Theres no question that Amazon is known for its packaging. Boxes and mailers with the ubiquitous smile logo now dot the porches of every neighborhood in the country. And with the companys 2017 purchase of Whole Foods, it became a major player in food packaging as well, wrapping everything from produce to potato chips. Since then, the chain has expanded to 535 locations and increased its sales 40%. That means that every day, millions of people take home some food wrapped in plastic from Whole Foodsbut probably rarely think about the packaging. But in a nondescript warehouse in a still-industrial part of Seattle, five scientists at Amazons Sustainable Materials Innovation Lab are trying to design a better package.This work is twofold. First, researchers are putting dozens of bio-based plastics through a gauntlet of tests on things like tensile strength, tear strength, and seal strength to see how they compare to their fossil-fuel-based counterparts. Second, theyre working with a handful of partners to make sure that when this packaging hits the market, theres a recycling infrastructure already in place that can support it.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Our long-term objective is to enable simplicity and recycling of plastics in the same way that you have paper today, says Alan Jacobsen, the director of Materials and Energy Sciences at the lab. You dont need to know, is it a 1, 2, 3, 4. You just throw it.The intense focus on circularity sands in stark contrast to the overconsumption that Amazons business model entailsand the vast amounts of junk it distributes, particularly with the recent launch of Haul, where every item is under $20. Jacobsen, for his part, says that he knows people are going to buy products at a range of price points. . . . We try to figure out how to enable that in the most sustainable way. And the company says it intends to make the research and technology available beyond Amazon, which means that if its successful, it could lead to a fundamental change in packagingand recyclingthroughout the economy.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]The challenges of designing food packagingLast October, Amazon announced that it had swapped out all of its plastic fillers with paper, part of its overall commitment to reducing plastic use. Paper isnt just more environmentally friendly than plastic, it also has much higher rates of recycling (68% compared to 6%). When youre at home recycling paper, you just throw it in the bin and you know its going to get recycled, Jacobsen says. Because its easier to recycle, its recycled more.But for some applications, paper just isnt a viable solution. Thats especially true for food packaging because of the physical properties of the material, says Jacobsen. Sometimes this has to do with the tear strength or puncture strength; sometimes it has to do with the moisture barrier properties or oxygen barrier propertiesjust properties that it is not possible for paper to meet.Food packaging has to keep potato chips crispy and pretzels salty and baby carrots wet; it has to be tough enough that a pile of apples dont tear open the bag, with a seal strong enough that frozen peas dont spill all over the floor (while still being easy to open). Food has way more demands of its packaging than something like a book, a tube of lipstick, or even a set of dishes. The default solution to this has always been plastic. But Jacobsen and his team are working on a replacement: biopolyesters. That means the plastic is biodegradable and uses biological materials, waste, or recycled content as the feedstock (or raw material used to make the plastic). [Photo: courtesy Amazon]But this packaging doesnt just have to be developed, tested, and producedAmazon also wants it to be easily recyclable, which is where things get even more complicated. Our current recycling infrastructure is finicky: Its not good at differentiating between different types of plastic, and if it gets confused, it errs on the side of landfill. (Because if the different types of plastic get bundled together, it downgrades the entire bale, which means less money for the recycling facility.)Jacobsen and his team want to eliminate this problem entirely. They want to make biopolyesters that are a blend of feedstocks (including different types of recycled plastic) and then have recycling plants (called materials recovery facilities, or MRFs) be able to take it all in, easily separate it, and find a home for these streams.But one new type of material is not going to work, says Jacobsen. Youre going to need a range of different materials. You often have to blend these materials together. You have to put them in different layers to meet the requirements for a particular application. But most recycling facilities arent set up to deal with these kinds of mixed waste streams in a single piece of packaging. So Amazon is working with a network of other companies to help redesin the plastic recycling infrastructure to make it simple for their designs to always be made into something new.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Glacierdesigning robots to go through the trashMuch of the recycling infrastructure in the United States is built on MRFs. These massive warehouses take in gobs of recyclingcardboard boxes and wine bottles and take-out containers and everything in betweenand sort hundreds of tons of waste each day. But in the course of that sorting, a lot of otherwise recyclable stuff can get missed or thrown out, maybe because the machines cant tell what it is, maybe because it gets mixed in with other items. That means a lot of theoretically recyclable materials get sent to the landfill, and also that a lot of bundles of recycled plastic are too degraded with other materials to be properly reused. Glacier, a San Francisco-based company that Amazon invested in last fall, designed a robot to eliminate these pain points. It can sort through more than 30 different types of material, meaning the end bales are more accurate, and fewer items get trashed. (One company, for example, added a Glacier robot, and found that its paper bales were 17% more pure as a result.)