Every year since 2010, Ive posted an article about what trend I expect to dominate the next twelve months. Throughout the 2010s, these forecasts usually focused on emerging technologies or new currents in management thinking. But around 2020, that began to shift. The annual trends increasingly centered on how we cope with change rather than the change itself.
Last year my trend was The Coming Realignment. History tends to propagate at a certain rhythm and then converge and cascade around certain points. Years like 1776, 1789, 1848, 1920, 1948, 1968, 1989and, it seems, 2020mark these inflection points. The years that follow are usually spent absorbing the shock and navigating the consequences.
Today, everything is up for question. Will AI boom or bust? Will it take our jobs or bring new prosperity? What kind of economic system will we adopt for the future? We are in the midst of a great realignment. What we know from previous inflections is that what comes after will be profoundly different from before. What we most need to watch is our institutions.
AI boom or bust?
Today, the AI investment boom is without a doubt the single biggest factor propping up the US economy. Just this year, tech giants are expected to invest roughly $364 billion in the technology. And the spending wont stop there. McKinsey projects that building AI data centers could add up to $5.2 trillion in investment by 2030.
This boom is different from what weve seen in the past because the main investors arent speculators or startups, but some of the worlds most profitable companies, including Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft. Unlike in past cycles, if the industry hits a downturn, there will still be tens of billions of dollars in annual profits to cushion the blow.
Still, as investor Paul Kedrosky points out, there are reasons to worry. Investment in data center infrastructure has already surpassed the peak of the dot-com boom and is beginning to approach levels last seen during the railroad frenzy of the 19th century. Also, 60% of the cost of those data centers goes to AI chips, which have a useful life of only about three years.
That means this is not a boom that can wait decades to pay off. If todays investments dont generate returns in the near future, much of the infrastructure could fully depreciate before delivering meaningful profit. In practical terms, unless tech firms can earn more than $200 billion in profiton these investments alone, not from their core businessesthey will be underwater. And as investment accelerates, that bar only rises.
Kedrosky also notes signs of growing systemic risk. Increasingly, tech giants are choosing to finance their infrastructure build-outs with Enron-like special-purpose vehicles. These structures cost more but keep the debt off their balance sheets. That risk, in turn, is increasingly being passed to more traditional investors, including REITs.
Will AI displace humans or enhance us?
A 2023 report by the World Economic Forum, analyzing 673 million jobs, predicted structural job growth of 69 million jobs and a decline of 83 million, an overall decrease of 14 million jobs. An IMF analysis found that 40% of global employment is exposed. In an interview with Axios, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.
Yet more grounded economic analyses suggest a much more modest impact. A study by the St. Louis Fed suggests a 1.1% increase in aggregate worker productivity, with much of that increase concentrated in the tech sector. A paper by Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, which looks at total factor productivity (TFP), a measure which takes use of capital into account, sees a 0.66% increase over 10 years, translating to a 0.064% increase in annual TFP growth.
A recent McKinsey report takes an optimistic view. While noting that many routine office and production jobs are likely to disappear, those that leverage technical, social and emotional skills are likely to flourish, just as Autor has predicted. However, there is reason to suspect that optimists may be merely extrapolating from historical trends that may no longer apply.
Theres no guarantee that the future will look like the past. An analysis in Harvard Business Review suggested that AI could disrupt the non-routine creative work that, to this point, has been hard to automate. Meanwhile, research in Science has found that, although AI may enhance individual creative work, it diminishes the diversity of novel output, potentially stifling the very innovation it aims to support.
What will be the economic system of the future?
Before 1789 the world was ruled by the divine right of kings and the feudal system. Yet that year would prove to be an inflection point. The American Constitution, the French Revolution, and the first Industrial Revolution, already underway since the introduction of the steam engine in 1776, together created a fundamental realignment of power.
These forces would build and clash for decades until things came to a head in the revolutionary year of 1848. Today, we seem to be in a similarly liminal space, as we decide what kind of future we want to live in. The next century and a half would be dominated by the tensions between socialism and capitalism.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the West was triumphant. Communism was exposed as a corrupt system bereft of any real legitimacy. Yet for anyone paying attention, communism had long been discredited. As far back as the 1930s, Stalins disastrous collectivization and industrialization campaigns had led to mass starvation. By the 1970s, Soviet total factor productivity growth had gone negative, meaning more investment actually brought less output.
Yet today, it is capitalism that finds itself under siege from all sides. Leftist progressives like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani advocate for reining in the private sector and creating a bigger safety net. The mercantilist American president rails against free trade and nationalizes the means of production. Christian nationalists openly call for theocratic rule.
At the same time, a new cadre of theorists has emerged whose ideas dont fit the traditional right-left paradigm. New Right thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin and Patrick Deneen call for wholesale reordering of society. On the more technocratic side, a new school of thought is emerging that is associated with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompsons book Abundance.
Its the institutions, stupid
In Why Nations Fail, economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson explain why the fate of nations rests less on innate factors such as geography, culture, or climate and more on the quality and types of institutions they build. In particular, they make the distinction between inclusive institutions and extractive institutions.
Inclusive institutions protect property rights broadly across society, establish fair competition, and reward innovation. Extractive institutions, on the other hand, concentrate wealth in the hands of a small elite who exploit the broader population. These elite players control resources and use state power to enrich themselves at society’s expense.
We are clearly in a liminal period in which we are struggling to adapt to shifts in technology, economics, and identity. Will AI oppress or empower regular people? Will we trade openly or retreat behind national barriers? Will we focus primarily on our local communities or see ourselves as citizens of a larger planet?
As ever, there will be no shortage of pundits predicting the paths the future will take. Many of their narratives will be persuasivebut also mutually contradictory. The real tell will be what kinds of institutions we build and which ones we allow to decay or be destroyed outright. Are we creating institutions that strengthen rights and the rule of law, or those that serve the powerful?
The outcome is still unclear, but the lines of battle have been drawn. If you want to know what to expect in the near to mid-term, pay less attention to predictions about technology, politics, or ideology and focus instead on institutions. Those are what create the norms and rituals that will shape the behaviors of the future.
Stargazers and scientists are getting a holiday present from the cosmos this week.
3I/ATLAS, an interstellar comet, will get closest to Earth on Friday, December 19, as part of its journey across the galaxy.
Lets break the facts of this natural phenomena down because it sounds like it could be the plot of an exciting science fiction thriller.
What is an interstellar comet?
Much like a Christmas tree, planets in our Solar System revolve around our star, the sun.
Its not the only planetary system out there. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains other systems, and if you zoom out even further, there are even more.
The comet 3I/ATLAS is labeled interstellar because it comes from outside our star system and is not gravitationally bound to the sun. Its on an elliptical vacation of sorts, exploring new locations with a greater freedom than the other objects surrounding it.
When was 3I/Atlas discovered?
Scientists only recently discovered 3I/ATLAS, on July 1, 2025.
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System survey telescope, funded by NASA and located in Rio Hurtado, Chile, first laid eyes on the object. This observation caused scientists to go back and look over records from other Atlas telescopes to learn more.
These pre-discovery findings found evidence of the comet dating back to June 14, 2025.
