People often say that a single spark can light a fire.
In careers, that spark is often a person. It might be someone early in life who cracks open a door, offers encouragement, or quietly shows what success can look like. Whats less obvious is how profoundly that very first connection can shape everything that comes afterward.
Consider 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion Serena Williams. Williams has often spoken about the crucial role played by her first coachher father, Richard Williams. His belief in her abilities and his willingness to expose her to competitive tennis from an early age ensured she gained experience long before most of her peers. In this, shes not alone: In sports, a first coach can recognize potential before anyone else does.
Or consider Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theatres first Black female principal dancer. When Copeland was 13, a Boys & Girls Club teacher, Cynthia Bradley, recognized her potential and brought her into formal ballet training; within four years Copeland earned a spot in ABTs Studio Company. In 2015, she became ABTs first Black female principal, a milestone built on that early mentorship. Those first advocates opened doors to elite training, scholarships, and professional networks that sustained a long, barrier-breaking career.
Anecdotes like these are powerful, but they also raise questions. Do early connections cause long-term success, or do they simply come more easily to people already positioned to succeed? After all, a young athlete with supportive and affluent parents might have access to better training and competition regardless of who their first coach is. This chicken-and-egg problem is hard to untangle, unless you look at a setting where chance plays a role. Thats where my research comes in.
Real estate as a natural laboratory
Im a professor of real estate finance, and I noticed that the residential real estate brokerage industry can mimic a random experimental setting. Since only a small number of people are active in housing markets at any given time, agents cant choose exactly who they work with. That means a new agents first counterparty brokerthat is, the agent on the other side of the deal depends on who happens to be representing clients at the same time and place. In many cases, that first connection is essentially a matter of luck.
So my colleagues and I analyzed more than 20 years of home sales data from Charlotte, North Carolina, covering more than 40,000 unique real estate agents and 417,000 home sales from 2001 to 2023. We found that new agents who land their first deal with a well-connected power broker are about 25% more likely to still be in the business a year later. Since many agents struggle to close a second deal within a year of their first, this significantly boosts their chances of building a lasting career.
The first handshake and lasting spark
What makes these first encounters so powerful is not only the transfer of skills but also the shaping of confidence and identity. A young musician invited to join an orchestra by a respected conductor begins to see himself as part of that world. A student encouraged by a scientist to enter a national competition begins to imagine a place for herself in research. An athlete who trains with an Olympic medalist begins to visualize competing at the highest levels. In each case, the first connection changes the sense of what is possible.
Our study also found that new real estate agents at the greatest risk of leaving the field (those with fewer early sales) benefit the most from starting out with a well-connected partner. The same dynamic appears in sports, where struggling athletes often flourish under coaches with deep relationships and credibility, and in education, where students on the verge of disengaging can be reenergized by respected teachers who open doors to programs, competitions, and networks. These mentors do more than teach. They change trajectories.
The lesson for those just beginning their careers: Seek out people who are respected and generous with their experience. Observing how they work, think, and solve problems can shape your own professional identity.
For those who are more established, the takeaway is equally important: Offering a hand to someone new, making an introduction, or simply offering encouragement can set in motion a sequence of events that shape a life.
Soon Hyeok Choi is an assistant professor of real estate finance at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Our built environment contributes to a mental health crisis.
Were not living in a natural outcome of human needs and behavior. The built environment as we know itbuildings and the spaces betweendoes direct damage to our minds. Land use planning has had devastating impacts on Americans: economically, socially, and culturally. But Im not a doomer and I know these things are fixable. Not overnight reversible, but certainly fixable.
Copycat plans
Typical land use rules are written, updated, and enforced at the local government level. But as you might expect, agencies copied each other over the years because why wouldnt they. Years ago, when I learned some photography techniques that were new to me, I made cheat sheets for other photographers. Much of what Ive learned as an adult (podcasting, publishing, public speaking, etc.) has been taught by generous people who themselves had learned tips and tricks. So of course public agencies copied each other with their rule-making. That worked for a similar river city? Lets try it here.
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Planning departments at city and county levels werent setting out to guide development in a way that would purposefully harm people. Quite the opposite.
