Cities, and those who live in them, are clamoring for more green space, and the benefits parks, trees, and recreation areas provide. The Trust for Public Lands annual ParkScore report found nearly a quarter of Americans in the 100 largest cities dont live within a 10-minute walk of a park or green space.
While few cities have acres and acres of space to transform into parkland, they do have opportunities to create new types of urban parks, such as elevated parks, pocket parks fashioned from vacant lots, rails-to-trails projects or capping highways to create new greenspaces. New research, including exclusive project analysis for Fast Company, finds that these projects have a significant cooling impact, showcasing how these kinds of infrastructure interventions can provide some of the densest parts of urban America with much-needed cooling.
A study conducted by Climate Central on behalf of the High Line found that New York Citys iconic linear park offers unique cooling and shading benefits, in addition to the social and environmental benefits of adding park space.
High Line, NYC [Photo: Max Harlynking/Unsplash]
We always had a suspicion that we can also make our community more healthier and livable, and we wanted data around it, says Alan van Capelle, Executive Director of Friends of the High Line.
Researchers started by tracking the urban heat island intensity (UHII) of the areas surrounding the High Line in Manhattan. This measurement captures the additional heat created in urban environments by buildings and pavement, as well as density. Some neighborhoods near the High Line exhibited a 12.9 degrees Fahrenheit UHII, among the highest temperatures Climate Central has found after analyzing 65 U.S. cities.
But the parkvia the obvious shading impact from the structure itself, but even more importantly, from the additional shading, transpiration, and overall cooling benefits of so many additional trees and plantscut the UHII to just 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit along many stretches of the park, creating an 8 degree Fahrenheit cooling impact.
There was variance along the High Line, with areas that are primarily rocks and shrub exhibiting a less pronounced cooling impact, underscoring how its not just shading that makes the difference. And its not exactly news that parks provide cooling benefits to cities. But evidence that adaptive reuse parks in the midst of cities can achieve such pronounced temperature differences suggest that they can be an important tool for urban cooling.
High Line, NYC [Photo: Polina Rytova/Unsplash
Climate Central found that other such parks exhibit similar impacts. In exclusive research for Fast Company, Jennifer Brady, senior data analyst for Climate Central, applied existing data and research to a number of newer urban parks across the country and found similar cooling impacts.
Chicagos 606, an elevated rails-to-trails project on the citys near northwest side, may cool the adjacent neighborhoods 6 degrees Fahrenheit to 8 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the precise build type and density. Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which caps a highway adjacent to downtown and runs through one of the citys hottest neighborhoods, yields approximately 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 6 degrees Fahrenheit cooler temperatures.
The Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans and Railroad Park in Birmingham, Alabama, both located in relatively cooler parts of their respective cities, still cool adjoining areas by 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Chicago, 606 Trail [Photo: Shep McAllister/Unsplash
The design of these parksincluding shade structures, shading impact with bridges and overhangs, and of course plants and tree covercan make a big difference, said Brady. It also helps that much of this kind of abandoned industrial infrastructurecomposed of cement and old buildingsadds to the heat, so simply removing them reduces urban heat gain.
But it also shows that targeting particular dense areas with the most pronounced heat island effect can be done, and make a dramatic change. Theres always been a strong case to transform vacant lots and leftover lots in areas without park access, both from a recreation and health angle as well as public safety. Adding cooling and climate resilience to the list should make an even stronger case for more investment in these kinds of industrial reuse park projects.
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas. [Photo: TrongNguyen/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus]
Last year, the nations 100 largest cities invested a record $12.2 billion in parks; steering more of that funding towards these types of projects can have serious resilience impacts in an era of heightened climate change.
Van Capelle said theres currently 49 other such reuse park projects taking place across North America that are part of the High Line Network, an advocacy group for these kinds of green space projects. He sees the heat island mitigation impact as just another reason to advocate for and invest in these projects.
Being able to step out of your apartment and go into a cool location, being able to know that in the summertime, when the city can become uncomfortable, theres a place like the High Line that runs along a number of neighborhoods is vitally important, said van Capelle.
For 13 years, Subway Surfers download rate has been consistent: about one million new installs every single day.
Half of those downloads come from users upgrading to new devices. The other half comes from children aging into phone usage, and users in less developed countries reaching a level of affluence that allows them to purchase their first smartphones. This steady influx of players has made Subway Surfers the most downloaded mobile game of all time, with 4.5 billion lifetime downloads.
Recently, however, Subway Surfers traffic has arrived in more dramatic waves. In 2020, the app saw a surge of new users after TikTokers discovered a way to hack the game. In 2022, a 10th anniversary social media campaigncombined with a TikTok-viral no coin challengeonce again sent downloads soaring.
Mathias Gredal Nrvig, CEO of Subway Surfers parent company SYBO, understands the vital role social media plays in the games continued growth. Many of its early competitors have vanished: Draw Something and Zombie Farm are no longer on the app store, and Temple Run (which once inspired Subway Surfers) has stagnated. Through TikTok, though, Subway Surfers has kept its edge.