[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Our society tends to view recycling as a nice alternative to landfilling our trash, says Rebecca Hu-Thrams, one of the cofounders. [But] we very much see recycling as an absolutely crucial pillar of societys necessary transition toward circular manufacturing. In other words, recycling is at its core a way to get your hands on more raw feedstocks, more materials to turn into new stuff.Hu-Thrams referenced a customer in the Midwest that installed one of Glaciers AI cameras on whats known as a last chance line, where all the trash leaves the facility and theres one more shot to pick out recyclable items. This facility quickly realized that about two-thirds of its total leakage was coming from beverage bottles; when they identified where and why this was happening, they were able to fix the issue. So in the span of a couple of weeks or less, they actually are now on track to rescue 15 million more of these PET bottles every single year that wouldve ended up in landfill, says Areeb Malik, Glaciers other cofounder.[Image: courtesy of the author]Amazon plans to install one of these robotic systems in its lab next month. The goal is that as they develop new biopolyesters that are a mix of materials, they can simultaneously be training the system to recognize them and mark them as recyclablenever getting confused and thinking they belong in the trash.We want to make sure that once the materials are out in the market, we know that theyll be identified in these systems right away, says John Shane, a principal materials engineer who worked in Amazons lab for three years. And well be able to generate data sets here that we can share with Glacier and then they can share with their customers. As that information is fed back to the companies, theyll ideally be able to design packaging thats easier to recycle (and better identified by the robot).Thats a huge priority for Amazon, which plans to share what it learns from its biopolyester development. We dont want to own the IP and keep it to ourselves, says Jacobsen. We want everybody to have access; we have no financial motivation.[Photo: Amazon]EsterCycledesigning chemicals to break down the plasticsBut even if Glaciers tech scales up and is able to identify much more theoretically recyclable plastic, the current recycling infrastructure isnt necessarily able to transform that into new products. And thats the problem EsterCycle is trying to solve. The Denver-based startup spun out of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory last August, after completing a successful project with Amazon on mixed recycling waste. Julia Curley was a postdoctoral researcher at NREL working on the project; shes now EsterCycles founder and only full-time employee. Curley stresses that EsterCycle isnt looking to upend traditional recycling processesits developing an entirely new one. The goal is to be additive to the current system, taking what MRFs now see as contaminated, lower quality plastic and transforming it into materials that can be made into new products.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Our existing system essentially collects bales of similar plastic; shreds, washes, and melts it; and then turns it into something new: Its a mechanical process. EsterCycle, on the other hand, is working on chemical recycling. Plastics are made of these long chains of molecules called polymers, Curley says. And what were doing is actually cutting that chain into its individual components, kind of like taking apart a large string of Legos into its individual pieces. And then they can be remade into new plastics. (Some environmental groups criticize wide-scale chemical recycling as being a pipe dream of Big Oil, although most of the research in this area thus far solely relates to fossil-fuel-based plastic.)This will be especially relevant for compostable plastics, which are commonly used in food packaging. While this is still a small portion of overall plastic (just 1%, as of 2024), its projected to keep increasingand our current infrastructure isnt designed to recycle it. Curley says that currently, if too much of it is in a recycling bale, it will significantly lower the quality and price that a MRF can ask for it. Commercial composters, meanwhile, often dont accept it either, because of contamination issues, or because theyre skeptical that it actually breaks down.EsterCycle is now using a lot of these compostable plastics as feedstocks to demonstrate how well its chemical process works at breaking them down and making them usable for the supply chain. As EsterCycle breaks down these kinds of plastics, the resulting building blocks can be sold to any kind of manufacturer. The idea is that they can be drop-in additions to existing manufacturing, meaning the process doesnt have to change at all, Curley says.