The comet got its name because it is a tradition to name objects after the people or system that discover them. In this case, it was named after Atlas. The 3 and the I tell the world this is the third interstellar object found.
Animation of comet 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory through our solar system. [Animation: NASA/JPL]
How close will 3I/ATLAS actually get?
On Friday, 3I/ATLAS will get the closest to Earth in its orbit, but close is a relative term.
It will cross within 167 million miles of our planet. To put that in perspective, that is around two times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The comet poses no danger to Earth, meaning there’s no need to hire a ragtag group of oil drillers la the 1998 film Armageddon.
How best to view 3I/Atlas
Unfortunately, 3I/ATLAS cannot be viewed by the naked eye. Dedicated stargazers will need a small telescope. But the silver lining is that the comet will hang around until spring. For best results, view in the early, predawn hours.
According to NASA, those who are extra enthusiastic and planning a Friday adventure should focus on the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo, as 3I/ATLAS should appear near that location.
For those who are without a telescope and would rather sleep in, NASA has done the work for you. You can visit the NASA website to view 3I/ATLAS from many different angles. Maybe the pictures will inspire you to write the next great science fiction tale.
Finally, NASA’s “eyes on the solar system” tool lets you view a simulated live version of 3I/ATLAS as it hurls through space.
The Christmas holiday season is a time to step back from the busy pace of modern life and connect with our nearest and dearest instead of screens, apps and chatbots.Here are some suggestions on how to unplug from the online world for the next few weeks as you sit down for a festive meal, exchange gifts or take time out for some self-reflection.
Do not disturb me
Your phone already has built-in features that can help you stop getting distracted.To temporarily silence all those attention-seeking notifications, use the Focus setting on your iPhone or Android device. This mode is designed to stop interruptions when you want to concentrate. You can customize it by blocking specific apps or muting only when you’re doing certain things, like sleeping or reading.Android and iOS also have related screen time controls to manage overall device usage. Too much Instagram scrolling? Limit yourself to a daily total of 20 minutes.There are other tricks you could try, like turning the screen gray to make it less appealing. On iPhones or Android devices, tweak the color filter or adjustment settings. On Android, activating Bedtime Mode also turns the screen gray.
Delete apps
If you need to be more strict with yourself, then delete any or apps you’re addicted to. An effective way to stop looking at your phone is by removing those apps that you spend the most time scrolling through, even if temporarily. You can always reinstall them again if the withdrawal symptoms become too much.
Get outside
When the temperature drops, it’s tempting to hunker down inside and stay cozy. But don’t sit on the couch all day. Head outdoors, away from Wi-Fi signals. If it’s been snowing where you are, have a snowball fight or go sledding. To keep your hands warm, don’t forget to put on bulky mittens which your phone’s touch screen won’t respond to.Even if there’s no snow, take a walk in the woods, a park or along some tree-lined streets. Time spent outdoors, and away from screens, can benefit your mental health and physical well-being. There’s even a term for it: forest bathing.
And touch grass
There’s an app you can use to force yourself to literally get back in touch with nature. Touch Grass takes its name from a viral catchphrase for when someone has lost their connection to the real world because they’re consumed by what’s on their screens.It’s similar to other apps designed to restrict screen time by forcing users to take a timeout from scrolling. The difference is that Touch Grass requires users to go outside and take a picture of themselves physically touching some grass.Touch Grass has a free service level that allows you to block two apps. I found it was quite effective at stopping me from opening two of my favorite time-wasters, Reddit and Instagram, though I ended up spending more time on other apps like Facebook. To block all apps, you’ll have to shell out for a subscription $6 a month or $50 annually.If you can’t find grass because it’s winter, there’s also the option to touch snow or sand. It’s only available for iPhones so far, but there are copycat versions for both iOS and Android, though we haven’t tested them.
Putting pen to paper
When was the last time you sent a Christmas card? Most digital natives find it easier to type out holiday greetings or send digital cards over chat apps, than to put pen to paper.The consequence of all the time that we spend tapping, typing or swiping on our devices is that handwriting is becoming something of a dying art. But there are neurological and cognitive benefits of handwriting, research suggests. For example, taking notes by hand is a better way for students to learn and to remember information.So use this time of year to write a thoughtful message to someone special, a letter to a long-lost friend, or thank you notes for presents received.
Pick up a book
If you still don’t know what you want for Christmas, why not ask for a book? It’s easy to find inspiration and ideas at this time of year, when many people like to share the books they’ve read over the past 12 months, and outlets including The Associated Press compile their list of the year’s best books.Reading long-form literature or non-fiction has many benefits that can’t be gained from glancing at short-form bursts of text on your device, including a deeper understanding of a topic, developing empathy, increasing your focus and concentration and more.
Lock your device up
If you’re looking for a last-minute gift, how about a time-lock vault to put your devices out of reach for, say, 15 minutes, a few hours or even weeks?There are plenty of versions for sale online. For about $30, I bought a battery-powered gray plastic model that can hold several smartphones. The instruction leaflet says it’s intended to “enhance self-discipline.”Punch in the amount of time up to 30 days and a digital display will count down until it unlocks. The lid has portholes so you can thread in cables for charging while you wait.One evening, I locked my phone up for an hour and then grabbed my laptop to do some online Christmas shopping. But my plans were foiled because I forgot that authentication requests for my credit card and Amazon went to my phone.
Not-as-smart phones
For another gift idea, consider putting a brick phone under the tree. Also known as a feature phone, these devices cater to those who want a back-to-basics phone without all the digital stimulation that comes with a smartphone.Retro devices from Nokia evoke the early days of the cellphone era no touch screens, numeric keypads and throwback video games like Snake. Most can only make voice calls and send text messages.If that sounds too primitive, there are so-called digital minimalist phones that serve a similar market niche. Devices from Light, Punkt and Balance offer sleek, modern designs but with a stripped-down experience.
Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.
Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
One of the best things about the Christmas period is all the yummy desserts found in peoples kitchens. But now one of the largest food companies in America is issuing a warning about one of those sweet treats.
Heres what you need to know about a new recall from Danone U.S., which impacts one of its dairy-free frozen desserts.
Whats happened?
On December 15, North American food producer Danone U.S. announced a voluntary recall of one of its dessert products, per a notice posted on the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company is recalling its So Delicious Dairy Free brand of Salted Caramel Cluster Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert.
The recall is due to concerns that the product may contain foreign materials mixed into the dessert. Specifically, there is a chance that the cashews in the frozen dessert may have small stones and other hard objects embedded within them.
The potential for foreign material contamination is obviously concerning, which is why Danone U.S. is pulling the impacted products from the shelves and urging consumers who have them not to eat them.
What products are included in the recall?
Only one product is listed as being part of this recall, though the product has multiple best-by dates:
Product Name: So Delicious Dairy Free Salted Caramel Cluster Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert pints
SKU: 136603
UPC: 744473476138
Best-By Dates / Lot No (Exp Dates): Before 08 Aug 2027
The recalled product, as the notice on the FDA website states, can have multiple Best-By Dates / Lot No (Exp Dates), all of which are before August 8, 2027.
Danone U.S. has also posted photographs of the recall product, which you can view here.