The fact that TikTok loves us means were also being rewarded by Apple and Google, because their algorithms see what trends on other platforms, Nrvig says. Its a flywheel of activation.
Subway Surfers social media dominance
TikTok is crowded with so-called brain rot content. These posts typically layer two unrelated videos: one showing a TV show or narrated Reddit post, the other featuring a video game. Also called sludge content, the videos lull the doomscrolling brain into a passive state, watching and listening as the parallel feeds play. Its like Cocomelon for teenagers.
@bekiedit23 #creatorsearchinsights #reddit_tiktok #aitastories #redditstoriestts #redditredings #reddittiktok #fyp #Aita #viral #edit #subwaysurfers #xyz #subway #subwaysurfersstorytime original sound – beki – beki
Nrvig takes a much sunnier view of these videos, saying they give you a moment of zen. They also frequently feature Subway Surfers, repeatedly bringing TikTok users back to SYBOs IP. Theres no clear evidence that these brain rot videos drive viewers to the App Store, but they certainly do keep Subway Surfers in the conversation.
[TikTokers] know were not going to go after them for posting our content, Nrvig says. We have a very different approach from other companies, where they do a lot more policing of social media.
Subway Surfers in-house social media channels are led by Celia Zimmermann, SYBOs head of player experience. While the company produces plenty of its own content across platforms, the team also spends considerable time supporting the flow of organically created content. Zimmermann describes the games openness as brave, noting that many community managers at other gaming companies dont have the same speed for green-lighting. We have IP that were able to be quite flexible with, she says.
This social momentum is especially important for Subway Surfers young audience. Many tween players gather on platforms like TikTok. SYBO does not track younger players directly, but Nrvig estimates anecdotally that about half of the games players are under 18. That figure does not account for the many kids playing on adult devices, which could push the percentage even higher.
Of course, not all social media trends are positive. In New York City, a TikTok challenge recently encouraged some young people to try hopping between subway cars. At least six people died in 2024 attempting the stunt. Nrvig calls the trend unfortunate and says SYBO would never repost or amplify dangerous content, though the company ultimately decided not to issue a public statement.
Train surfing has been a thing that people are doing in New York, thankfully very seldom, but we havent seen with our downloads that people think of it as something they can do in real life, Nrvig says. Its clearly a game, and a silly game at that, and therefore we dont have any direct connection to it.
Can TikTok keep a 13-year-old game on top?
Nrvig sees Subway Surfers as part of a standout group of Scandinavian mobile games. Theres Angry Birds, launched in 2009, and Candy Crush, which debuted in 2012. Both remain strong performers, though Subway Surfers download rate now outpaces them by a sizable margin, according to analysts. It also stands out as the only game in the group embracing such a deeply TikTok-driven strategythough it remains hard to say whether virality and revenue always go hand in hand.
While SYBO declined to share exact revenue figures, Nrvig notes that 80 to 85% of the companys revenue comes from advertising, with the rest gnerated through in-app purchases. Monthly active users remain relatively steadyaside from viral spikesat 100 to 150 million. With such a stable user base, revenue shifts at SYBO tend to follow fluctuations in the ad market.
Analysts are split on Subway Surfers future. Samuel Aune, a gaming insights analyst at Sensor Tower, supports Nrvigs view of long-term stability. He describes the games 10-year download curve as really consistent, especially when compared to its peers. Not a lot of games have lived 10-plus years, he tells Fast Company.
Ariel Michaeli, CEO of Appfigures, takes a more skeptical stance. Mobile game downloads have declined across the board on both the App Store and Google Play. But Subway Surfers has dropped a little bit more than everyone else, he says, citing the companys internal tracking. It used to be number one for a very long time. Over the last few months, it started slowly going down [the ranking] . . . Subway Surfers has been around for so long that theres fatigue.
And what if TikTok disappeared? That seems unlikely in the U.S. for now, with President Donald Trump having extended the TikTok ban deadline for a third time. But in India, where TikTok is banned, Subway Surfers had to pivot. Facebook is their go-to, and so is YouTube, so thats the place where we go to engage with them, Zimmermann says.
For now, Subway Surfers holds its lead. Nrvig argues that among todays top-ranked mobile games, it is the only one growing organically. Its steady stream of downloads continues, driven by strong, recognizable IP and smart social media strategynot by less transparent forces.
Were still the most downloaded viral game, Nrvig says. Everyone else has paid for their traffic to get on that list.
UX designers and product designers have very similar jobs. They both arrange digital parts. They both use Figma more than other designers do. And, according to a recent Fast Company analysis of design job listings, they start out with pretty much the same entry-level salary, around $70,000 a year.
But as their careers progress, those salaries diverge. Among job postings asking that a candidate have between four and five years of experience, the average salary offered for UX designers was about $123,720, while the salary for product designers was $149,850. By the time these types of designers reach more developed stages of their careers, requiring at least eight years of experience, UX designers are offered an average of about $153,920, while product designers can earn $197,579. Thats about 28% more for product designers.