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Novamontdesigning packaging to be recycledNovamont, an Italian company, has been working on biodegradable and compostable products since its launch in 1990and its exactly the kind of company that might buy those building blocks. Its Mater-Bi is used in things like shopping bags and packaging; while it was originally made out of fossil-fuel-produced polyesters, the company has been working to increase the amount of renewable content in this material. While EsterCycle isnt yet sending its feedstock their way, the idea is that ultimately, Novamont and similar companies would be able to seamlessly incorporate those biopolyesters into their products. In the meantime, Amazon and Novamont are testing out bio-based plastic grocery bags in Amazon Fresh stores in Valencia, Spain. That was a great application where paper was being used and it wasnt meeting the requirements, Jacobsen says. The grocery bags were being put in the fridge before being delivered to customers and because of the moisture, they were falling apart when people took them out. Switching to the plastic bags has made it better for the folks that are delivering them and improved it all around.In the U.S., Jacobsen and his team have been testing out produce bags made from biopolyesters at some Whole Foods locations and at Amazon Fresh stores in the Seattle area. There, they have QR codes where customers can give feedback on the bags.The Amazon lab collects that feedback, shares it with Novamont, and then they keep iterating on the design until it gets closer to what they want. We learned that lettuce wilted faster [in the early bags], says Jacobsen. Is it the end of the world? Probably not, but to some customers, its not ideal. Researchers at the lab could then take that feedback and reexamine the moisture barrier properties in the bags to see how that element could be adjusted. Once these bags have been used, the goal is that theyre fed back into the recycling stream. To that end, Novamont is also conducting trials with one of Glaciers AI models to ensure that the bags can be properly sorted once they reach a MRF. And then, of course, the ideal is that EsterCycle would be able to chemically break down the bags to be fed back into Novamonts production system.[Photo: courtesy Amazon]Designing a better recycling systemno matter whos in the White HouseMany of these developments are still years from being widely used in the market. That would seem compounded by the fact that the Trump administration appears actively hostile toward anything that benefits the environment and is cutting funding and staffing at research institutions across the country. (Just last week, 114 people were fired from NREL as part of massive cuts to the Department of Energy.)Jacobsen admitted that its a bit of a wait-and-see period, and notes that while their funding isnt necessarily dependent on the government, they do partner with government labs where theres an opportunity to accelerate progress. He hopes that will continue to be possible over the next four years. [Image: courtesy of the author]The Glacier team, meanwhile, is cautiously optimistic about what Trump means for their business. Recycling in the waste industry as a whole tends to be extremely bipartisan, says Glaciers Hu-Thrams. Whether youre thinking about recycling from a climate crisis mitigation angle, or an onshoring and workforce development and job creation angle, theres so many reasons why advancing recycling infrastructure and recycling efficiency is a really, really good thing to do for our society. Much of this work is also done at the state and local level, where decisions are more insulated from Trumps rhetoric and slapdash executive orders. Thats where Jacobsen hopes to make the most progress, noting that cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Denver are interested in incorporating these products into their recycling infrastructure. It can be a bit jarring to try to square the innovations coming out of Jacobsons teamand the genuine passion that they have for a fossil-fuel-free supply chainwith Amazons position as the largest online seller of stuff in the U.S. But our addiction to consumptionand Amazons commitment to fulfilling itmeans that this cycle is unlikely to end anytime soon. Ensuring that its not wrapped in plastic made from fossil fuels is a big deal. And if theyre successful at transforming food packaging, it has implications far beyond just what we eat.
It is hard to believe that in 2025, we are still dialing to schedule doctor appointments, get referrals, refill prescriptions, confirm office hours and addresses, and handle many other healthcare tasks. In fact, I created Zocdoc nearly 20 years ago to help patients avoid the dysfunctional phone experience and schedule appointments online. But I must confess that I have to pick up the phone sometimes, tooand I dread it.
I am not alone. According to a recent survey my company conducted, most Americans say they dread calling their doctor about as much as they dread getting a shot. At best, it is an inconvenience. At worst, the phone is a barrier to care and a wildly inefficient and costly channel for providers. Given that billions of healthcare interactions occur over the phone each year, this is a calamitous liability.
Relying on technology that was revolutionary in 1876 is no way to manage Americas healthcare administration. Especially because 150 years later, a new technology has emerged that will transform how healthcare operates: artificial intelligence.
While AI incites a range of feelings when it comes to its clinical implications and possibilities, I am much more focused on leveraging AI to solve healthcares administrative challenges. Considering these burdens cost $600 billion to $1 trillion annually, AI offers a remarkable opportunity to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and deliver first-class experiences for everyone.
As I see it, the effort to leverage AI to improve healthcare administration will unfold in three stages: Assistive, Autonomous, and Augmentative AI.
Assistive AI: Supervised Intern
In the Assistive stage, I view AI as a capable but dependent intern. It supports healthcare workersbut requires ample supervision.
Take AI scribes, for example. Although the technology takes records and transcribes patient encounters, physicians must still review and revise the notes to ensure they are correct. However, because AI scribes cannot yet work autonomously, documentation burdens remain and there is not a pure efficiency gain.