If a new Sears distribution center was coming to town, theyd want to map out a plan to accommodate all the new employees and subsequent traffic. In the middle of the 20th century, planners were still very much concerned about separating dirty and/or dangerous land uses from residential areas. The result was that all across the country, local development rules required or incentivized development patterns that spread everyone and everything across the landscape.
A work zone, school zone, shopping zone, entertainment zone, and a sleep zone were established. And then each major category started getting more prescriptive subcategories. Residential morphed into single-family, multi-family (apartments), and condos. But wait, theres more! Residential land uses started to be regulated by local governments according to lot size: garden apartments, planned unit developments, and subdivisions were each given rules. Residential was also regulated by the type of people living in a place: public housing, group dwellings, age-restricted dwelling, renters, and owners.
Local regulations created (and continue to create) sprawl in cities, not just the suburbs.
The traffic factor
Land use planning requires traffic engineering analysis, a process prioritizing speedy car movement above all else. Wider roads and intersections are not just suggested but required with the express goal to move vehicular traffic from zone to zone as quickly as possible. This has been going on for nearly 100 years without taking a foot off the brake.
The obvious outcome of modern land use planning is that Americans drive everywhere all the time. Not just work commutes, but all the errands before, during, and after work. Half of our car trips are less than a few miles long. A quarter are less than one mile. Less than a mile in a car by ourselves.
The mental health connection
Life in a single-occupant vehicle has its perks, like singing along to music or listening to podcasts uninterrupted. It also has its pains, like separation from other humans and mental deterioration.
Loneliness is a significant variable affecting depression. Its a predisposing factor. Cigna conducted a study of 20,000 Americans, and reported a jaw-dropping finding: nearly half of adults sometimes or always feel alone. 40% said their relationships arent meaningful and they feel isolated.
Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. She says the health risks of missing out on social connection is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Worse yet, theres a causal relationship between social isolation and suicide. Conversely, having a crew (social support in doctor jargon) has a protective effect against suicide. For every suicidal death, another 20 people attempted suicide.
The takeaway
So what do you do with all this heavy information?
First, remember that the built environment is deliberately planned for us to drive in cars from zone to zone. Planners arent trying to destroy our minds, but the built environment increases anxiety, depression, isolation, loneliness, and suicide.
Second, understand the land use catastrophes are reversible. Compact development won’t be legalized overnight, but reform can come as quickly as local leaders are willing. Walk-friendly, bike-friendly, transit-friendly places are good medicine, and theyre made possible at the local level.
Third, and most important of all, know that things can get better in the end. Americas built environment does not fit who we are as humans, but we can turn this around with something as boring as reforming land use planning. Start by legalizing healthy infrastructurea variety of land uses within walking distance of homes and streets designed for safe walking and cycling.
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Niccol Machiavelli, the infamous author of The Prince, wrote in the 1500s that the ideal leader makes and breaks solemn agreements. He creates alliances with weak allies to defeat a powerful enemy and then eliminates them one by one. He blames his next-in-charge for his own mistakes, and he executes opponents in public.
St. Francis of Assisi was the antithesis of a Machiavellian leader. Born in 1181, the future saint renounced his fathers wealth, then spent the remainder of his life wandering around northern Italy as a beggar and preacher. Francis gained a reputation for extreme humilitybut certainly he was not weak. He dealt with popes, nobles and even an Egyptian sultan. He founded a religious order, the Franciscans, that survives today.
In modern times, Machiavellian leaders abound in the corporate world. Perhaps more surprisingly, many other business leaders resemble Francis: humble and self-effacing, but by no means weak. In our research, we argue that two types of motivation help to explain these vast and enduring differences in leadership.
Two faces of power
Psychologists have long been fascinated by peoples nonconscious motivesand how to measure them. One influential assessment, developed in the 1930s, is the Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT. People write short stories about ambiguous pictures, and researchers then analyze the stories to see which themes emerge: what the writer cares or worries about, and how they see the world.
In 1970, psychologist David McClelland coined the phrase the two faces of power to describe two different types of power that motivate people, based on his TAT analyses: personal power and socialized power. Personal power is the motivation to dominate others. McClelland noted that people with a desire for personal power tend to use imagery that evokes the law of the jungle in which the strongest survive by destroying their adversaries. Socialized power, on the other hand, aims to benefit others.