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UX design vs. product design
To understand what might be driving the discrepancy in salary between UX and product designers over the course of their careers, it is helpful to look at differences in the actual duties that each type of worker performs, and how their careers typically progress. A UX designer is responsible for the feel and flow of a product, e.g. the user experience, while a product designer oversees both visual elements of an app or website and what types of features it should even have to begin with.
Alexander Benz, a UX designer, product manager, and CEO of Blikket, a design and development agency for DTC brands, explains that people who start out as UX designers tend to go on become UX managers, involved in the production of a products design system, or they become other kinds designers. But as product designers develop in their careers, they begin branching out into other parts of the business, interfacing with stakeholders from across the organization.
When you get into the product, he says, then you also have a bigger responsibility to . . . [take] in the ideas from stakeholders and manage more people in the whole process.” For example, while a UX designer might create a flowchart and visual style for a money transfer feature in a banking app, the product designer is closer to the metal, helping determine what components the app’s feature should actually containDoes it save a list of past transfer recipients? Does it autocomplete input fields?and so on, while considering the feature’s broader success metrics and technical constraints. “I think that is where the salary difference comes in.
UX designers everywhere
Another factor that could be contributing to the salary discrepancy is supply. There are simply more UX designers today than product designers. This may be because UX design boot camps, such as General Assembly and Springboard, proliferated in the 2010s, when interest rates were low, capital was cheap, and a new startup was seemingly being born every minute. These young companies all needed tech-savvy designers on staff to create their wireframes and user journeys, and boot camps minted them.
Boot camps are based on the notion that certain jobs require practicing and perfecting a mostly fungible set of best practices that can be deployed to any client. Boot camps are accessible, cheaper than college or graduate school, and have created hundreds of thousands of additional workers in their respective fields.
But while there were many boot camp options for budding UX designers, no such counterpart emerged for product designers. There is no oversupply, Benz says. Instead, product designers occupy roles in their companies that are more difficult to delineate. Their jobs require technical and soft skills that take more than a few months to master. There is no crash-course curriculum in product design.
More good news for product designers
Product designers are enjoying an extra advantage right now. Because their jobs cant be codified into a standard set of steps and principles, they are largely protected from LLMs. As language models become more sophisticated at performing junior- and, increasingly, senior-level coding tasks, they are threatening all sorts of jobs in tech. Its the jobs that LLMs dont understand that are arguably safest.
In other words, the very qualities that make UX designers a target for easy boot camps also make them a target for AI. And the job description of a product designerthe fact that the role involves constant communication with individuals inside and outside an organizationmeans that it is relatively more protected from automation.
For UX designers who might be looking for both a salary boost and a shovel to dig an anti-automation moat around their careers, it’s a great time to pivot.
This article is part of Fast Company‘s continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this year’s comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings.
When youre job-hunting for the first time, that old adagewho you know matters more than what you knowcan seem daunting.
In my two decades of helping new professionals access their desired industries, Ive learned that creating meaningful networks can start from scratchbut conventional networking advice doesnt always hold up. Instead, you need to emphasize your value. Heres how to tackle it.
1. Launch an Outreach Campaign: The 100-Connection Method
The most successful networking strategy I have observed requires a deliberate approach to building professional relationships. Develop a list of future workplaces within your industry, then aim to reach out to 100 of their professionals.
How to execute this:
Use LinkedIn, company websites, and industry publications to find professionals who work at your target organizations.
Build a system with a spreadsheet to handle your outreach efforts over a period of 36 months.
Develop specific connection requests that show your serious interest in their professional development, with personal messages via email or LinkedIn.
Dont request employment opportunities; rather, ask to hear about their professional path.
The majority of experts are willingand even eagerto discuss their careers with young professionals who make thoughtful approaches to them. When your outreach is authentic and specific, Ive seen a positive response rate of up to 40%. Once you start, make it scalable: Aim for 23 new connections per week.
2. Offer Value Before Seeking It
Young professionals fail to understand that networking requires them to provide value first before expecting anything back. Heres how to do it.
Offer industry trends to relevant professional networks during face-to-face interactions.
Connect professionals to contacts in your existing network, regardless of their network size.
Write blog posts, LinkedIn articles, or research summaries that demonstrate your understanding of the industry.
People naturally feel compelled to give back to you when you help them. When youre reaching out to 100 people, that multiples.
3. Use Technology to Remove Traditional Barriers
Modern technology has made networking more accessible to all people than ever before. Use these tools strategically:
Virtual meeting platforms: Geographic limitations no longer exist. Through video calls you can establish business relationships with leaders from across the country (or beyond).
AI-powered research tools: The combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and company websites and industry databases helps you find appropriate contacts and discover their professional backgrounds prior to making contact.
Professional transcription services: Use tools like Otter.ai during informational interviews to generate precise recordings, which enables you to maintain full attention on relationship development during discussions.
4. Master the Art of Informational Interviewing
The standard job interview places you in a position to request something from the interviewer. Through informational interviews, you provide an opportunity to acquire knowledge from professional expertise. Heres how to get the full use out of an informational.
Create 57 well-prepared questions that focus on your acquaintances career development, professional understanding, and industry advice.