It should be noted that the recalled product actually came in two different packaging designs. Products purchased before February 7, 2025, have a different package design than those purchased after.
Has anyone been harmed by the recalled product?
The recall notice does not state whether anyone has been harmed by the presence of foreign materials in the frozen dessert.
Danone U.S. says, So Delicious Dairy Free is working swiftly with retail partners to remove the potentially impacted product from shelves. In the meantime, the company has already identified and corrected this issue and will soon be able to bring back the frozen dessert so many people enjoy.
Where was the recalled product sold?
The notice does not specify where the product was sold. Fast Company has reached out to Danone U.S. for additional details.
What should I do if I have the recalled product?
You should not consume the recalled product if you have it in your possession.
Instead, the recall notice posted on the So Delicious website states that you should dispose of the product.
For information about a refund for the product, consumers are asked to contact So Delicious via the contact form on its website. Alternatively, consumers can call the company on the So Delicious Dairy Free Care Line at 1-833-367-8975.
Last week, two fonts became the unlikely stars of a political messaging firestorm, after the Trump administration replaced Calibri as its official diplomatic font in favor of Times New Roman, claiming that an initial shift to Calibri in 2023 was part of former President Bidens DEIA agenda. The implication was clear: Calibri was framed as a liberal, Democratic font; while Times New Roman took its place as the Trump administrations more conservative choice. Now, a new study is revealing the major flaw in this logic: font is certainly a political tool, but its not inherently partisan.
The study, titled Youre Just Not My Type: How Attitudes Towards Fonts Explain Affective Polarization, examines how affective polarizationor the tendency to associate positive feelings with ones political ingroup, and negative feelings with outgroupsimpacts peoples reception of different fonts. The study showed that, across multiple kinds of fonts, respondents were more likely to respond favorably to a font if they were told that it was associated with their own partisan and ideological beliefs.
As the studys conclusion explains, “People will ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the typeface in a political logo based on their political views of the candidate it represents. According to the researchers behind the study, Katherine Haenschen, Shannon Zenner, and Jessica R. Collier, this finding demonstrates that campaign designers shouldnt feel constrained to only using certain kinds of fonts in their workbecause, at the end of the day, constituents vote for candidates, not fonts.
Emotion leads to analytical inconsistency
This new study adds another layer of nuance to several years worth of research on how fonts are perceived in a political context.
In 2019, an initial study coauthored by Haenschen found that individuals do make some instinctive ideological distinctions between typefaces. Serifs, like Times New Roman or Garamond, were rated by study participants as more conservative; while sans serifs such as Helvetica or Arial were rated as more liberal. But that perception isn’t the same as reality. Based on 2020 data from the Center for American Politics and Design, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to use sans serif fonts, with 68% of Democratic candidates and 62% of Republican candidates using sans serifs that year, respectively.
Haenschen, Zenner, and Colliers research offers more context on why that might be the case. Across three survey experiments, the researchers tested the relationship between political identity and emotional reactions to typefaces. They found that, when it comes to fonts in politics, emotions matter more than stylistic preference.
In one condition, participants were shown a font along with a brief description framing it as ideologically associatedlike, for example, Time magazine rates Garamond as the most conservative font. In another, participants were shown a typeface with a partisan description (which refers to party affiliation), like, Time magazine rates Century Gothic as the most Democratic font. They were then asked to rate how much they liked the font.
In both the ideological and partisan cases, respondents’ favorability ratings were noticeably impacted by their own political views. And the more partisan a respondent was, the more these descriptors impacted their choices.
If you tell me, This font is liked by conservatives, and I’m a conservative, then that makes me like it even more, Zenner says. If you tell me that liberals like this typeface, and I’m not a liberal, then I tend to dislike that typefaceor it will affect how much I like it.
While some respondents resisted these impacts, she says, most peoples political affiliation dominated their responses more than their actual taste. We saw that the political grouping you have can really overrun any kind of taste.
But it’s good news for designers, actually
For campaign designers, these results may actually be good news. Zenner says designers shouldnt worry about constraining their font choices based on ideological associations, because, ultimately, voters will associate their positive (or negative) feelings about a candidate with the font itself.
Designers need to keep in mind that they still have the ability to make choices about typefaces, Zenner says. They shouldnt say, I can only pick a sans serif typeface if we have a liberal candidate, or I can only pick a serif if we have a conservative candidate, because, no matter what, the partisanship of the people who are voting swamps all these taste-level things.
For some candidates, she adds, this research also opens the door to convey a more nuanced platform through design. For example, a Republican candidate campaigning in a swing state might opt for a sans serif font more traditionally perceived liberal to communicate a more forward-thinking, modern, or progressive stance, without actually alienating their voters.
Affective polarization can also help explain how a font can so easily become a political flashpoint, as in the case of the Trump administrations nixing of Calibri in favor of Times New Roman. As soon as these typefaces became a topic of political discussion, Zenner says, the way people responded to them became inherently tied to their own political affiliations. Its no longer about how the font looks, or works, or whether anyone actually likes itits all about how its been politically labeled.
People will be like, I only want stuff that looks like Times New Roman because I associate with MAGA and Trump, and therefore I’m going to back that up, Zenner says. Or the opposite will be like, Im definitely going to use Calibri in everything and I am going to make a statement by doing that, and I don’t know if I even care for it or if I like it or notit’ll just be the politics of it. I think it’s an example of where, yes, these differences in taste exist, but they’re very much driven by culture.
Chipotle is officially in its Ozempic era.
Today, the brand is launching an all-new High Protein Menu in the U.S. and Canada, which it describes as a clean menu for the protein movement. The menu comes with six items, including proteinmaxxed burritos and bowls and a new salad option.
The real stand-out, though, is what Chipotle is billing as its “first-ever snack,” but is really just a tiny cup of chicken. The High Protein Cup is a topping-less, four-ounce serving of adobo-seasoned chicken that you could easily hold in the palm of your handand it’s a perfect, if somewhat depressing, symbol of the GLP-1 age.
For Chipotle, the new menu means embracing two emerging trends in the food and beverage space: bringing off-menu, TikTok-inspired hacks into its official product offerings, and offering more nutritionally optimized (and visually unappealing) options as GLP-1 weight loss drugs begin to transform American consumers eating habits.
[Photos: Chipotle]
Menu hacks go mainstream
Over the past few months, popular chains have increasingly been turning to platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels to see exactly how their fans are engaging with menusand bringing those popular online hacks into the real world. Starbucks ignited the trend in July by launching a secret menu in its app that built off of the digital-driven consumer behavior of drink customization. That same month, Taco Bell tried something similar by rolling out a feature called Fan Style, which let users build their own menu items and share them on socials.
In a press release, Chipotle explicitly cited a viral TikTok of a fan ordering a side of chicken for an extra protein boost as one of the inspirations behind its new High Protein Menu.
“On social media, guests have been ‘hacking’ their orders by getting a side of protein as a standalone snack,” says Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief brand officer. “Were formalizing that behavior.”
@maditev #chipotlehacks #chipotle its just so satisfying original sound – Madi Teeuws
Chipotle’s Ozempic era
Chipotle’s new menu appears to be targeting two different prospective customers: Those who are embracing the broader high protein trend, and those who are seeking low calorie, nutrient-dense options out of necessity driven by GLP-1s. The difference between these two categories is stark.