McClelland noted that personal power was associated with behavior like heavy drinking, gambling, aggressive impulses and collecting prestige supplies, like convertibles. People concerned with the more socialized aspect of power, meanwhile, join more organizations and are more apt to become officers in them, including sports teams.
A few years later, McClelland and consultant David Burnham published an article titled Power is the Great Motivator, elaborating on this basic link between power motivation and leader effectiveness. Through a series of biographical vignettes and an analysis of a large company, they showed that managers exhibiting a high degree of socialized power were more effective than managers motivated by personal power.
Measuring motivation
It seemed to us that personal power, the law of the jungle, motivates the kinds of behavior approvingly described by Machiavelli. Likewise, socialized power seemed to underlie the forceful but altruistic behavior of St. Francis and modern so-called humble leaders.
But we faced a problem: how to measure motivation. Powerful people such as world-class CEOs have little inclination to take TATs or answer questionnaires for admittedly humble scholars.
In the 1990s, psychologist David Winter showed that speeches, interviews and diplomatic texts reveal nonconscious motivation in the same way as the Thematic Apperception Testdemonstrating a way to study leaders views of power. For example, someone driven by a desire for personal power often tries to control or regulate people around them; attempts to persuade and convince; and is concerned with fame, status and reputation.
However, Winters procedures for analyzing texts are manual and complex; it is difficult to process a large number of documents. Also, he focused on personal power; socialized power was not included in his coding procedures.
Words and action
In order to overcome these limitations, we used computer-aided text analysis to analyze the language of CEOs in interviews and conference calls.
In a series of 2019 studies, which were peer-reviewed and summarized in the Academy of Management Proceedings, our team identified 40 Machiavellian and 40 humble CEOs. First, we took a close look at the types of words and phrases that distinguished the two groups, shedding light on the kind of power that motivates each one.
Using these patterns, we created two dictionaries of words and phrases that expressed personal power and socialized power. Language about strong, forceful actions, control, managing impressions, punishment and fear of failure, to name a few themes, constituted the personal power dictionary. Defeat, overrun and strafe, for example, appeared among the words on the personal power list. Themes such as rewards, mentoring and positive relationships characterized the socialized power dictionary.
Then, we used a computer program to scan hundreds of interviews and quarterly conference calls. The computer program calculated personal and socialized power scores for each of the CEOs.
Our team also developed indexes of Machiavellian and humble leader behaviorsuch as smearing competitors and backing out of agreements, or making significant donations to charity, respectivelyand measured all 80 CEOs.
We found very high correlations between power motivation and CEO behavior. CEOs with high personal power scores, based on our analysis of their interviews and conference calls, also tended to show Machiavellian behavior. CEO humble behavior was positively related to socialized power.
People and profits
Do these abstract statistical results really mean anything? Evidently.
Numerous CEOs from our list of humble executives have founded or managed exceptionally successful and people-oriented companies, including Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, Danny Wegman of Wegmans, and James Goodnight of the SAS Institute. Several of the humble CEOs have appeared multipletimes on Fortunes annual Best Companies to Work For list.
The Machiavellian CEO list included Kenneth Lay of Enron fame and John Rigas, one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, who was convicted of fraud. Mark Hurd, one-time CEO of Hewlett Packard, appeared on Complexs list of the worst chief executive officers in tech history. In general, criticisms of profits over people, poor treatment of employees, scandals, lavish spending, lawsuits and accusations or convictions of fraud characterize many of our Machiavellian CEOs.
McClelland and Burnham were right. Power really is the great motivator, but its the type of power that makes the difference.
William D. Spangler is an associate professor emeritus of management at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Aleksey Tikhomirov is a lecturer of public administration and policy at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Cass Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor and one of the most cited legal scholars in the world. He founded the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, served in the White House during the Obama Administration, received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, and has written dozens of books on topics ranging from behavioral science to constitutional law.
Whats the big idea?