And they do not even begin to clear the waste and friction burdening office staff and patients.
Autonomous AI: Productive Peer
AI that works independently defines the Autonomous stage. Instead of an intern, think of the technology as a peer. This is where efficiency gains begin to accrue, and it is where we are now. To understand Autonomous AIs potential, lets return to the phone.
In healthcare, the phone is bad for business. Up to 20 percent of calls go unanswered, with each missed call costing provider organizations $200 to $300 in lost revenue. Half of Americans say theyre likely to switch providers if they cannot get through to their doctors office.
The phone is also bad for health outcomes. More than half of patients admit to delaying care when they cannot reach their doctors office, while a third admit to giving up on scheduling a visit entirely.
Autonomous AI is perfectly suited to remove these challenges. Appointment management is high volume, with billions of calls a year. It is highly volatile, with fluctuating peak times that are hard to efficiently staff. And it is highly rote, with most scheduling tasks being simple and repetitive. This makes appointment management a prime area for AI, freeing staff to focus on more valuable, complex responsibilities. In fact, the best AI phone assistants can successfully and independently handle more than 70 percent of a practices inbound scheduling calls.
The AI phone assistants ability to scale efficiency, improve the patient experience, and help practices counter macroeconomic headwinds and bolster their bottom lines is compelling.
Augmentative AI: Superhuman Colleague
When AI surpassesand then scalesanything humans can do, we enter the Augmentative stage.
Soon, polyglot AI phone assistants will detect and then offer to converse in a patients preferred language. AI models will recognize patients appointment preferences, from cadence of visits to time of day and day of the week. AI will even predict the likelihood of a patient attending an appointment and then create custom engagement plans to increase those odds.
Augmenting AI will also excel at anticipating patients needs. It may contact a patient before a prescription runs out and offer to refill it with their pharmacy, or it may proactively schedule a checkup at their preferred appointment time.
This might sound futuristic, but given AIs rapid advances, this stage is fast approaching. My prediction is this is likely only 12 to 18 months away.
AI or Obsolescence
It is tempting to point AI toward healthcares moonshots, but our biggest and most immediate opportunities for transformation lie in fixing the basics.
With AI, we finally have the technology to bring Americas healthcare experience out of the 1800s and into the modern age. In doing so, we can remove the friction, barriers, and waste that have disempowered patients and saddled providers for decades.
Change will happen suddenly, and then all at once. Because AI improves by the minute, healthcare organizations that wait to adopt this technology lose more ground every day. In no time, they will find themselves as relevant as a rotary phone.
Greenlands coastline is huge: a sprawling 27,394-mile labyrinth of fjords, glaciers, and ice-choked waters, longer than Earths circumference. Its length and topography makes it one of the planets longest and most logistically hostile to patrol in peacetime. Now, with countries like Russia and the United Statess neo-imperialist plans to grab as many Arctic natural resources as possible, it is one of Europes frontlines. Which is why people like Jens Martin Skibstedglobal partner and VP of foresight and mobility at design studio Manyoneare thinking about how to better protect a wonderland that is key for the future Denmark and the European Union.For decades, Denmark has relied on the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol (yes, soldiers using sleds and good boys), satellites, and sporadic aerial surveys to monitor this vast expanse. These methods are slow, costly, and imprecise. For example, in 2023, a tsunami in Dickson Fjord went unnoticed for a year, clearly exposing the systemic gaps in this mixed surveillance system. [Image: Manyone]Skibsted and his design team originally thought drones could be a solution. Drones are efficient, they can act in swarms, and they can be fitted with cameras and sensors that can feed an artificial intelligence system to keep track of that vast ice landscape at all times. But traditional drones have problems. The big ones are long range but expensive to operate and require human crews. The small ones dont have enough range: Their batteries run out after a short time and they need to return to a base to reload. Skibsted and his team thought that they needed a new solutionone that could fly, so they could quickly cover large patches of territory, but also one that could operate entirely on its own, landing, recharging, and taking off again. The AquaGlider, as they called their drone, is a solar-powered autonomous drone. It reimagines the USSRs ekranoplan, a large airplane-like vehicle once feared by NATO, which the Red Army wanted to use for coastal invasions. Its origins trace back to the 1960s, when Soviet engineer Rostislav Alexeyev designed a hybrid aircraft-boat that exploited ground effect, an aerodynamic phenomenon where wings gain increased lift and reduced drag when flying within one wingspan of a flat surface. By skimming 1030 feet above water, these