Protein in its own right is currently having a moment across the fitness and nutrition worlds, and that’s snowballed into the macronutrient finding its way into everything from Cheerios to Starbucks drinks and Propel electrolytes. New protein-focused items on Chipotle’s menu include a double high protein bowl and burrito, both filled with chicken, beans, and other toppings, and both clocking in at around 80g of protein for 800 calories.
But what really stands out about the Chipotle High Protein Menu are its options geared toward customers on GLP-1sa group that would otherwise be left behind by Chipotle’s traditional, high-calorie burritos. These include a High Protein-High Fiber Bowl and High Protein-Low Calorie salad, both explicitly labeled “GLP-1 friendly”; an Adobo Chicken Taco (which is a singular taco with 190 calories); and the aforementioned four-ounce chicken cup.
“We designed GLP-1-friendly builds to generally align with widely shared guidance: approximately 300 to 550 calories, 20 to 40 grams of protein, and 6 to 12 grams of fiber,” says Brandt. “Our goal is to make it simple to find options that fit those ranges.”
The logic behind the tiny chicken cup is clear: GLP-1 users need small, low-calorie, protein packed portions, because their brain’s hunger signals have been altered to feel fuller faster. But the unfortunate side effect of this effort is that, compared to Chipotle’s iconic chunky burritos and overstuffed bowls, its Ozempic-optimized chicken snack looks more like plain, sad fuel to be dutifully digested than a meal to look forward to.
Chipotle is hardly the first brand to rethink its menus for the GLP-1 era, and it wont be the last. The brands embrace of new menu items geared toward smaller appetites signals that, as weight loss medications continue to fly off pharmacy shelves, GLP-1-centric menus may become the norm for other fast casual spots. We just hope they’ll add a few toppings to their offerings.
There’s no shortage of apocalyptic headlines about the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence. For workers, the technology has inflicted anxiety and uncertainty, provoking questions of when, how many, and which kinds of workers will be replaced. Companies have been propelled into a FOMO fury to integrate AI expediently or miss out on efficiency, cost savings, and competitive advantage. The disruption is inevitable, but from where I sit at the nexus of employee mental health and technology, we’re asking the wrong questions.
Enhancing, not replacing, humans
As CEO of Calm, I have spent the past year visiting with executives and their teams across the country to understand how they are faring amid the uncertainty. No matter their sector or location, employers and employees alike have shared their resounding commitment to a future where human talent will still lead, where work will still be human-powered.
There’s no doubt that the future will be different and that workforces will be impacted. The how, who and when of it all is likely to remain uncertain for some time. AI is already transforming how we workbut it isn’t replacing the human element of work. It’s enhancing it. The future of work won’t be man versus machine; it will be man and machine. I see this every day in our work and in conversations with others navigating this transition.
An experiment
One recent experiment reinforced this truth. Partnering with a major chip company, our team explored whether AI visual-language models could help people recognize and reflect on their own emotions like happiness, sadness, or fearso that they might use them to overcome a barrier many face in seeking mental health support: putting their feelings into words. The aim wasn’t to use machines to tell someone how they feel, but to use technology to help support emotional self-awareness that could lead to better descriptions of their emotional experience and other important outcomes, ultimately enhancing their journey with mental health support.
While the AI model achieved 80% accuracy in mapping facial expressions to core emotions, which is closing the gap on the level of accuracy needed to deploy the tool for use, it was clear that achieving the level of accuracy needed could only be achieved with human input to label the data. In short, AI gave us scale to gather and get close to helpful analysis, but human input gave that data the accuracy and meaning we needed to get to a use case. This isn’t just true for mental health technology. It’s the blueprint for the future of work across every industry. Technology supports it, but humans lead it.
The organizations that will succeed won’t be the ones deploying technology in isolation. They’ll be the ones that invest as deeply in human capacity as they do in data and algorithmsprioritizing mental-health support infrastructure, designing resilient cultures, and creating workplaces where people and machines complement one another. And that requires a specific kind of leadership: leaders who ask how employees see themselves integrating AI to supercharge their work, not replace itand who actively encourage their teams to engage with these tools in ways that feel empowering and additive. Leaders who listen to what their teams need now to be ready for the AI future. Leaders who model the human capabilities no algorithm can replicate: creativity, judgment, empathy, and emotional intelligence.
Overwhelmed
But here’s the problem: the very people we need to guide us through this transition are struggling to stay afloat themselves. Calm Health’s latest survey of more than 250 U.S.-based C-suite executives revealed a striking paradox. While nearly nine in ten rate their mental and emotional health as “good,” nearly half say they feel overwhelmed; one in four report anxiety or depression tied to their role. Sleep disruption (41%), exhaustion (34%), and an inability to be mentally present (40%) are rampant. Many leaders say they’ve considered stepping down or changing careers.
This isn’t just about the general difficulty of leadership. This crisis is happening as leaders navigate one of the most disruptive technological transformations in history. They’re making critical decisions about AI integration, workforce transformation, and organizational changewhile burned out, anxious, and unable to be mentally present. They’re being asked to model emotional intelligence and human-centered thinking while running on empty. Leaders who are sleep-deprived and overwhelmed cannot do the thoughtful, human-centered work that AI integration demands. They can’t ask the right questions about preserving creativity and empathy in their organizations. They can’t build psychologically safe environments where employees feel secure enough to experiment with new tools. They can’t listen deeply to their teams’ needs or properly mentor the next generation of leaders. And they certainly can’t inspire and sustain organizations through profound uncertainty.
The wrong questions
This leads me to believe that were asking the wrong questions when debating AI and the future of work. We should not be asking which sectors will be transformed and how fast. We know that it will be all sectors, and transformation is already happening. We should be asking questions about how we are supporting our leaders and employees through this transition. How are we fostering a shared vision and sense of connection? How are we minimizing exhaustion, burnout and anxiety? Eighty-four percent of executives believe that mental health directly impacts their company’s bottom line.Research shows that when workplaces invest in well-being, employees are three times more likely to be engaged, far less likely to burn out, and significantly more loyal to their employer. Burnout alone drives $200300 billion in lost productivity and turnover each year, while companies that invest in mental-health care see returns of up to 4:1 through lower absenteeism, better performance, and improved retention.
At Calm Health, we see this firsthand. When employees engage with our offerings, 77% complete a mental-health screening, 39% enroll in a clinical program, and 37% report improved well-being after a single session. The benefits dont just improve individual livesthey lift culture, performance, and the organization as a whole. And that begins atthe top. None of that is possible when leaders themselves are depleted.
Contrary to dystopian headlines, most leaders already understand the human + AI future. Just 13% fear AI will replace human workers. Nearly 60% see AI and human talent as complementary. Thirty-one percent believe AI will free people to focus on higher-value work; another 25% believe it enhances human capabilities rather than replaces them. And almost 80% describe the human brain as the “original data center.”