Hidden forces shape our decisions all the timewhether that comes in the form of peer pressure, marketing strategy, or cultural norms. Manipulation is silent, pervasive, and dangerous. We need to find ways to protect ourselves from influences that guide our actions without giving us a fair shot at making deliberate choices.
Below, Cass shares five key insights from his new book, Manipulation: What It Is, Why Its Bad, and What to Do About It. Listen to the audio versionread by Cass himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Manipulation undermines your freedom to choose.
Manipulation isnt just persuasionits trickery that prevents people from exercising their capacity for deliberation. It might stir emotions, hide crucial information, or bury key terms in fine print so you cant make a truly informed choice. The danger lies in how it quietly strips away your agency, making you act without genuine reflection.
2. Sludge is manipulation by a thousand cuts.
Sludge refers to needless barriersendless forms, hold times, or bureaucratic hoopsthat make it hard to get what you want or to escape a bad deal. Companies often make signing up effortless, but impose exhausting obstacles when you try to cancel or change terms. This easy in, hard out design is manipulation on steroids.
3. We need a right to not be manipulated.
Societies already protect people from fraud and deception, but theres no legal safeguard against manipulation itself. Thats a problem because manipulation can waste your time, drain your money, and damage your well-being without breaking existing laws. Its time to create a clear, enforceable right that shields people from such exploitation.
4. The Barbie Problem: buying what we wish didnt exist.
Some goods are bought not out of love, but because social norms make them feel unavoidable. Think of Barbies, cigarettes, certain social media platforms, or any items that most people purchase yet many privately wish would disappear altogether. Companies exploit social pressures to manipulate us into consumer choices that dont reflect our true preferences. Getting people to buy products they deplore or regret purchasing is a serious problem that we need to find a way to reduce.
5. Social norms can trap us.
Once a product exists, refusing it can send an unwanted signal: in some communities, turning down a drink implies youre no fun; skipping a trendy app makes you seem out of the loop. To avoid that social penalty, we complyeven if wed be happier without the product entirely. This is manipulation by peer pressure, and is extremely hard to resist because of how certain choices signal specific social perceptions of you.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
As is the case for many founders, my journey began as a one-person show. I started Digital Voices, an influencer marketing agency that helps brands grow by pairing them with creators across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. With just a shoestring budget of $300 and a background in digital strategy, I launched the company with more ambition than certainty. Afterlong hours coupled with hustle and self-doubtit has now evolved into a multimillion-80-person operation spanning the globe.
Here are five lessons about leadership I learned along the way.
1. Get comfortable with constant change
Leadership today is defined by constant fluctuation. On a Monday, youre making long-term strategic decisions aimed at future-proofing the business. The next day, youre brainstorming creative ideas for a client campaign. All of this comes as you attempt to balance the businesss progress against your own personal journey. And thats before you even get to the impact that your actions or a throwaway comment have on your wider team.
In order to grow, your business should be constantly changing. For example, weve built new technology that has completely changed peoples day-to-day work, changed roles, titles, teams, opened offices in the United States, and built a team in Costa Rica. One of my favorite business adages is, If your company doesnt feel like an entirely new business every 18 months, youre not scaling. Youre stagnating.
This puts immense pressure on every leader. That relentless tension means that for real progress, you always have to feel out of your comfort zone.
You need to spin multiple plateschecking that the aspects of the business you used to run are going smoothly, while feeling like a beginner at whatever obstacle youre throwing yourself at next.
2. Vulnerability is key
Ive never met a leader whos gone their entire career without making mistakes. Neither have you. The perfect leader doesnt exist.
It doesnt matter how many books youve read, coaches youve had, how much time or money youve invested in self-development, making mistakes is part of this game. The proximity to failure keeps most entrepreneurs motivated.
The polished, superhero, all about the grind, idealized image of entrepreneurship is dead. People want to see the honest version of your struggles and humanity. Sharing your mistakes publicly isnt a sign of weakness; its an avenue towards building trust with your customers and employees.
Try to resist the urge to receive every piece of negative feedback on your backfoot. Very rarely is it a personal attack or a character assassination. Think about it this way: Giving negative feedback and offering solutions is hard. It means your employees care enough to think about how your business can be better. Also, no one likes conflict or enjoys having hard conversations. They are risking discomfortand at times even their jobto give you insights.