mammoth craft, like the 550-ton Caspian Sea Monster, achieved fuel efficiency double that of airplanes, hauling military assets at 300-plus mph. Soviet GEVs were plagued by instability in rough seas, navigational hazards, and political abandonment after the USSRs collapse. [Image: Manyone]Its ironic that a machine inspired by Soviet ingenuity could become Europes first line of defense in a region where Russia is rapidly militarizing (and which Trump also wants to control). But Skibsted saw potential in this forgotten tech to create a new kind of vehicle. The proposed AquaGlider would fly on its own for weeks at a time, taking off and landing on water; its designed to recharge while floating thanks to solar panels, and avoids storms by simply sitting on the water rather than flying. The drones make the most efficient use of energy, dozens of them zipping along the huge coastline a few feet above the water to absorb information and transmit it to base, surveilling everything from illegal fishing to Russian submarine activity.[Image: Manyone]Engineering perpetual motionThe AquaGlider is basically a wing that uses two propellers to speed forward, trapping air against the ocean or ice. This creates an air cushion that allows it to glide with minimal energy. This ground effect lets it travel twice as far as a conventional aircraft on the same power. During takeoff, retractable hydrofoils lift the hull above waves, reducing drag until the craft transitions to flight. If storms surge, electric thrusters enable vertical takeoff, though Skibsted told me in an email interview that this zaps the battery and is a last resort.[Image: Manyone]Solar panels cloak its wings and underbelly, harvesting energy even in twilighta critical feature near the Arctic Circle, where summer brings 24-hour sunlight and sometimes the sun rays go almost parallel to the ground for most of the day. Still, Greenlands winters, with months of darkness, pose a problem. Here, the AquaGlider docks with buoys that store energy from waves and offshore wind farms. These buoys double as communication relays, transmitting data to satellites or coastal stations.[Image: Manyone]Durability is baked into its graphene-coated composite hull, which resists corrosion and iceberg collisions. It avoids obstacles like any driverless car, Skibsted tells me, relying on Lidar and thermal sensors to navigate. For icinga fatal flaw in Soviet designsthe drone borrows deicing systems from modern aircraft designed to work under extreme conditions, like those of Air Greenlands he says, using heated surfaces or pneumatic boots to shed frost.[Image: Manyone]The geopolitical iceberg aheadFor now, however, after all the technical work done with an unnamed drone manufacturer that was Manyones client, the AquaGlider remains a design on paper. The client aborted the project because they were too busy making drones for the Ukraine war, Skibsted says. So, basically we own it ourselves. We dont know what will happen, but Denmark is investing heavily in the arctic.Indeed. Denmark knows that things may get really bad. Russias Arctic ambitions loom large. Its shadow fleet patrols the GIUK Gap (Greenland-Iceland-U.K.), mapping underwater cables and wind farms for potential sabotage. Danish intelligence warned that Russia could mobilize for regional war within five years, which now have been updated to just two if NATO appears divided, according to Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister: Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided. In response, Denmarks 20242033 defense agreement has committed $570 million to maritime upgrades, including autonomous drones, underwater sensors, and 21 new Home Guard vessels.[Image: Manyone]The AquaGlider fits neatly into this strategya low-cost, persistent patrol akin to Ukraines low cost maritime drones, which have destroyed or damaged at least 26 Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea since the war began including the Red Navys Moskva flagship. But Denmarks immediate investments are pragmatic: four minelaying ships and underwater drones will deploy by 2030. But theres also a section of the budget that will be dedicated to autonomous surveillance crafts that can monitor the coastlines, Skibsted tells me. Thats where AquaGlider can fit. It makes sense from a design perspective. It will be up to the engineers to make it a reality, if it picks up the interest of the Danish government.
Charles Suppon has big plans for the Tunkhannock Area School District.
At any given time, the northeastern Pennsylvania districts chief operating officer can rattle off statistics about fields in which its schools excel: arts, AP classes and softball, as well as on-the-job training programs for future farmers, welders and more. Goats and chickens roam the high schools courtyards, where students also tend to koi fish; in the hallways just beyond, high schoolers tinker with tractors, build furniture to sell and offer free tax services for the broader community.
But Suppon speaks with vigor when he talks about the five-megawatt system he hopes to install across five solar arrays on the districts buildings and surrounding property. The solar panels will heat the districts pool and serve as the basis for new curricula and jobs training classes on the solar industry. For a rural district of around 2,000, Tunkhannock is punching above its weight class, he believes.
Were a smaller school district doing big things.