These aren’t comfort statements. They’re strategic imperatives. The leaders who hold this vision are right. But vision without capacity is just aspiration. To actually build organizations where humans and AI complement one another, leaders need to be mentally and emotionally equipped to do that work. Well-being in the workplace isn’t just nice to haveit is the infrastructure that enables performance, especially in the era of AI. Technology may speed and scale work, but it doesn’t relieve the need for emotional presence or psychological safety.
AI will reshape nearly every job, industry, and business model. The question isn’t whether humans will still be needed. They will. The question is whether we’ll prioritize investment in the mental health of that original data center and AI at the same pace. Human capacityespecially leadership capacityis required to navigate our future wisely. We need to support the leaders and the next generation of management to guide us there. That work begins with ensuring todays leaders not only have access to transformational AI tools, but also mental health resources that support their higher-value work, so they can actually show upmentally present, emotionally resilient, and genuinely human.
You’ve probably seen them: clutch purses designed to look like croissants, anime-inspired hot sauce gear, purposefully ketchup-stained shirts, and even fried chicken perfumes. It seems like many of our favorite food brands are betting on merch, with surprisingly effective results.
While some might see these as stunts or a new revenue play, its more meaningfully a reflection of cultural and consumer shifts. Consumers today arent just eating at these restaurants, theyre fans of the brands themselves. Chain restaurants like Waffle House, Applebee’s, or Cracker Barrel occupy a unique emotional space. Just as people support sports teams, they express fandom for these cultural icons.
And their proud embrace of brand merch isnt ironic or an inside joke. Whether its through TikTok-famous denim McMerch or retro restaurant lampshades, brands are making genuine connections.
[Photo: Xavi Lopez/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images]
Theres a strong element of nostalgia driving this. Research of Gen Z, millennials and Gen-X reveal high levels of historical nostalgia compared with baby boomers and the silent generation. For fast casuals, this leads to people celebrating the brands they grew up with; ones that feel like part of their personal and cultural history. But social media plays a role here as wellturning consumers into more than customers, but advocates and extensions of the brand. Branded apparel like shirts, hats, or hoodies become a vehicle for that expression. Aligning with a beloved restaurant can feel like joining a community, and social media amplifies that connection.
In our current times of economic uncertainty, brand advocacy becomes even more valuable. Thats why fast casual apparel and other collaborations can help maintain visibility, attract new audiences, and reinforce loyalty; smart plays if done thoughtfully.
[Photo: Panera]
Brands worth wearing
Todays fast casual chains face mixed economic realities. Some brands are thriving; others are struggling under macroeconomic pressure. Young and lower-income consumers, for example, are spending less at chain restaurants, likely due to tighter budgets. When forced to choose between dining out and cooking at home, many opt for the latter.
But these iconic restaurant brands are also having a cultural moment. We now live in a post-ironic world. In the 1990s, wearing fast-food or diner merch mightve been tongue-in-cheek. Today, its a genuine cultural statement. People are earnestly celebrating brands that once might have been considered lowbrow. This reflects a larger postmodern blending of high and low culture, where Michelin-star restaurants serve burgers, and cultural hierarchies have softened. Consumers see authenticity and nostalgia as valuable, not kitsch.
Adding to that, these brands now have the ability to reach audiences in new ways: digitally and socially, creating activation opportunities far beyond traditional marketing. Together, this creates a climate where, suddenly, people are not only open to wearing their favorite food brands, they crave it. And while the initial impact for brands can be more revenue, its real value lies in brand building, deepening affinity, and strengthening the relationship between brands and their audiences.
[Photo: Arby’s]
What food fandom craves
While demand is up, adding a logo to a hat or shirt isnt enough. Instead, creating the right opportunity means translating the brand experience into something people genuinely want to live with; something that both celebrates what makes the brand itself and taps into whats happening in culture. The goal is to take the rituals, emotions, humor, or nostalgia tied to the brand and express them through products that feel culturally current, functional, or stylish enough to belong in peoples real lives.
[Photo: Pizza Hut/Chain]
Take Arbys 13 Hour Drip Fit, a recent project where we collaborated to transform a familiar part of the Arbys experiencethe messy joy of eating barbecueinto a wearable cultural moment. The napkin-made clothing line was playful, self-aware, and unmistakably Arbys, while also speaking to fashions fascination with absurdity and craft. Other ideas, like the Pizza Hutinspired Hut Hat, work because they tap into a universally recognizable brand experiencethe lights over the tableswhile aligning with cultures embrace of bold, nostalgic statement pieces that feel both fun and genuinely wearable.
As importantly, when executed well, these types of collaborations generate buzz, encourage social sharing, and attract influencers organically. Our “13 Hour Drip Fit” spread everywhere from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to the media to TikTok, earning valuable organic reach in the process. In these instances, success isnt just measured by sellouts but by cultural resonance and conversation.
[Photo: Heinz/ThredUp]
Of course, when stepping outside the norms of fast casual marketing, theres always a danger in overdoing things. Brands that chase trends or follow others risk appearing derivative. But playing it too safe leads to stagnation, and fast casuals cant afford to rely solely on traditional pricing tactics to serve their hungry fandom. Its those brands ready to create products that surprise and delight audiences that will spark the type of cultural conversation that will expand their reach.
BJ’s Wholesale Club is planning to open nine new U.S. stores in 2026, and already debuted a new location on December 17 in Casselberry, Floridaits third in December alone, following openings in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Sumter, South Carolina.
BJs currently has more than 250 clubs in 20-plus states. In 2025, the membership-based warehouse chain added 12 new locations in a number of states, including Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Our momentum remains strong as we continue to bring unbeatable value and convenience to new communities, Bill Werner, BJ’s Wholesale Club’s EVP of strategy and development, told Fast Company in a statement. Were on track to open our first clubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2026 and look forward to bringing BJs Wholesale Club to even more families in 2026 and beyond.
BJs confirmed to Fast Company that it will open clubs in the following locations in 2026:
Selma, North Carolina
Delray Beach, Florida
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Forney, Texas
Waxahachie, Texas
Grand Prairie, Texas
SW Fort Worth, Texas
Foley, Alabama
Mesquite, Texas
How does BJ’s work?
Like Costco and Sam’s Club, BJ’s is a membership-based warehouse chain that sells both bulk and regular-size products at a discount. Everything from groceries to tech, home goods, apparel, and gasoline is known to be competitively priced.
Members pay an annual fee, and can shop online or in-store.
BJ’s Wholesale Club financials
The Massachusetts-based chain reported strong third-quarter earnings, including a 9.8% increase to $126.3 million in revenue from membership fees, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.16, which beat analysts expectations. Total revenue came out to $5.35 billion, a 4.9% year-over-year increase.
BJs Wholesale Club Holdings (NYSE: BJ) was up more than 1% in midday trading on Wednesday, December 17.
Balancing on a railroad-tie-size beam of a platform floating in Spains Vigo Bay, Ricardo Tur crouches and points below. Dangling several feet underwater is a pen the size of a garden shed, home to 80 octopuses.
I squat too, hoping to glimpse even a single armthere are 640 of them down there! In my excitement, I lean too far and almost fall in.