3. Hire for fit
The culture versus credentials debate: Weve all heard it, some of us have lived it.
The truth is that the perfect on paper candidate will always turn your head. According to their resume, theyve got all the relevant experience, the certifications and qualifications, the recommendations… For all intents and purposes, theyre a shoo-in.
And yet we should all recognize by now that credentials are only part of the puzzlea vital ingredient certainly, but not the whole pie. You need people who thrive in the uncertainty of a scale-up environment and who believe in what youre striving for and genuinely want to help drive your business forward. Not everyone will be capable of that level of engagement, or even want it. So dont let a resume with big brand names mask the fact that someone isnt the right fit from a culture perspective. Spend the time and hire slow. And then keep the trust of your team by firing fast if they arent the right fit.
4. Stay true to your values
Be clear on what your cultural non-negotiables are in the business. Write yours down. Inform your team as they need to know what lens they should view decisions through.
There will be times when protecting your bottom line will clash with your business’s purpose. Principles will cost you money. Ive been offered multiple seven-figure sums to market gambling or weight-loss brands. And while the business could have used that money, we turned it down.
Why? Because were accountable to the businessand not just commercially, but culturally, too. Which means you need to be confident that the experience, grit, skills and team that got you this far, will continue to propel you forward.
Im not saying dont edit your approach. Im saying be careful with the tweaks that cost you your principles and culture. Those decisions are nearly impossible to roll back.
5. Empower your employees
Too many founders lean toward helicopter leadership. Its like the business version of helicopter parenting, a term used to describe the sort of parents who constantly hover round their kids, micromanaging every experience. While the business might have once been your baby, you cannot spin all the plates across all teams. For one, its not sustainable. For two, your employees will despise you for it.
You need to create an environment where people are not afraid to put their hands up if something is going wrong. They need to trust that youll jump in and help them solve the problem, rather than play the blame game. Hard on the problem, easy on the person.
This isnt about maintaining total control, its about achieving clarity and trust. The most impactful founders move beyond acting as a boss, and start acting as conductorsbringing out the best in their team for the collective benefit of everyone.
If youre someone who sneaks off to the bathroom for a little phone time, you could be upping your odds of developing hemorrhoids.
A recent survey suggests Americans spend two full days a year scrolling on the toilet. Now, new research shows that people who bring their phone to scroll social media are 46% more likely to get hemorrhoids than those who dont.
Hemorrhoidsswollen veins in the lower rectum that can cause pain, itching, and bleedingare often linked to straining. But lingering on the toilet itself has now been identified as a bigger risk. Research published last week found phone users spend five times longer on the toilet, which increases pressure on anal tissue and raises the likelihood of haemorrhoids. About 54% of respondents reported reading the news, while 44% scrolled social media.
Hemorrhoids affect about half of U.S. adults over 50, leading to nearly 4 million doctor or ER visits annually and more than $800 million in healthcare spending. While most cases resolve on their own, some require medical treatment or even surgery.
The study, published in PLOS One, focused on participants over 45. But in a related study of college students, nearly all admitted to bringing their phones to the toilet. Of course, bathroom reading long predates smartphonesbut flipping through a shampoo bottle or toilet book rarely leads to the half-hour distractions common with Instagram or TikTok.
How often have you finished your business, washed your hands, and then realized youve been sitting and scrolling for far longer than you intended? Researchers recommend leaving the phone outside the bathroom altogetheror, if thats unthinkable, limiting yourself to two TikToks at most.
This study bolsters advice to people in general to leave the smartphones outside the bathroom and to try to spend no more than a few minutes to have a bowel movement, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center gastroenterologist Trisha Pasricha said in a statement. If it’s taking longer, ask yourself why. Was it because having a bowel movement was really so difficult, or was it because my focus was elsewhere?
Trading app Robinhood Markets, mobile app monetization company AppLovin, and building company Emcor Group, will be added to the S&P 500 later this month, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Friday.
Robinhood will replace Caesar’s Entertainment, AppLovin will take MarketAxess Holding’s spot, and Emcor will take Enphase Energy’s place. The changes take effect on September 22.