Suppons district is in a bright red portion of Pennsylvania northwest of Scranton, narrowly outside one of the states more prolific natural gas regions. For him, solar is simply a pathway toward cost savingsjust as natural gas, from which the district earns royalties off several leases, has been. Tunkhannock believes it could save upwards of $1 million a year by switching to solar, money that could be used for student initiatives.
It was always a financial decision, Suppon said. We wanted to be able to offset our energy costs, produce our own energy, and only pay distribution [fees] back to the grid.
Theres one catch: Tunkhannocks plan to go solar is contingent upon winning more than $1 million in funding from the states Solar for Schools program. Currently in its inaugural year, Solar for Schools was born from a bill that faced an uphill battle in a legislature where environmental bills often die by attritiona battle that required its creator, progressive Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia) to reach across the aisle and help marry what are often competing interests in the statelabor, education, and climate.
But that money for Tunkhannock might not come through because of the stiff competition for the limited funds. While last years state budget gave the Solar for Schools program $25 million to disperse to school districts, the program received applications that add up to nearly four times that amount from schools and districts large and small, rural and urban, and conservative and liberal.
I was pleased, but hardly surprised, Fiedler said in an email to Capital & Main of the demand.
The disparity between the grant programs budget and the size of its application pool mirrors a broader reality within the state Legislature: Despite clear and growing demand for solar energy, the political will to meet it has yet to catch up.
A 2022 poll of more than 1,300 Pennsylvanians conducted by Vote Solar Action, an advocacy group urging pro-solar legislation at the state level, found that 65% of Pennsylvanians support large-scale solar farm development in the state. More than 80% said they support rooftop solar, while 73% support natural gas and 52% support coal.
I [have] visited nearly every corner of the state, from Waynesburg to Bethlehem, and in every place I met folks who wanted to save money on electricity, create good local jobs, and preserve the beauty of their communities, Fiedler said.
Yet the state lags far behind most others in solar development: Pennsylvania currently ranks 49th in the nation for its growth in solar, wind, and geothermal generation over the last decade, according to the nonprofit advocacy group PennEnvironment.
It has fallen behind other major fossil-fuel producing states, like Texas, the countrys second-largest solar generator in 2023; California, where solar and wind together comprise close to half the states energy generation; and New Mexico, which Environment America, the national organization behind PennEnvironment, ranked 4th in the U.S. for renewable energy production in 2024.
Just 3% of Pennsylvanians now have solar panels on their roofs, Vote Solar Actions poll foundthough 31% said theyd be interested in installing them.
The lag could be attributed, in part, to interconnection delays by the regional grid operator PJMthough many of its neighbors in the same system, like Washington D.C., New Jersey, and North Carolina, have eclipsed Pennsylvanias solar production.
Because of increased demands predicted by PJM, utility bills in Pennsylvania are slated to increase this summer. Fiedler sees solar production as an antidote to what could be an oncoming energy crisis in the state.
We must generate more electricity, she said. Nuclear, wind, geothermal, and gas power plants can all be part of the solution, but the fact is we need energy now, and solar is the fastest.
But solar initiatives continue to hit gridlock in the halls of state power.
After making its way through the state House last summer, a bill that would have enabled community solara program that allows multiple residents to enroll in a shared solar array separate from their homesdied in the Republican-controlled Senate. The bills author, Rep. Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh), who introduced it as a way to make solar accessible for renters, apartment dwellers and those who cant afford solar panels by themselves, has had to reintroduce the bill and start over again this session.
Gov. Josh Shapiros attempt to pass an updated renewables target also failed to gain traction in the Legislature last session. Where a 2004 target required 05% of the states energy generation to come from solar, the new plan would have required the state to reach a 35% target by 2035 that included solar, wind, and nuclear energy generation. He has reintroduced it as part of a broader energy package dubbed the Lightning Plan.
In a divided legislature, the fate of both initiatives is tenuous.
As renewable energy faces sweeping attacks at the federal level under the direction of President Donald Trump, states are stepping up to hold the line. Whether Pennsylvania will prove itself to be a meaningful player in this fight remains an open question.
Climate change has become politicized, said David Masur, executive director of nonprofit advocacy group PennEnvironment. Which then potentially can create more powerful special interests who are opposed to common sense policies and have a vested self-interest in the status quo, and politicians having sort of a knee jerk reaction to oppose things [that] are probably good even for their very own constituents.
