becomes more pervasive, I expect to see content that breaks the internet coming from all corners of the globe.
Major League Soccer used Camb.ai to live-dub commentary into four languages simultaneously. Is sports broadcasting reaching a linguisic tipping point?
Prior to MLS using our technology, there was very little appetite for using AI in a livestream context. This milestone has led to AI being considered a viable alternative for commentary and dubbing, and were now seeing more and more global sports organizations adopt the technology.
Whats your mission in competing in this ultra-competitive AI arena?
The internet was made for English speakers, and we decided to redesign it for the world. While language is a tool of diversity and hence evolution, it is also a tool of exclusion.
I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have the good fortune of going through an English-language education. I’m grateful for that, but I also see the unfairness of that. We created a company to disrupt that disparity. As noted in the film Ratatouille, Not everyone can be a great artist. But a great artist can come from anywhere. We are trying to create a world where a great artist born anywhere, creating anywhere, is able to take their content to any other part of the world.
When Anirudh Rao was 4 years old and living in Nashville, his friends house was destroyed by a tornado. A year lateryes, as a kindergartnerRao started sketching a potential solution for better tornado warnings.
Now 12 years old and living in Colorado, Rao is pursuing a more advanced version of his concept: a network of drones that could theoretically sense infrasound, a wave phenomenon emitted before and during tornadoes with frequencies below the threshold of human hearing.
On the outskirts of the city, therell be a base station and a network of autonomous drones that fly in all directions, says Rao. He envisions sensors detecting infrasound along with temperature, pressure, and altitude, and sending data back to the base station; if a tornado is detected, that information could go to local authorities to trigger an official tornado warning and push notifications on phones.
[Photo: courtesy Anirudh Rao/Young Planet Leaders]
Currently tornadoes are detected as they have been for decades: through radar and by storm chasers visually spotting them on the ground. But radar doesnt work perfectly. As storms have started to move east out of the traditional Tornado Alley in the center of the country (a trend that may be happening because of climate change), theyre also moving into hillier topography, where radar is even less reliable. As tornadoes are shifting eastward, theyre also reaching more populated areas, increasing the risk.
[Photo: courtesy Anirudh Rao/Young Planet Leaders]
Raos instinct to use infrasound is in line with the latest science. The idea isnt new, though until tornado patterns changed, radar had been considered good enough. As tornadoes move into hillier areas and it limits the effectiveness of radar [science is] refocusing on the potential use of infrasound, says Brian Elbing, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at Oklahoma State University.
Though it still isnt fully understood how tornadoes produce infrasound, you can pick up the signal before the tornado touches the ground, and it lasts the life of the tornado, Elbing says. And it carries information about the strength of the tornado.
[Photo: courtesy Anirudh Rao/Young Planet Leaders]
Rao’s theory is that rather than building large stationary sensors for infrasound, drones could cover more ground. “My bigger idea was to use the fact that infrasound produced by tornadoes travels hundreds of miles,” he says. “Instead of waiting for it to come closer and then detect it using Doppler [radar], drones can fly outwards in all directions to offer an opportunity to reach out to a potential tornado, thus reducing the detection time and increasing the warning time.” (He calls his concept Revere, named after Paul Revere’s warning during the Revolutionary War.)
There are challenges, including the fact that the noise from wind interferes with the sensors that detect infrasound. Rao argues that it’s possible to physically shield the sensor and then filter the signal. Altitude is another challenge, since the pressure would change as the drone flies, but Rao thinks that’s also surmountable.
Ebling believes that a stationary network of sensors measuring infrasound is more likely. It would be cheaper to use than radar, and more accurate, so people could feel more confident that a warning wasn’t a false alarm. As the science advances, he says it could be feasible to build commercial networks of sensors as soon as a decade from now.
Rao, meanwhile, is continuing to pursue his idea, while also working on an array of other inventions, from a sensor that could measure moisture in wounds to help avoid infection to a biomimetic surface for roads that could help ice melt faster. “I’m really interested in science, and I believe science can solve a lot of problems,” says Rao, who is a National STEM champion and was recently honored by a platform called Young Planet Leaders.
Le Creuset turned 100, and to celebrate, it released a new cookware collection in a hue inspired by its original color, Flame.
Named Flamme Dorée, French for “golden flame,” the set includes round and oval dutch ovens, a braiser, and a saucepan in a rich orange gradient with a shimmering gold finish. Prices for the Flamme Dorée pieces range from $310 to $860, which is more expensive than its standard linesespecially premium prices for what the company is positioning as a special occasion product.
[Photo: Le Creuset]
The French cookware brand was first known for its orange enameled cast iron cocottes, and it now sells products in a range of more than 200 colors. Last year it partnered with Pokémon and released its first ever out door cookware line. The original molten orange Flame color is its “signature color,” Le Creuset says, and Flamme Dorée is the modern remake. It recommends pairing the color with a deep rich green called Artichaut and White.