The S&P 500 rebalances the index quarterly. No changes were made at the start of the most recent quarter in June.
“The changes ensure each index is more representative of its market capitalization range. The companies being removed from the S&P SmallCap 600 are no longer representative of the small-cap market space,” the S&P Dow Jones Indices said.
Robinhood shares up following S&P promotion
In the minutes after the announcement, shares of Robinhood were up 7.2%, while AppLovin rose 7.8%, and Emcor, 2.7%.
Strategy, a bitcoin company that was rumored to have possibly made the cut, was passed over. Its stock took a 2.5% dive following the announcement. The promotions come after Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev had expressed hope that the company could join the S&P 500 soon.
Its a difficult thing to plan for, Tenev said at the companys annual shareholder meeting in June. I think its one of those things that hopefully happens.
The S&P announcement could boost Robinhoods expansion toward becoming a one-stop banking service: In March, the company announced plans to launch Robinhood Banking, a service for its Gold members that would include perks like having cash delivered to you instead of having to go to the ATM.
Taxi company Uber also got a boost: It has been promoted to the S&P 100, replacing Charter Communications, the S&P Dow Jones Indices announced.
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has agreed to pay a record-setting $1.5 billion to a group of book authors and publishers in order to settle a class action lawsuit. The payout is thought to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright suits and could influence other cases where an AI company has been sued for copyright violations.
This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong, Justin Nelson, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The suit, filed last year, was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson over copyright infringement. They alleged that Anthropic used the authors’ copyrighted books to train its chatbot, Claude.
Is AI training ‘fair use’?
In June, a judge ruled that while Anthropic was allowed to train its AI model using books that it had acquired the copyright for under fair use rules, the startup had illegally acquired books via online libraries that contained bootleg copies of books. The judge concluded that the authors had cause for the case to proceed to a trial. That was slated to start in December.
Now, according to a court filing on Friday, the startup has agreed to pay authors $3,000 for each of around 500,000 books it used to train its AI, plus interest. The company also agreed to destroy the datasets containing the allegedly pirated material.
As best as we can tell, its the largest copyright recovery ever, Nelsons said, according to the Associated Press It is the first of its kind in the AI era, he added.“Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems, Anthropics deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement.
What does this mean for other AI companies?
The settlement may give other AI companies facing similar challenges to their use of copyrighted material to train their models pause. Back in June, the judge in this case affirmed that using books to train a large language model represented a transformative use of the workcrucial for fair usebut made a clear distinction if the books had been sourced illegally.
Since chatbots exploded onto the scene in late 2022, authors have repeatedly expressed concern that the models that power them were trained using their works without permission.
In 2023, The Authors Guild, a professional organization for writers, sent an open letter to the CEOs of prominent AI companies calling for them to get authors consent before using their’ works to train models. More than 15,000 authors signed the open letter; best-selling author Nora Roberts was among them.
“If creators arent compensated fairly, they cant afford to create. If writers arent paid to write, they cant afford to write,” she said at the time.
Anthropic is not the only AI startup at the center of a copyright case: OpenAI was sued in 2023 by more than a dozen authors for copyright infringement in the training of its large language modelsthe suit is still pending. And another suit brought by authors against Meta on similar grounds was dismissed earlier this year, but the judge did not weigh in on whether the companys use of copyrighted materials to train its AI was legal.
The judge in the case has scheduled a hearing on Monday to review the settlement terms; he will need to approve it before it can go ahead.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is planning to release a report that will reportedly link autism and acetaminophen use in pregnancy, according to The Wall Street Journal. The department has confirmed a report is in the works, but has not revealed its conclusions.
Drug maker Kenvue, which sells acetaminophen under the brand name Tylenol, saw its shares slump following the Journals report, dropping more than 10% on Friday.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ihas made investigating autism a cornerstone of his efforts at the department. According to the Journal, the report will also make a link between folate deficiency and autism. But in statements to other media outlets, an HHS spokesperson said the Journals reporting was “speculation.”
“We are using gold-standard science to get to the bottom of America’s unprecedented rise in autism rates, a spokesperson for the department said.