Keep meetings to 2030 minutes maximum.
During the conversation, ask for the names of three professionals who can provide valuable insights.
Send a thank-you note to the participants right after the meeting.
Not sure where to start? These are some helpful questions to ask.
What changes has the industry undergone during your professional lifetime?
What are the most important skills that are rising to prominence in your field?
Who should I reach out to next in my industry exploration?
5. Transform Conversations into Lasting Relationships
Young professionals who succeed maintain valuable relationships from their business contacts instead of just collecting business cards. Turn these conversations into assets.
You should document the most important information that comes from your conversations.
Write about the lessons youve learned and share it with your network.
Develop a system for staying in touch with connections, whether that be quarterly check-ins, sharing relevant articles, or congratulating them on achievements.
Look for ways to reconnect contacts with each other when it makes sense.
Develop a personal advisory board from your 100 connections; 10 to 15 people will establish long-term mentorship roles. Nurture these relationships consistently.
The Long-Term Payoff
Recent graduates who focus on value creation instead of value extraction have successfully made industry-changing career transitions and built strong professional networks.
Begin by establishing one professional connection during this present week. Focus on what you can learn from them and how you might be helpful. Strategic and consistent relationship building produces surprising opportunities that surpass your expectations.
Remember: You’re not building a network to get somethingyou’re building relationships to contribute something. Its from there your network will grow.
Imagine you owned a bookstore. Most of your revenue depends on customers coming in and buying books, so you set up different aspects of the business around that activity. You might put low-cost “impulse buy” items near the checkout or start selling coffee as a convenience. You might even partner with publishers to put displays of popular bestsellers in high-visibility locations in the story to drive sales.
Now imagine one day a robot comes in to buy books on behalf of someone. It ignores the displays, the coffee kiosk, and the tchotchkes near the till. It just grabs the book the person ordered, pays for it, and walks out. The next day 4 robots come in, then 12 the day after that. Soon, robots are outnumbering humans in your store, which are dwindling by the day. You soon see very few sales from nonbook items, publishers stop bothering with those displays, and the coffee goes cold. Revenue plummets.
In response, you might start charging robots a fee to enter your store, and if they don’t pay it, you deny them entry. But then one day a robot that looks just like a human comes into the point that you can’t tell the difference. What do you do then?
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This analogy is basically what the publishing world is going through right now, with bot traffic to media websites skyrocketing over the past three months. That’s according to new data from TollBit, which recently published its State of the Bots report for the first quarter of 2025. Even more concerning, however, is that the most popular AI search engines are choosing to ignore long-respected standards for blocking bots, in some cases arguing that when a search “agent” acts on behalf of an individual user, the bot should be treated as human.
The robot revolution
TollBit’s report paints a fast-changing picture of what’s happening with AI search. Over the past several months, AI companies have either introduced search abilities or greatly increased their search activity. Bot scraping focused on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which is distinct from training data, increased 49% over the previous quarters. Anthropic’s Claude notably introduced search, and in the same period ChatGPT (the world’s most popular chatbot by far) had a spike in users, plus deep research tools from all the major providers began to take hold.
At the same time, publishers increased their defenses. The report reveals that media websites in January were using various methods to block AI bots four times as much as they were doing in a year before. The first line of defense is to adjust their website’s robots.txt file, which tells which specific bots are welcome and which ones are forbidden from accessing the content.
The thing is, adhering to robots.txt is ultimately an honor system and not really enforceable. And the report indicates more AI companies are treating it as such: Among sites in TollBit’s network, bot scrapes that ignore robots.txt increased from 3.3% to 12.9% in just one quarter.
Part of that increase is due to a relatively new stance the AI companies have taken, and it’s subtle but important. Broadly speaking, there are three different kinds of bots that scrape or crawl content:
Training bots: These are bots that crawl the internet to scrape content to provide training data for AI models.
Search indexing bots: Bots that go out and crawl the web to ensure the model has fast access to important information outside its training set (which is usually out of date). This is a form of RAG.
User agent bots: Also a form of RAG, these are crawlers that go out to the web in real time to find information directly in response to a user query, regardless of whether the content it finds has been previously indexed.
Because No. 3 is an agent acting on behalf of a human, AI companies argue that it’s an extension of that user behavior and have essentially given themselves permission to ignore robots.txt settings for that use case. This isn’t guessworkGoogle, Meta, and Perplexity have made it explicit in their developer notes. This is how you get human-looking robots in the bookstore.
When humans go to websites, they see ads. Humans can be intrigued or enticed by other content, such as a link to a podcast about the same topic as an article they’re reading. Humans can decide whether or not to pay for a subscription. Humans sometimes choose to make a transaction based on the information in front of them.
Bots don’t really do any of that (not yet, anyway). Large parts of the internet economy depend on human attention to websites, but as the report shows, that behavior drops off massively when someone uses AI to search the webAI search engines provide very little in the way of referral traffic compared to traditional search. This of course is what’s behind many of the lawsuits now in play between media companies and AI companies. How that is resolved in the legal realm is still TBD, but in the meantime, some media sites are choosing to block botsor at least are attempting tofrom accessing their content at all.