Case in point: Solar for All, a federal grant program initiated by the Biden administration that awarded Pennsylvania $156 million for residential solar installations on low-income households, was designed to save residents $192 million over the next 20 years in energy costs while averting 43 million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, the equivalent of removing more than 9 million cars from the road for a year.
These funds quickly became a negotiating chip. During deliberations over the 2024 state budget, a line was inserted into an omnibus fiscal code bill that prevented the state from accessing the funds. Though the Solar for All program was just one of several dozen federal environmental grants Pennsylvania won under Biden-era initiatives, the budget bill specifically calls out that one program. It requires legislative approval for the programs funds to be disbursed.
So, Fiedler sought out exactly that when she authored HB 362, a bill that would force the Legislature to vote on allowing the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, the states independent financing authority, to distribute funds it has already been awarded. Fiedler said the funds are already under contract with the federal government.
HB 362 passed the House Energy Committee, which Fiedler chairs, in March. It now sits in the state House, home to a slim one-vote Democratic majority, as a battle to free the money falters after being confronted with a last-minute hurdle.
Two days after the bill passed, Rep. Craig Williams (R-Chester County), introduced an amendment that would require the states utility regulator to promulgate regulations on net meteringa system that allows residential solar users to sell surplus energy back to the grid to incentivize the buildout of rooftop solar. Environmentalists fear the amendment could open the door to doing away with net meteringa major financial incentive for many residential solar owners.
Reforming net metering has long been a priority of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative lobbying firm that disburses model bills to states, including those fighting renewable energy and attacking environmentalists.
The group argues that paying solar owners for the energy they produce is costly for utilitiesthey pay them retail rates, rather than wholesale rates, and residential solar producers may end up generating enough energy to offset distribution fees theyd pay for the wires that move energy around the grid. Utilities then pass those costs onto consumers, and nonsolar users end up subsidizing their neighbors with solar panels, they argue. Williams has used similar language in opposing solar legislation; environmentalists generally disagree with this premise.
Critics were quick to point out that, prior to joining the Pennsylvania House in 2020, Williams spent more than 10 years as general counsel for PECO, a Philadelphia-based utility that has come under fire from environmentalists for neglecting to increase its share of renewable energy.
State lobbying and campaign finance records show the company spent more than $600,000 on lobbying in 2024, and donated $6,000 to Williams in 2024 between a failed run for attorney general and a successful campaign to keep his seat in the state House. The trade group that represents PECO and other utilities, the Edison Electric Institute, has long challenged net metering as states have grown their share of solar production.
The more people who generate energy from their homes, the less [utilities] get to build out their larger operations, said Elowyn Corby, Mid-Atlantic regional director for Vote Solar Action.
Williams amendment passed with support on both sides of the aisle. Environmentalists, however, consider it a poison pillone that could weaken the states fledgling solar industry.
In Pennsylvania, probably the best thing we have going for solar is net metering, said Masur, the PennEnvironment director.
Minus Williams amendment, Fiedlers Solar for All bill makes common sense, Corby said.
At its heart, the goal of this legislation is to make sure Pennsylvania doesnt send federal money that belongs to our neighbors back to DC, Fiedler said.
The Solar for All program focuses specifically on serving homeowners who might otherwise be unable to afford solar panels of their own. In Pennsylvania, funds are specifically earmarked for low-income households, who are guaranteed at least 20% savings on their electricity bills.
Its unclear whether Fiedler will push forward to advance HB 362 now that it includes a threat to net metering.
In the coming months,the state Legislature may also vote on initiatives that would put solar panels on municipal and emergency response buildings; warehouses and distribution centers; and townhouses governed by homeowners associations.
Shapiro has proposed reupping the Solar for Schools programs $25 million appropriation in the 2025-2026 budget, set to be finalized by June 30. Though Fiedler said shes pleased to see the program reinstated, she said that number is the minimum we should budget.
Jim Gregory, a former state representative and now executive director of the Conservative Energy Network-Pennsylvania, has committed himself to convincing his former colleagues of the importance of renewables in a diverse state energy portfolio.
If that money is going to be made available, we want to see it made available to low- and moderate-income families in rural Pennsylvania, he said.
Gregory said hes watched as attitudes toward solar among conservatives in state government have shifted.
I dont oppose anyone who wants to put solar on their rooftop or anything like that to help with utility bills, said Rep. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren) at a recent meeting of the House Energy committee on Fiedlers bill. Rapp has, for several sessions, introduced legislation requiring solar operators to create end-of-life plans for their arrays, which has yet to pass.