“More than just a color, Flamme Dorée is a feeling,” Le Creuset says, like warmth or light.
[Photo: Le Creuset]
Le Creuset teased the collection’s release with a social media post of vintage print ads for the original orange Flame-colored sets. Few brands have been around long enough to have colors they’ve been associated with for 100 years, so by reimagining the color for a modern take, Le Creuset is tapping into its heritage to make something new.
“Fiery, vibrant and globally recognizable, this celebratory hue pays tribute to the past while illuminating the path to the future,” it says.
Earlier this year, elected officials from 18 towns and counties devastated by Hurricane Helene gathered outside the Madison County courthouse in Marshall, North Carolina. Standing in a street still stained with the mud left behind when the French River overran its banks, they called for swifter state and federal help in rebuilding their communities.
Everyone stood in the chill of a late January day because the first floor of the courthouse, built in 1907, remains empty, everything inside having been washed away in the flood. The countys judicial affairs are conducted in temporary offices as local leaders wrangle state and federal funding to rebuild. Local officials hope to restore the historic downtown and its most critical public buildings without changing too much about it. They, like most of the people impacted by Hurricane Helenes rampage in September, dont doubt another flood is coming. But they are also hesitant to move out of its way.
When you talk about what was flooded and moving it, it would be everything, and thats just not realistic, said Forrest Gillium, the town administrator. Were not going to give up on our town.
They may not have to. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is no longer enforcing rules, first adopted during the Obama administration, that required many federally funded construction projects to adopt strict siting and building standards to reduce the risk of future flooding. The rules were withdrawn by Donald Trumps first administration and then re-implemented by executive order under former President Joe Biden. Now theyve been withdrawn by Trump for the second time.
The change eases regulations dictating things like the elevation and floodproofing of water systems, fire stations, and other critical buildings and infrastructure built with federal dollars. Ultimately, the rules were intended to save taxpayers money in the long run. Many other federal, state, and local guidelines still apply to the programs that help homeowners and businesses rebuild. Still, FEMA said rolling back the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard will speed up recovery.
Stopping implementation will reduce the total timeline to rebuild in disaster-impacted communities and eliminate additional costs previously required to adhere to these strict requirements, the agency said in a statement released March 25.
Trump rescinded the standard through an executive order on January 20. It had required federal agencies to evaluate the impact of climate change on future flood risk and weather patterns to determine whether 500- and 100-year flood plains could shift and, if so, consider that before committing taxpayer money to rebuilding. The guideline required building critical facilities like fire stations and hospitals 3 feet above the floodplain elevation, and all other projects receiving federal funding at least 2 feet above it, said Chad Berginnis, who leads the Association of State Floodplain Managers. The idea was to locate these projects so they were beyond areas vulnerable to flooding or design them to withstand it if they could not be moved.
Easing the standard comes even as communities across the U.S. experience unprecedented, and often repeated, flooding. Homeowners and businesses in Florida, along the Mississippi River, and throughout central Appalachia have endured the exhausting cycle of losing everything and rebuilding it, only to see it wash away again. The Federal Flood Risk Management Standard was meant to break that cycle and ensure everything rebuilt with taxpayer money isnt destroyed when the next inundation hits.
Why on earth would the federal government want it to be rebuilt to a lower standard and waste our money so that when the flood hits, if it gets destroyed again, were spending yet more money to rebuild it? Berginnis said.
Last fall, federal climate scientists found that climate change increases the likelihood of extreme and dangerous rainfall of the sort Helene brought to the Southeast. Such events will be as much as 15% to 25% more likely if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. With more extreme rainfall come challenges for infrastructure designed for a less extreme climate.
Youre going to have storm sewers overwhelmed. Youre going to have basins that were designed to hold a certain kind of flood that dont do it anymore, Berginnis said. Youre going to have bridges that no longer can pass through that water like it used to. You have all of this infrastructure thats designed for an older event.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said the Obama-era standard was developed because it is no longer safe or adequate to build for the flood risks of the past and with the rollback, the federal government is setting up public infrastructure to be damaged by flooding and wasting taxpayer dollars.
Officials across western North Carolina have expressed frustration with the pace of rebuilding while acknowledging that they dont want to endure the same problems over and over again.
Canton, North Carolina, continues recovering from its third major flood in 20 years. Everything that flooded in 2004 flooded in 21. Everything that flooded in 21 flooded in 2024, Mayor Zeb Smathers said. Strategies like new river gauges and emergency warning systems, coupled with land buyouts, have helped mitigate the threat.
However, mitigation brings its own risk. The town has seen its tax base dwindle as people who lost their homes moved on after accepting buyouts or decided that rebuilding was too much effort. When it comes to public buildings, Smathers struggles with the idea of moving something like the school, which has seen its football field flooded in each storm. He feels it is more cost-effective to rebuild than to move, and saves energy and hassle, too.