For user agent bots, however, that ability has been taken away. The AI companies have always seen data harvesting in the way that’s most favorable to their insatiable demand for it, famously claiming that data only needs to be “publicly available” to qualify as training data. Even when they claim to respect robots.txt for their search engines, it’s an open secret that they sometimes use third-party scrapers to bypass it.
Unmasking the bots
So apart from suing and hoping for the best, how can publishers regain some, well, agency in the emerging world of agent traffic? If you believe AI substitution threatens your growth, there are additional defenses to consider. Hard paywalls are easier to defend, both technically and legally, and there are several companies (including TollBit, but there are others, such as ScalePost) that specialize in redirecting bot traffic to paywalled endpoints specifically for bots. If the robot dosn’t pay, it’s denied the content, at least in theory.
Collective action is another possibility. I doubt publishers would launch a class action around this specific relabeling of user agents, but it does provide more ammunition in broader copyright lawsuits. Besides going to court, industry associations could come out against the move. The News/Media Alliance in particular has been very vocal about AI companies’ alleged transgressions of copyright.
The idea of treating agentic activity as the equivalent of human activity has consequences that go beyond the media. Any content or tool that’s been traditionally available for free will need to reevaluate that access now that robots are destined to be a growing part of the mix. If there was any doubt that simply updating robots.txt instructions was adequate, the TollBit report blew it out of the water.
The stance that “AI is just doing what humans do” is often used as a defense for when AI systems ingest large amounts of information and then produce new content based on it. Now the makers of those systems are quietly extending that idea, allowing their agents to effectively impersonate humans while shopping the web for data. Until it’s clear how to build profitable stores for robots, there should be a way to force their masks off.
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The Senate budget billalso called the reconciliation bill, or Trumps One Beautiful Bill Act is making headlines for its drastic cuts to Medicaid, its rollback of clean energy tax credits, and the fact that it would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. Its also threatening to take away millions of acres of public land.
Nearly 150 groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and local organizations like Alaska Wilderness League and New Mexico Wild, have urged Senate members to reconsider this unprecedented sell-off of public lands.
The Senate budget bill would be a fire sale of Americas public lands and waters, Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. The bill would force the sale of between 2 million and 3 million acres of public lands from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, acres that span 11 Western states. (The state of Connecticut is about 3.1 million acres, for comparison).
[Screenshot: The Wilderness Society]
The bill also makes even more public land eligible for salemore than 250 million acres, including hiking trails, ski resorts, wilderness study areas, national monuments, and critical wildlife migration corridors. New areas would also be opened for oil leasing and offshore drilling under the bill, including in the Gulf of Alaska.
If passed, the bill would likely be largest single sale of national public lands in modern history, according to the Wilderness Society. Its a move Senate Republicans are making, multiple groups note, in order to pay for billionaire tax breaks. The bill trades ordinary Americans access to outdoor recreation for a short-term payoff that disproportionately benefits the privileged and well-connected, the Wilderness Society says.
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, has also said the bill would create opportunities for housing. But nature organizations say it would do no such thingand that it would bring more harm to the public.
There is no provision to prevent lands sold under Lees bill from being developed into high-end vacation homes, Airbnbs, or luxury housing projects, the letter signed by dozens of organizations reads. Selling these lands, they add, threatens public access, undermines responsible land management, puts environmental values, cultural resources, and endangered species at risk along with clean drinking water for 60 million Americans and betrays the publics trust.
That 250 million acres of public lands are at risk can be hard to visualize. The Wilderness Society made an interactive map, showing both the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands the bill makes eligible for sale.
The map illustrates how those 250 million acres span 119 congressional districts, reaching all the way from Alaska down through the Western United States, and over past the Rocky Mountains.
This bill would lead to a wave of irreversible extraction that will rob future generations of public access to lands and waters that belong to all of usjust to bankroll tax cuts for the superrich, McEnaney said in his statement. As currently proposed, Americans will soon lose permanent access to the public lands close to home, their favorite trails, their parks, and their favorite recreation areas. Once these lands are sold, and the no trespassing signs go up, there will be no going back.
I heard its supposed to rain this weekend. How about those Cubs? Did you hear Ed, the escaped zebra from Tennessee?
If you groan at the thought of small talk, youre not alone. More than 70% of Americans said theyd prefer to just sit in silence over talking about the weather, sports, or current events, according to a survey by the online education site Preply.
While small talk is often viewed as the unnecessary fluff that comes before something real is discussed, that attitude doesnt do its importance justice, says Deb Feder, author of Tell Me More: Building Trusted Client Relationships through Everyday Interactions.
I think small talk is where the real is found, she says. Its where the depth of a relationship can really be cemented. Its taking conversations and allowing them to evolve by getting curious and by taking time to get to know others.
Small talk often takes place at cocktail parties or in a line at the store, but when its done at work, it has the power to accelerate your career, says Feder.
Our careers involve relationships, she says. Whether it is with a colleague down the hall, a boss or a client, you’re constantly interacting with people. Those small moments of conversation before or after a meeting is where banter happens. Its all part of your career.