Tur is a marine biologist who for the past decade has been feeding the octopuses on this batea, the Spanish term for the 65-foot-by-82-foot raft Im on. The rafts owner, Carlos Veiga, a short, fit 75-year-old who has fished the planets oceans since the Franco era, stands nearby. Around us in this inlet, which contains Europes busiest fishing port, are nearly 500 more bateas, primarily devoted to mussel farming. But Veigas raft tends to a far more complicated creature. It is the worlds oldest continuously operated aquaculture farm for Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus. No reporter has ever been aboard before.
The Spanish government granted Veigas fishing co-op, the Samertolameu Pot Fishers Association, an experimental license in 1998 to fatten up around 2,000 wild-caught octopuses per year. Veiga and his fellow fishermen retain permission to capture young adults, house them in shelters made of PVC pipe, and feed them fishing discards and special octopus food through a yellow tube that snakes down from the surface. Veiga tells me that the animals 5 feet below us are a month old. Once theyve reached 6 pounds, in another two months or so, Samertolameu can sell themfor about $45 each on a good dayat Vigos daily fish auction.
It would be nice to see them. But three decades of trial and error have taught Veiga and Tur that if cages are hung higher, there is too much light, and rainfall dilutes the salinity. Also, thieves can get ideas. Wholesale prices for large octopus in Europe have climbed to almost $8 per pound, double what they were in early 2021, FAO Globefish data show. (Shrimp and salmon prices are relatively unchanged.)
Demand for octopus is soaring. Global catches climbed from fewer than 35,000 tons back in 1950 to 375,000 tons in recent years, pushing the first-sale fish market to between $6 billion and $8 billion annually. Once a delicacy for adventurous eaters, octopus now appears on menus across the globe: mesquite-grilled for Texas barbecue, sliced for Japanese sushi, folded into Mexico City tacos, and sun-dried on the Mediterranean coast.
The surge has put intense pressure on wild stocks. Following a 400,000-ton catch in 2017, the decades largest, governments began to enact fishing bans. This summer, the octopus fishery in Galicia, where Veigas batea is also based, shut for three months so that populations could recover. Portugal instituted its own restrictions in August. In September, Morocco, the leading producer after China, halted catches until years end.
As a solution, many in the industry are starting to embrace the once unfathomable-sounding scheme of farming octopus commercially. If octopus can be scaled at the rate of previous fish species, its estimated that an additional 20,000 tons per year could be produced from farming by late next decade. That may not sound like a lot, but it equals the annual Octopus vulgaris catch for all of Europe in recent years, and its likely to grow. Whoever gets there first will be primed to take the spoils from a brand-new value chain, potentially worth $1 billion per year from farm to plate.
If it can be done, octopus would be the first new farmed animal protein to hit the market in half a centurysince salmon was first commercially raised in the 1970scapping off a marathon quest unlike any in modern aquaculture. For decades, farming octopus was believed to be impossible. It requires feeding a predator in captivity, putting animals that traditionally live alone in communal cages, and drastically improving a wild survival rate that ranks among natures worst: At best, one in every 1 million Octopus vulgaris eggs reaches maturity.
Six years ago, Turthen technical director at the Pescanova Biomarine Center, run by Spanish seafood conglomerate Nueva Pescanovaand a colleague from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, Pedro Domingues, pulled it off. They captively bred a lab-born male Octopus vulgaris, Goliath, with a lab-born female named Lourditas (after the French holy site Lourdes, where water supposedly performs miracles). Five generations of offspring kept reproducing. Veigas batea supplied breeding stock to the Pescanova Biomarine Center so that it could start additional generations; the young octopuses consumed a special feed in the lab, then some of them matured back on Veigas batea.
After decades of research at different centers and companies around the world, Nueva Pescanova announced in July 2019, its team had successfully closed the octopus reproduction cycle in aquaculture. Its next step would be building the worlds first industrial-scale octopus farm, in the Canary Islands, to raise octopuses for consumption. Then-CEO Ignacio Gutierrez promised that consumers would see farmed octopus starting in 2023.
The announcement outraged animal rights activists, all the way up to Jane Goodall, who found the idea abhorrent. But the shock rippled beyond typical activist circles as well. Octopuses are, after all, among the most mysterious and otherworldly creatures on the planet, popularly associated with exceptional cunning and skill. Nueva Pescanovas plans raised red flags even for meat eaters, igniting a debate about whether these cephalopods should be farmed at all (more on this later).
At the same time, Nueva Pescanovas own business entered a rocky stretch: three straight years of profit declines that culminated in 2024 with a $145 million decrease in revenue year over year. Turs octopus team was gutted. The Canary Islands government called for deeper environmental-impact studies before the farm could be built.
When Nueva Pescanovas plan appeared to run aground, many assumed the effort to cultivate octopuses had too. But as Fast Company discovered in Vigo, the work continues. The original team of Tur, Domingues, and Veiga has regrouped under a new banner; they are now looking for corporate backing. New companies have entered the race, including at least two other Spanish seafood purveyors and Japanese fast-food chain Tsukiji Gindaco (which sells takoyakifried octopus ballsat Los Angeless Dodger Stadium).
There is a remarkable sense of urgency among them. With global octopus catch levels plateauing and demand swelling, some company is likely to figure out hw to farm them. (Multiple scientists I spoke with assume that China could even be doing it already.) And the prize will be about more than just money.
Out of the Shallow Now: Farming eclipsed catching in 2020, and the gap has only widened sincefor every type of seafood. Sources: OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-2034; FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024; FAO
Whats happening in Vigo today could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it rightto establish rules from the outset that prioritize welfare, ecological responsibility, and food security for a growing world population. As the world has seen with industrial pork, chicken, and cattle farms, when cruel practices become entrenched, theyre hard to reform. And they rarely stop people from eating meat.
No food choice is without consequences.
Vigo, perched on Spains northwestern coast, has a credible claim as World Octopus Capital. A statue of Jules Verne with octopus legs dominates the harbor, eight-legged murals overtake building walls, and graffiti on the main plaza reads DONT EAT ME below an octopus flipping the bird. An hours drive inland, a decades-old festival serves the planets largest platter of octopus every year. Centuries ago, coastal fishermen paid tithes to monasteries in octopus. Today, Vigo is home to several of Spains biggest seafood conglomerates, including Nueva Pescanova.
In Vigos Old Town, Tur and I sit at a table inside Tapería O Canario, a block from his apartment. Before us lies an array of prawns, squid, gooseneck barnacles, and pulpo a la gallega, the Galician staple of boiled octopus, cut with scissors, drizzled with oil, dusted with paprika, and eaten with wood picks.
In 2021, O Canario became the first restaurant to serve captive-born octopus, a descendant of Lourditas, to Tur and a few other Nueva Pescanova executives. It had been hatched at the Biomarine Center, fattened in a Nueva Pescanova pen, then prepared six different ways.
Before he ran Nueva Pescanovas aquaculture R&D, Tur, 41, spent a decade studying marine life around the world: invasive starfish feeding on sea urchins in the Mediterranean, tuna in the Indian Ocean aboard a vessel once hijacked by pirates (before Tur joined), and toothfish in Antarctica. These experiences offered a firsthand lesson in the food systems fragility: Toothfish, an enormous snaggletoothed predator rebranded in the 1970s as Chilean sea bass, now fetches as much as $70 a pound, fueling overfishing and poaching.