What the science says about acetaminophen and autism
Some studies have found correlations between taking the common painkiller in pregnancy and the risk of children developing neurodevelopmental conditions. But these studies dont prove a link, and other results suggest otherwise: A 2024 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) studythe largest on acetaminophen to datefound that there was no association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and increased risk of autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, or intellectual disability.
The report comes months after Kennedy promised HHS would undertake a “massive testing and research effort” to find a cause for autism as soon as September. A mountain of research suggests that autism has no single cause, but is likely a combination of factors, including genetics. Kennedy has since walked that timeline back, telling CNN, “it will probably take us another six months.”
No proven link
Tylenols maker Kenvue told Fast Company in a statement that there is no proven link between acetaminophen and autism.
“To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and leading medical organizations agree on the safety of acetaminophen, its use during pregnancy, and the information provided on the label.”“We advise expecting mothers to speak to their healthcare professionals before taking any over-the-counter medications, including acetaminophen, as they are best positioned to advise their patients on whether taking acetaminophen is appropriate based on their unique medical conditions.
The FDA has not found any “clear evidence” that acetaminophen during pregnancy “causes adverse pregnancy, birth, neurobehavioral, or developmental outcomes.” It also recommends that pregnant persons talk to their care providers before using any medications.
Fast Company reached out to the department of Health and Human Services for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Last month, the online prediction market Kalshi filed some very dry but potentially very lucrative paperwork with the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company, which allows users to predict real-world event outcomes that range from election winners to the annual number of U.S. cases of whooping cough, announced its intent to offer markets for football point spreads, totals, and individual touchdown scorers, too.
In other words, Kalshi users would no longer be limited to predicting game results, awards winners, win totals, and end-of-season champions. Instead, they would be able to make these sportsbook-style wagers on the platform, without going through a state-licensed sportsbook to do it.
Technically, Kalshi doesnt take bets or set odds itself, and the company carefully avoids referring to its business as gambling. Instead, it enables customers to trade event contracts priced between 1 and 99 cents, where the prices roughly correspond to the percentage chance that the market believes a given outcome will occur. Kalshi, which allows trading both on its own site and also through its partnership with Robinhood, makes its money on transaction fees. When the market resolves, those who hold the winning position are paid out at $1 per share.
For example, if Kalshi offers a contract for whether Justin Jefferson catches a touchdown on Monday Night Football, and Jefferson promptly reels in a 77-yard bomb and then hits the Griddy, those who bought shares in the yes position would get to cash in. Those who banked on Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy struggling to throw downfield in his regular-season debut would get nothing. (As of this writing, Robinhood allows users to bet on some sports outcomes via its Kalshi partnership, but doesnt yet offer Kalshis prop bets.)
Given how ubiquitous sports gambling has become since the Supreme Court struck down a near-total federal ban in 2018, the distinction between buying an event contract on Kalshi and placing a conventional bet on the DraftKings app might seem irrelevant. But there are differences that matter. Because Kalshi is regulated by the federal government, its contracts effectively enable people to skirt local regulations and place bets in states where sports betting is still illegalamong others, California, Georgia, and Texas.
Unlike state-licensed sportsbooks, federally regulated exchanges like Kalshi are also not subject to state-mandated procedures for reporting suspicious sports betting patterns. Last year, Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA for tipping off bettors that he intended to fake an injury to ensure that his under bets would hit. The NBA opened an investigation after sportsbooks found that prop bets on Porter, a fringe player on a bad team, were among the biggest winners of the night. If a player were to try the same stunt on a platform like Kalshi, it might be more challenging to find out that the game is literally rigged.
In most states, users must be 21 to use DraftKings or FanDuel. Kalshi users, however, need only to be 18. Studies show that problem gamblers are disproportionately young men, who now have the ability to gamble away paychecks, inheritances, and student loan money via smartphone app. In my view, the nationwide availability of a lightly regulated platform that functionally lowers the gambling age from 21 to 18 is troubling, to say the least.
Like all exchanges, Kalshi is subject to CFTC-required integrity and surveillance requirements. It also works with a third-party service to monitor for suspicious sports betting-related activity, and recently debuted responsible risk management tools, like those in use at sportsbooks, that allow users to cap their deposits, take breaks, and opt out of market access.