Rather than quickly segueing away from small talk, Feder says you can use it to create and strengthen relationships. When we have relationships with people that we trust, we can get bigger results, she says. We can be invited to the table and to opportunities a whole lot faster.
How to Improve Your Small Talk
Talking about the forecast, baseball, or the latest escaped animal only gets you so far. To be good at small talk, Feder says you need to decide what you like to talk about.
Owning what you’re interested in and leading from there is a good start, because it allows you to relax and realize that there is stuff you know that you could share, she says. I ask people, If you could talk about one thing all day long that’s not work, what would it be?
Maybe youre a fan of a certain television show, movie, or book. You might be passionate about your dogs or a hobby. Or maybe you loved where you grew up. Feder says small talk can be anything.
Lean in there and just practice, she says. It can be relaxing to talk about what you enjoy. It opens the doors to get curious about other people and their interests.
Talking about what youre interested in shouldn’t become a monologue about yourself. Instead, it gives you a jumping point. For example, if you love to travel, you could start a conversation by asking, If we were going to plan this meeting anywhere else in the world, where would you suggest we go?
It opens up conversation and allows you to learn a lot about a person, says Feder. Sometimes people tell you about their hometown. Sometimes people tell you about some random mountain village far away. I like to think of conversation openers, rather than just a question that you want answered.
How Small Talk Boosts your Career
Small talk has the potential to improve your career in a few important ways, says Feder. The first is by deepening relationships within your team. The more you know the people around you, the more efficient and effective you can be.
For example, you may learn that a coworker isnt a morning person. In this case, you might ask for their help after theyve had their second cup of coffee. Or you might discover that your boss needs to get out the door right at 5 p.m. on Wednesdays to coach her daughters soccer team. You would know to not wait until late in the day to ask important questions.
Understanding the rhythm and the way that other people think around us can be a huge accelerator, says Feder.
Small talk also opens the door for improved client relationships because you can find topics that lead to future avenues for connection.
When you learn that somebody loves fishing or travel, you can remember to ask how their latest trip went when you see them next or send them a link to a relevant article, says Feder. It shows that you are interested in them, not just for the work, but as a human being. People appreciate that care.
Finally, one of the best things you can do to accelerate your career is to introduce somebody else to an opportunity or person who can be helpful to them.
Its less about you being able to do something for somebody, and more about spotting opportunities and sharing them with others, says Feder. The more you know about somebody from small talk or banter about work, the more you can understand which connections to make.
Small talk allows you to get curious about someone else. It allows you to add layers to clients, team members or executive relationships in a way that’s meaningful and natural. If you avoid small talk altogether, you lose the chance to build rapport and develop connections, says Feder.
Trust is built in tiny little moments, she says. You don’t walk into a room and say, Hi, trust me. We want to learn about the human being and how they show up as their whole self. Small talk can be fun if you decide it’s a great way to start a connection.
Marcus leads a team of eight direct reports, and Jennifer is his star employee. While the other seven team members struggle to complete tasks on time or in the way Marcus asks for them, Jennifer seems to ace any task shes given. She asks questions when shes unclear and owns up to her mistakes. Any time the other employees mess up, Marcus wishes he could clone Jennifer seven times and save himself the hassle.
Sound familiar?
You may not be able to clone your star employees, but you can help your team replicate the cognitive habits of people like Jennifer to build the skill of accountability across your team. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, weve spent the past year reverse-engineering what accountable people do from a cognitive perspective. Quite literally, weve asked, what are the cognitive habitsthe habits of mindof people who do this well? Three have come into focus: syncing expectations, driving with purpose, and owning ones impact.
In short, accountable people get clarity in what theyre supposed to do, execute tasks deliberately and intentionally, and learn from the outcomes they produce, whether good or bad.
3 HABITS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
When people attend to these habits in the course of their work, we call it proactive accountability. That is, they see accountability as a way to grow, develop, and innovate. They take ownership of their responsibilities and learn from their mistakes. Proactive accountability stands in contrast to punitive accountability, a practice in which leaders create environments of fear, blame, or punishment that hinder learning and growth, as well as permissive accountability, in which leaders assume performance issues will simply work themselves out.
Sync expectations
A major factor in cultures with low accountability is a mismatch in expectations. The manager thinks the team member will do one thing, but the team member thinks theyre supposed to do something else. Disappointment and broken trust follow.
In the brain, unmet expectations are processed as error signals. Levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine drop, sapping motivation and causing us to feel frustrated or angry, which forces us to adjust our expectations. When expectations are met, however, there is no error signal, dopamine levels hold steady, and trust and satisfaction remain strong.
The first habit of proactive accountability, Sync expectations, involves the employee getting clear about whats expected of them. This is an important first step because shared understanding is the foundation of being effective. In the brain this is represented by a temporary synchronization of neural activity, known as neural synchrony.
Relationship building
During neural synchrony, neurons in both peoples brains are firing in the same patterns because their minds are processing information in nearly identical ways. For this to happen, both people need to discuss and eliminate any potential misunderstandings before moving forward.