Seafood is Earths most consumed animal protein. Humans caught or farmed 200 million tons of it in 2025, compared with 150 million tons of poultry, according to an estimate by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a global policy forum founded in 1961. Overexploitation and marine mismanagement have pushed fisheries to their biological limits, leaving very little room to catch more seafood sustainably. But because global human population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, the planet will, in fact, need more seafood: Demand is expected to double by then.
Without aquaculture, it will be impossible to feed the worlds growing population, explains Ángel Matamoro, an industry veteran who spent six years as Nueva Pescanovas chief corporate sustainability officer. In its latest annual report, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that wild-caught seafood has officially been eclipsed in global production by farmed seafood. Some 70% percent of salmon now comes from farms.
Only a handful of species have defied ongoing attempts at large-scale commercial farming: squid, eels, deep-sea crustaceans like lobsters, some large fish such as bluefin tuna. But wild squid are plentiful. Eels have a small market. Lobster is a luxury. Tuna simply requires too much space.
For decades, attempts to farm these eight-legged animalsthe common octopus in the Mediterranean, the western rock octopus in Australia, the Patagonian red octopus in Chilehad sputtered. In 2017, after scientists from Japans Nissui Corp., owner of frozen-seafood brand Gortons, artificially incubated eggs, the company boasted that it would be selling farmed Octopus sinensis in grocery stores within three years.
In a world obsessed with protein and anxious about fat and cholesterol, octopus could be the ultimate catch. Its leaner than chicken, high in amino acids, offers 75% of its calories in the form of protein, and is almost entirely edible. It grows fast, takes up little space, produces relatively little wasteand fetches top dollar. One could easily imagine lots of companies processing it into the kinds of palatable octobites now being sold to L.A. Dodgers fans.
Octopuses are marvels of mechanical engineering and masters of using their problem-solving skills and fluid forms to stage daring escapes from aquariums. They have throats that pass through their doughnut-shaped brains, three hearts pumping green blood, and arms they sometimes eatand can regenerate.
Fascination with them has exploded over the past decade. A year after Sy Montgomerys 2015 bestseller, The Soul of an Octopus, debuted, Peter Godfrey-Smiths Other Minds framed encounters with octopuses as the closest humans will get to meeting an intelligent alien. Documentaries followed, including Netflixs popular My Octopus Teacher in 2020. Fan clubs formed, Mak Robers octopus maze video racked up 100 million views on YouTube, novels featured octopus heroes, and department stores showcased octopus-themed home decor. We are in the golden age of octopus appreciation, Montgomery says.
The more en vogue octopuses have become, the harder it has been to defend raising them for food in tanks. Even Montgomery tells me that if Nueva Pescanovas farm had been proposed five years sooner, there would have been less moral outrage.
Nueva Pescanova discovered this the hard way. When the company unveiled its plans in 2019 for its $75 million Canary Islands breeding facility, animal advocates and scientists opposed the project, fast and loudly. Montgomery blasted it as extremely cruel. Godfrey-Smith, a professor of animal philosophy, joined three othersan environmental ecologist, an animal welfare expert, and a marine biologistto write what became opponents touchstone paper, The Case Against Octopus Farming.
They argued that octopuses would suffer stress, injury, and disease in captivity. They pointed to experiments like marine biologist Roger Hanlons 1977 attempt to raise Caribbean reef octopuses: He noted problems with cannibalism, containment, dependence upon live food, and the death of pregnant females.
The animals appetite also raised ecological concerns. Octopuses feed-conversion ratio is at least 3:1, the authors said, meaning that it takes at least 3 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of octopus. In animal agriculture, this is quick math for assessing environmental efficiency: One pound of beef requires 6 to 10 pounds of feed, pork 3 to 5, and chicken closer to 2. Because octopuses are carnivores, their feed requirements would devastate wild fisheries, the authors argued.
As opposition grew, members of Greenpeace and Spains animal-rights political party, PACMA, gathered in Gran Canaria, the site of Nueva Pescanovas planned facility. They painted themselves to look like octopuses and held signs reading OCTOPUS SLAVERY and STOP THE OCTOPUS PRISON. A manifesto asserting that octopuses are too intelligent for captivity was read aloud at protests in Berlin, New York, Mumbai, and Sydney.
Jane Goodall backed a petition that has collected more than 162,000 signatures. When I learned Spanish companies plan to imprison these sensitive, fascinating creatures in octopus farms, I was deeply distressed, the late primatologist wrote. PETA warned of horrific terror and pain and predicted that the octopuses captivity would almost certainly lead to unnatural aggression, cannibalism, injury, and death as they fight and struggle to escape.
The pressure turned personal. Tur says that an activist organization spammed his work email account with thousands of messages per minute, crashing it.
[Illustration: Chloe Niclas]
Tur had visited the proposed farming site at Gran Canarias port of Las Palmas several times, with an eye toward implementing some of the humane aquaculture practices hed been working on for years. A building onshore would contain nearly 1,000 tanks, to keep density low. Seawater would be pulled from the bay (and then cleaned before being returned). Plans included sand-padded raceways circulating water to give young octopuseswhich hardly stop movingsomething like an underwater treadmill. Adults would move to offshore enclosures similar to Veigas batea and be fed an advanced version of the same food.
When I reached out to Nueva Pescanova in 2023, asking to see the progress, the company invited me to visit the Biomarine Center once the research was ready. But as activist pressure ramped up, the company went silent. It never broke ground on the facility. In response to questions for this article, the press team replied, We dont have a spokesperson available at the moment.
Jennifer Bushman, executive director at the responsibly sourced seafood advocacy group Fed by Blue, wonders what the activist pressure has accomplished. Despite the outcry, consumption didnt decrease. It grew. We have determined wild-capture-only isnt scalable, Bushman argues. We have two options, as she sees it: Limit the quantity a growing world can consume, which would make prices soar, or find a way to do what weve done with the rest of our foodswe raise it.
Even the Romans knew how to fatten octopuses, researcher Pedro Domingues explains as we peer into one of Vigos ancient cetáreas, or stone pools, which stretch to the Mediterranean and mark the earliest attempts to raise seafood in controlled environments. The thing, Domingues says, is getting them to go to the bottom.
In the ocean, a female common octopus lays up to 500,000 eggs and dies after giving birth. The staggering number is natures hedge: Until hatchlings reach the size of rice grains and begin to settle, they drift in the current. Nearly all perish.
When hatchlings eat enough, though, they fall to the seafloorand their survival rate shoots up to almost 100%. Since the 1960s, researchers on at least three continents have tried to produce feed thats both ecological at scale and palatable to tadpole-size carnivores. Domingues succeeded, developing a special feed for Octopus maya with Carlos Rosas, a researcher in Yucatán, Mexico, who since 2004 has been helping a local fishing co-op there raise the Mexican four-eyed octopus in tanks outside his lab. At the Spanish Institute of Oceanography in the late 2010s, Domingues and Rosas discovered that if they mixed fish discards with polyunsaturated lipids and other ingredients, ran the result through a meat grinder, dried it, then milled that into powder, the picky hatchlings would eagerly consume it.