I dont think its a one-size-fits-all situation, he said. But in the mountains, were limited on land and where we can go.
Much of downtown Canton lies in a flood plain next to the Pigeon River. Smathers wants more flexibility from FEMA and greater trust in local decisions rather than more rules about where and how to build.
Though local governments fronted some of the cost of rebuilding according to national flood risk standards, much of that required work has been federally subsidized.
Josh Harrold, the town manager of Black Mountain, said the Obama-era rules werent onerous. Helene decimated the towns water system, municipal buiding, and numerous buildings and homes. We know this is going to happen again, he said. No one knows what thats going to be like, but we are taking the approach of, we just dont want to build it back exactly like it was. We want to build it back differently.
Harrold and other officials said they dont yet know how Trumps order rescinding the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard will impact reconstruction. And it comes as some municipalities adopt and refine stricter flood plain rebuilding rules of their own. In January, Asheville adopted city ordinance amendments to comply with the rebuilding requirements set forth by the National Flood Insurance Program. It is not clear what Trumps order might mean for that. City officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Berginnis said communities may not see immediate results from this changebut the effects will be felt in the future if leaders bypass the added protection it required: Everything that gets rebuilt using federal funds will be less safe when the next flood comes.
By Katie Myers, Grist
This article was originally published by Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here. The coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina.
The Minecraft movie is crass, dumb, and barely coherent. It also just made almost $163 million at the domestic box office over its opening weekend.
Video game adaptations have been on a hot streak in recent years. In 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed the billion-dollar mark, nearly unseating Barbie as the years top-grossing film. Amazons Fallout shattered records with 2.5 billion viewing minutes in its debut week. And now, A Minecraft Movie stands as the highest-grossing film since Deadpool & Wolverine.
Hollywoods obsession with intellectual propertyfrom comic book heroes to kids toysis nothing new. But for decades, video games were the outliers: critically panned, commercial duds. Thats no longer the case. Today, theyre becoming studios most reliable path to profit.
The long history of video game movie flops
While a few video game films trickled out in the late 1990s, the first major wave of studio-backed adaptations hit in the early 2000s. Many of these were helmed by German director Uwe Boll, who became notorious for a steady stream of critical and commercial failures. BloodRayne barely scraped together $3 million at the box office; Alone in the Dark grossed just over $12 million on a $20 million budget. In the Name of the King, starring Jason Statham, bizarrely carried a $60 million price tag but pulled in only $12 million. (Boll himself admitted that Alone in the Darkwith Christian Slater and Tara Reidwas not good.”)
By the early 2010s, studios leaned into flashy visual effects to boost video game adaptations. These films made modest profits but often alienated audiences. Max Payne, starring Mark Wahlberg, scored just 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and earned Wahlberg a Golden Raspberry Award (better known as a Razzie). Disneys Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, fronted by Jake Gyllenhaal, was pitched as the next Pirates of the Caribbean-style franchise. That dream died quickly after the CGI-heavy film was trounced at the box office by Sex and the City 2 and Shrek Forever After.
Around the same time, game developers began chasing global markets, especially in Asiaand most notably, China. That expansion opened new international audiences for video game films. The strategy peaked in 2016, when Universal released Warcraft. Though critics panned it and American audiences mostly shrugged, the film soared in China, earning more than $100 million there despite failing to reach $50 million in the U.S.
Even as box office numbers climbed, video game movies still carried the stigma of cheap storytelling and poor production. The late 2010s and early 2020s saw a mix of live-action flops like Mortal Kombat and animated crowd-pleasers like Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. They all turned a profitbut theyre often better remembered for their internet backlash than cinematic impact.
When gaming adaptations started soaring
Then, almost unexpectedly, these cash-grab adaptations started getting . . . better. Or at least good enough to justify their existence beyond box office potential. The Super Mario Bros. Movie didnt just rake in $1.3 billionit also delivered a viral hit with Jack Blacks Peaches. Critics may have panned Five Nights at Freddys, but audiences embraced it, giving it an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and contributing to nearly $300 million in global revenue.
Video games have also made major inroads into prestige television. HBO gave The Last of Us the coveted Sunday night slot, and the show went on to earn five Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series. Amazons Fallout became the platforms biggest premiere evereven surpassing YouTube juggernaut MrBeasts game show in viewershipand it, too, snagged a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series.
Now comes A Minecraft Movie. Is it good? Not really. But its a box office magnetjust ask the legions of middle schoolers screaming Chicken jockey! and causing public disruptions in theaters. Its the clearest sign yet of the genres evolution. Video game adaptations are no longer synonymous with bad CGI and low returns. Theyve officially entered the IP big leagues.