Syncing expectations also has benefits for relationships at the end of the project because fulfilled expectations breed trust, while unmet expectations erode trust. When two teammates sync expectations up front, they make an investment in sustaining the relationship long-term.
Tactic: Encourage your team to sync expectations by communicating in a way thats succinct, specific, and generous (SSG). SSG communication uses a narrow focus to support working memory (succinct); it uses visual, explicit language to enhance processing (specific); and its tailored to create ease of understanding (generous). Its not Get me this report by 5 p.m.rather, its Email me this report by 5 p.m. Eastern Time, and please attach the report as a PDF.
SSG communication creates clarity, which promotes synchrony and aligns expectations.
Drive with purpose
Once the leader and employee have synced expectations, the employee must own the responsibility to execute the task at the highest level. Highly effective people often do this by connecting the goal at hand to a higher purpose, and then working to create the right outcomes with that purpose in mind.
Purpose ignites motivation. When we know why were asked to do something, and we can see how the work creates a meaningful impact, were more intrinsically motivated to act. Compared to extrinsic motivators, such as money and status, intrinsic rewards, like a sense of accomplishment or mastery over a task, are much more powerful. Consciously or not, effective people find deeper meaning in their work to summon the energy to keep pushing.
They also act deliberately, rather than hastily, investigating as many possibilities as they can and assuming almost nothing. In addition, they check their biases to avoid making rash judgments. Since cognitive biases act as mental shortcuts, they pose risks for an employee completing a task effectively. Someone who acts with an expedience bias, for instance, might move too quickly and miss a crucial part of the work.
Tactic: Help your employees identify the impact this work will have on them. Perhaps the project is an opportunity for them to build a new skill or to contribute to an important organizational goal. Asking questions that elicit a clear why will help the employee form a stronger sense of purpose and ownership over their work.
Own the impact
Accountability doesnt just involve getting things done as expected; it means seeing how those actions play out going forward. Even the best laid plans can produce unexpected results. Accountable leaders own their teams impact, regardless of peoples positive intentions, and then they devise new plans to keep pushing toward success.
Proactive accountability requires us to maintain a growth mindset, or the belief that mistakes are chances to improve rather than signs of incompetence. When people always seem to get things done, its because theyre not getting mired in failure or basking in success. They may pause to experience their emotions, but ultimately theyre focused on achieving the next set of goals in front of them.
Tactic: The most important time for leaders and team members to own their impact is when things dont go as planned. Help your team apologize well by following (and modeling) a three-step approach: taking responsibility, saying how youll fix things, and asking for others input. Choosing to learn from our mistakes preserves trust and promotes growth: two outcomes that sit at the heart of proactive accountability.
DEMYSTIFYING ACCOUNTABILITY
With these three habits, Marcus feels more empowered to help his team build the skill of accountability. Jennifer may have a natural talent for getting things done at a high level, but theres no secret to her efficacy. When a new project comes her way, she merely goes through the prescribed steps that neuroscience shows will naturally produce accountability.
It will take time to develop the behaviors of proactive accountability and make them habits. But with the right focus, you can help everyone on your team, including yourself, become the kind of person who meets or exceeds expectations in whatever they do. What seems like magic will really just be brain science at work.
It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood outside Cup Foods, raised her phone, and bore witness to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial injustice.
Fraziers video didnt just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.
Today, that legacy continues in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warningand resistance.
Here in Los Angeles where I teach journalism, for example, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father stepping into a white, unmarked van as his daughter sobs behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, and blows her a kiss. In another video, filmed across town, Los Angeles Police Department officers on horseback charge into crowds of peaceful protesters, swinging wooden batons with chilling precision.
In Spokane, Washington, residents form a spontaneous human chain around their neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras erecting a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, a video shows white allies yelling Shame! as they chase a car full of National Guard troops from their neighborhood.
The impact of smartphone witnessing has been immediate and unmistakablevisceral at street level, seismic in statehouses. On the ground, the videos helped inspire a No Kings movement, which organized protests in all 50 states on June 14, 2025.
Lawmakers are intensifying their focus on immigration policy as well. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, Democratic-led states are expanding laws that limit cooperation with federal agents. On June 12, the House Oversight Committee questioned Democratic governors about these measures, with Republican lawmakers citing public safety concerns. The hearing underscored deep divisions between federal and state approaches to immigration enforcement.
BREAKING: ICE raid and community resistance in front of Home Depot in Paramount, California.— Jeremy Lindenfeld (@jeremotographs.bsky.social) 2025-06-07T18:27:17.850Z
The legacy of Black witnessing
Whats unfolding now is not newit is newly visible. As my research shows, Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook that was sharpened in 2020 and rooted in a much older lineage of Black media survival strategies that were forged under extreme oppression.
In my 2020 book Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest Journalism, I document how Black Americans have used mediaslave narratives, pamphlets, newspapers, radio and now smartphonesto fight for justice. From Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to Darnella Frazier, Black witnesses have long used journalism as a tool for survival and transformation.