In the fall of 2018, Nueva Pescanovas Biomarine Center took eggs from a wild-caught mother and reared a group of juveniles that included baby Lourditas. The next July, Lourditas gave birth. A month later, those hatchlings sank to the floor, officially making her and Goliath parents.
For the next several months, Tur and Domingues logged 12 hours a day, seven days a week, tossing the special feed into tanks, collapsing exhausted each evening. They didnt stop eating, Domingues recalls. The pair watched the hatchlings go through their awkward puberty phase, sprouting elongated arms, discovering their suckers and clumsily sticking them onto the walls.
By October, 7 in 10 had survived. (The team also managed to save Lourditass life after spawning.) Using conservative estimates, Tur projected that Nueva Pescanovas anary Islands facility would have a survival rate at harvest of around 40%not perfect, but 39% better than nature, they said.
Meanwhile, whereas captive octopuses in Vigo Bay had required almost 6 pounds of feed to gain 1 poundnearly twice the already high ratio critics citedTur and Domingues say they achieved 1.4 pounds per pound gained, approaching the rate for salmon, one of the planets most sustainable animal proteins, at between 0.5 and 1.3 pounds per pound gained.
But salmon cant compete on time to market. Farmed salmon takes three years to mature. Even a palm-size oyster needs two. An octopus at Nueva Pescanova could be ready in just nine months. With two or three females, youd get 1 million eggs, explains Domingues. If even half survive, thats 500,000 octopuses. You can have aquaculture just with three female octopuses.
The technical barriers were falling. But Turs team needed to prove something else: that octopuses could be farmed humanely. That is where researcher Pep Rotllant came in. I met the marine biologist, who studies stress in octopuses, at his lab at the Spanish National Research Councils Institute of Marine Research in Vigo, where there are two floors of tanks for rearing sea creatures, aquariums of zebrafish whose stripes have been CRISPRd off, bags of glowing red algae, and an octopus room that I was surprised to find totally empty. He shrugged. Under European Union rules, he says, studying octopuses now requires scientists to submit the same amount of bioethics paperwork you would for humans or dogs and cats. He motioned toward the ocean outside. Meanwhile, fishermen can catch octopus without any problem and keep it in a boat.
Last year, his team published two papers with Tur and Nueva Pescanova that challenged common assumptions about octopus stress and health. One confirmed that the octopuses raised in captivity had skin microbiomes that did not contain pathogenic bacteria, unlike their wild counterparts, suggesting that by at least one biomarker, aquaculture might be healthier. The other tested for corticosteroids, the hormones that regulate well-being in vertebrates, and found octopuses produce nonemeaning that how they feel, so to speak, remains unclear, but its biochemically different from the way humans, birds, and even fish do.
Both sides can cite findings to bolster their arguments. Yet it is worth noting how many cephalopod researchers warn against over-ascribing intelligence to the octopus. The animal is genetically more closely related to a barnacle than to livestock, and it has half as many neurons as a crow, two-thirds of which sit in its limbs.
Roger Hanlon, author of the landmark 1977 study, has long urged caution about reading too much of ourselves into the species, once reminding audiences at the height of public blowback that thinking is a loaded word. Hanlon even titled the paper he wrote on his 1977 experiment with a reference to Octopus briareuss potential for mariculture (as marine aquaculture is also called), writing that his methods could be applicable to mariculture on a larger scale. Now retired, Hanlon did not respond to requests for comment. However, his colleague Jennifer Mather, author of Octopus: The Oceans Intelligent Invertebrate, wrote in a 2019 letter in the journal Science, I would like it if no one killed and ate the intelligent and fascinating octopuses that I work with, either caught in the wild or farmed in captivity. But I am a realist; people have to eat.
Still, suggesting that an animal capable of staging daring aquarium escapes could be healthier in captivity often feels futile. It is difficult when the public is busy watching a guy on Netflix befriend an octopus, Rotllant says.
Over the past year, the heat around octopus farming has intensified. Science ran a letter in late 2024 signed by Sy Montgomery, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and almost 100 other conservationists, environmental experts, and scientists at 77 institutions in 10 countries urging Congress to pass the OCTOPUS Act, outlawing octopus aquaculture in U.S. waters. O. vulgaris, the species featured in the award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, lives in the intertidal zone and is capable of problem-solving and play, they wrote. This species is not suited for a life in a controlled, sterile, and monotonous environment with set diets and regimented feeding schedules.
In response, 118 hard-biology cephalopod experts from 66 institutions in 25 countries, including Domingues and Rosas, formed the Sustainable Cephalopod Aquaculture and Welfare Group and issued their own letter last May. They challenged the idea that octopus sentience renders farming them unsuitable, noting that pigs, cows, and chickensno less sentienthave been farmed for millennia.
Seafood companies, meanwhile, are charging ahead. Since the public blowback, the industry has clammed up, choosing to play their cards close to their chest, says Japan-based marine biologist Ian Gleadall, organizr of the Sustainable Cephalopod Aquaculture and Welfare Group. Last year, one of Nueva Pescanovas Spanish rivals, Grupo Profand, announced that it had received a license to start an experimental octopus hatchery in Vigo Bay, but said it would be a regenerative project to restore and improve ecosystems only, with zero commercial aims. Activists, however, have already vowed to create a PR disaster for Grupo Profand, mirroring Nueva Pescanovas. (The company didnt respond to a request for an interview.)
Meanwhile, Nueva Pescanovas project, despite being stalled for three years, may not be entirely dead. Beatriz Calzada, president of the Port of Las Palmas, told me that in its latest update to her office, the company said it is now reconsidering the Canary Islands facility design, not abandoning it.
Richard Schweid, an author and journalist who got a tour of the Pescanova Biomarine Center last year for his forthcoming book Life on the Octopus Farm, tells me he doubts Nueva Pescanova will ever sell farmed octopus, but he believes that some company will commercially scale it (his money is on one of the Japanese ones hes tracking).
Chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern, a longtime blue food advocate and cofounder of the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture, tells me that if farming what he considers a profoundly sentient being proceeds, it must be done with precision and restraint, with input from universities, governments, and local communitiesnot just industry.
Back in Vigo, Tur is busy trying to build something like that. He and Nueva Pescanovas former aquaculture chief, David Tronosco, have founded a consultancy and project management company called Green Parrot Aqua Solutions and have begun reassembling the old team of scientists plus government partners and local fishermen for a new phase of study. In October, they established what Tur calls the worlds first offshore lab for octopus aquaculture research, on Carlos Veigas batea.
Their pilot project, dubbed Octopus Prime, involves fitting underwater enclosures with cameras and sensors to track animal health and behavior. Researchers in Spain, Portugal, and Mexico are involved, including Domingues and Rosas; Rotllant is using the data to hunt for welfare biomarkers. Tur says that theyre on track to reach a feed-conversion ratio of 1.2 to 1, edging closer to salmons benchmark.
Eventually, they hope to advance what Carlos Veiga and his fishing co-op have been doing in these waters for generations. You get profit, and you get something thats almost pure proteinno fat, low cholesterol, low pollution, low biological waste, Domingues says. What else do people want?