That said, when asked about consumer protection concerns earlier this year, a lawyer for Kalshi said, People are adults, and theyre allowed to spend their money however they want it, and if they lose their shirt, thats on thema response that does not suggest that the company is terribly concerned with some of the bigger-picture issues here.
To date, a few state regulators have sent the company cease-and-desist letters, but with limited success. Federal district courts in Nevada and New Jersey have found that the CFTCs jurisdiction over exchanges like Kalshi is likely exclusive, which means states would not have the legal authority to regulate themor, critically, to tax them. Robinhood quickly filed lawsuits of its own in both states, arguing that Kalshis victories clear the way for Robinhood to offer sports contracts on its platform, too.
Those leery of using events contracts as a backdoor form of sports betting have what might, on paper, sound like a pretty good argument: CFTC regulations bar exchanges like Kalshi from listing contracts related to gaming, which, at least in the colloquial sense of the word, would seem to cover point spreads and player props. And as ESPNs David Purdum and Shwetha Surendran reported earlier this year, in early 2024, Kalshis own lawyers argued that this gaming language bars the sports-related contracts that the company is now rolling out.
Why? At the time, the company wanted to list contracts for election outcomes, and asserted that regulators intended gaming to refer to sports, and thus not to politics. A federal court eventually greenlit Kalshis offerings in time for the 2024 elections, and the company says it posted around $1 billion in trading volume on the results.
With the election behind it, though, Kalshi has spent 2025 pushing further into sports, notwithstanding its lawyers earlier arguments. And under President Donald Trump, Kalshi has good reasons to be optimistic about its chances of clearing whatever regulatory hurdles might stand in its way.
In January, the company announced that Trumps son, Donald, Jr., would serve as a strategic advisor, touting his ability to help push prediction markets into the mainstream.
Trumps nominee to serve as the new CFTC chair, Brian Quintenz, is a Kalshi shareholder who sits on Kalshis board of directors. Quintenz plans to resign and sell his stock if confirmed; even so, if a recently departed board member takes over as the head of its primary regulator, Kalshi is probably going to feel pretty good about that relationship going forward.
Already, Kalshi has scored a major legal victory since Trump took office: Shortly after that federal court allowed the company to list contracts related to the 2024 elections, the Biden administration appealed. But under new leadership, the CFTC voluntarily dropped its appeal in May, leaving users free to take long positions on whether JD Vance, Gavin Newsom, or someone else wins the White House in 2028.
Kalshi has promised a slow rollout of its contracts on NFL props, and told InGame, a publication that covers the sports betting industry, that it has no immediate plans to offer college football props. But the success of its initial filings seems to have further emboldened the company: This week, Kalshi submitted additional paperwork to the CFTC to allow users to more or less construct parlayspopular sportsbook bets that require multiple events, or legs, to occur in order to pay out.
One contracta market for predicting whether the Dallas Cowboys would beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday, and the teams would combine to score at least 48 points, and Cowboys receiver CeeDee Lamb would score a touchdownwent live shortly before kickoff. (It did not hit.)
To date, traditional sportsbooks have been publicly critical of exchanges like Kalshia position that makes sense, given that they have 70 billion reasons and counting to maintain their oligopoly on the market.
But under an administration that has adopted a lax, industry-friendly stance to prediction markets regulation, sportsbooks are increasingly looking to get in on the action themselves: If they can persuade at least some customers to make basically the same wagers, but on a platform that isnt subject to state regulation or state taxes, they are going to get over their initial skepticism in a hurry.
Sure enough, Underdog recently partnered with Crypto.com, which rolled out a sports event contract business in December. FanDuel has announced that it will offer event contracts with the CME Group, a derivatives marketplace; DraftKings says it is evaluating its prediction market-adjacent options, too.
The growth of prediction market-based sports betting doesnt mean that traditional sports betting will disappear. But it does mean that the problems created by legal sports gamblingthe addiction epidemic, the embarrassing scandals, an increasingly captured sports media ecosystem that is seemingly incapable of covering games without incorporating an officially sponsored betting angleare going to get worse.
The companies that take bets (by any name) care about making money. This is just one more way for them to do it.