Latino mobile journalists are building on that blueprint in 2025, filming state power in moments of overreach, archiving injustice in real time, and expanding the impact of this radical tradition.
Their work also echoes the spatial tactics of Black resistance. Just as enslaved Black people once mapped escape routes during slavery and Jim Crow, Latino communities today are engaging in digital cartography to chart ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The People Over Papers map channels the logic of the Black maroonscommunities of self-liberated Africans who escaped plantations to track patrols, share intelligence and build networks of survival. Now, the hideouts are digital. The maps are crowdsourced. The danger remains.
Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network revives a civil rights-era tactic. In the 1960s, organizers used wide area telephone service lines and radio to circulate safety updates. Black DJs cloaked dispatches in traffic and weather reportscongestion on the south side signaled police blockades; storm warnings meant violence ahead. Today, the medium is WhatsApp. The signal is encrypted. But the messageprotect each otherhas not changed.
Layered across both systems is the DNA of the Negro Motorist Green Book, the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations, and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy. Where the Green Book used printed pages, todays tools use digital pins. But the mission remains: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.
The People Over Papers map is a crowdsourced collection of reports of ICE activity across the U.S. [Screenshot: The Conversation U.S.]
Dangerous necessity
Five years after George Floyds death, the power of visual evidence remains undeniable. Black witnessing laid the groundwork. In 2025, that tradition continues through the lens of Latino mobile journalists, who draw clear parallels between their own communitys experiences and those of Black Americans. Their footage exposes powerful echoes: ICE raids and overpolicing, border cages and city jails, a door kicked in at dawn and a knee on a neck.
Like Black Americans before them, Latino communities are using smartphones to protect, to document and to respond. In cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and El Paso, whispers of ICE is in the neighborhood now flash across Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram. For undocumented families, pressing record can mean risking retaliation or arrest. But many keep filmingbecause what goes unrecorded can be erased.
What they capture are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader, shared struggle against state violence. And as long as the cameras keep rolling, the stories keep surfacingilluminated by the glow of smartphone screens that refuse to look away.
Allissa V. Richardson is an associate professor of journalism at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This is your reminder to pause and reflect on your own wellbeing, and check in on those around you. Be it anxiety, depression, burnout, or just a general malaise, its important to stay intentional and proactive about nurturing a healthy mind.
These 10 mental health books offer guidance and tips for cultivating inner peace, lasting joy, and emotional comfort.
[Photo: The Next Big Idea Club]
Taming the Molecule of More: A Step-by-Step Guide to Make Dopamine Work for You
By Michael Long
Dopamine, the molecule of more, is the chemical in our brains that drives us to seek out newer and better thingsthe latest gadget, the coolest job, the perfect partner. But for many of us, its easy to get stuck in a cycle of never being truly satisfied. Because dopamine can only promise happiness. It can never deliver. That part is up to us. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Michael Long, or view on Amazon
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Healing the Modern Brain: Nine Tenets to Build Mental Fitness and Revitalize Your Mind
By Drew Ramsey
This essential guide explores the nine tenets vital to cultivating mental fitness and provides direct, actionable techniques to improve brain function and emotional health. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Drew Ramsey, or view on Amazon
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Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
By Laura Delano
The powerful memoir of one womans experience with psychiatric diagnoses and medications, and her journey to discover herself outside the mental health industry. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Laura Delano, or view on Amazon
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Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts
By Gregory Walton
Discover simple psychological shifts that build trust, belonging, and confidencefrom the codirector of the Dweck-Walton Lab at Stanford University. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Gregory Walton, or view on Amazon
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The Narrowing: A Journey Through Anxiety and the Body
By Alexandra Shaker
An exploration of the connection between anxiety and the body by a clinical psychologist, drawing from the latest research as well as historical and cultural insights through time, arguing that only through understanding anxietys role in our lives can we transform it into resilience. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Alexandra Shaker, or view on Amazon
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Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life
By Caroline Fleck
How the science of seeing and being seen is the key to inner and interpersonal transformation. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Caroline Fleck, or view on Amazon
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How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion
By Yung Pueblo
Love enters our lives in many forms: friends, family, intimate partners. But all of these relationships are deeply influenced by the love we have for ourselves. If we see our relationships as opportunities to be fully present in our healing and growth, then, Yung Pueblo assures us, we can transform and meet one another with compassion instead of judgment. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Yung Pueblo, or view on Amazon
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How Do You Feel?: One Doctors Search for Humanity in Medicine
By Jessi Gold
A poignant and thought-provoking memoir following one psychiatrist and four of her patients as they deal with the unspoken mental and physical costs of caring for others. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Jessi Gold, or view on Amazon
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The Grief Cure: Looking for the End of Loss
By Cody Delistraty
In this lyrical and moving story of the world of prolonged grief, journalist Cody Delistraty reflects on his experience with loss and explores what modern science, history, and literature reveal about the nature of our relationship to grief and our changing attitudes toward its cure. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Cody Delistraty, or view on Amazon
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How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
By Ellen Hendriksen
Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with this clear and compassionate guide. Listen to the Book Bite summary, read by author Ellen Hendriksen, or view on Amazon
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