Though far from an all-out embrace of solar, Rapps language offers a window into a softening stance on renewables. In 2019, Rapp wrote on her Facebook profile that solar and wind energy pose serious environmental risks, and called its supporters radical Green New Deal proponents.
Despite past roadblocks, Fiedler remains optimistic about the fate of solar initiatives in the state. She sees the Solar for Schools program as evidence of broadening support for clean energy.
I believe there is political will for solar and all types of energy development in the state, she said. A lot of that success comes from the broad stakeholder coalition we built and from the support of colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
For school districts like Tunkhannock, the states ability to reach consensus has very real consequences. With the fate of federal solar tax credits unclear, district leaders say they are currently on the edge of their seats. The Solar for Schools grant could end up being a lifeline.
To say not getting potentially a million dollars in grant money wouldnt affect us at all I think would be a lie, said Suppon, the school districts chief operating officer.
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
An upcoming exhibition at Londons Design Museum will let guests take a journey through Wes Andersons never-before-seen personal archivesfrom the coat worn by Gwenyth Paltrow in The Royal Tenenbaums to the original Grand Budapest Hotel model and the actual puppets used in the stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox.
The exhibition, titled Wes Anderson: The Archives, includes more than 600 objects collected by the iconic filmmaker over the past 30 years. It opens on November 21 and runs through the following July, and advance tickets are already on sale. Aside from a smaller initial showing at la Cinémathque française, a collaborator on the exhibition, this will be the first time that Andersons archives have been displayed. In fact, most of the items have rested in storage ever since the shooting of their respective films.
Max Fischer’s Rushmore Swiss Army knife. [Photo: Roger Do Minh/ the Design Museum]
An extensive archive
Andersons personal object curation began after the making of his first feature-length film, Bottle Rocket, which was released in 1996.
Andersons meticulous collecting of these items began when he realized that everything that had been made for Bottle Rocket was owned and then sold off by the films production company, the release explains. So, from his second feature filmRushmorehe personally took care of every item after shooting concluded, ensuring he was the guardian of all items crafted for each movie.
Model of The Grand Budapest Hotel [Photo: Thierry Stefanopoulos/La Cinémathque française]
Because of this concerted effort, the Design Museum now has access to items from 1998s Rushmore all the way up to Andersons most recent project, the 2023 short film anthology collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More.
Richie Tenenbaum poster, The Royal Tenenbaums. [Photo: Richard Round-Turner/ the Design Museum]
Some of the most recognizable pieces in the collection include props, costumes, and puppets from Andersons films. From The Grand Budapest Hotel, theres the original candy-pink model of the titular hotel, standing several feet tall; the films Boy with Apple painting, which becomes a central character in itself; and the jaunty concierge costume worn by Ralph Fienness Gustave H. From The Royal Tenenbaums, theres the much-emultated tan fur coat worn by Gwyneth Paltrows Margot Tenenbaum, as well as a poster of Richie Tenenbaum thats shown in the film. And from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, costumes from the full ensemble cast will be on display together.
Miniature washing machines, Isle Of Dogs. [Photo: Richard Round-Turner/ the Design Museum]
Fans of Andersons animated stop-motion films, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs, will get an opportunity that might be the most exciting of all: coming face-to-face with the characters themselves.
Rat puppet, Arch Model Studio, Fantastic Mr. Fox. [Photo: Richard Round-Turner/ the Design Museum]
A glimpse of Wes Anderson’s creative mind
In addition to props from the films, Wes Anderson: The Archives plans to offer a peek into Andersons work process and lesser-known details from his career.
Starting with the earliest point in his artistic evolution, the museum will show a screening of Andersons Bottle Rocket short film, the original 13-minute version of the eventual feature-length movie starring Owen and Luke Wilson. The short serves as the very first example of Andersons now-iconic style, and is often cited as the launchpad for his later fame.
Wes Anderson’s personal notebooks from The Royal Tenenbaums. [Photo: Roger Do Minh/ Wes Anderson]
Also on view will be a series of Andersons annotated notebooks from the set of The Royal Tenenbaums, as well as early sketches, storyboards, and polaroids from set.
In short, its a Wes Anderson superfans most far-fetched dream, all contained in one museum showing.
Hawa Hassan was only 4-years-old when fighting forced her and her family from their home in Somalia. Hassan spent the next three years in Kenya, where some of her earliest memories were of running around tents in a refugee camp with her siblings and helping her mother stock the goods store shed opened there.
When she was seven, Hassans mother sent her to live with family friends in Seattle. It would be another 15 years before she saw her family again.
A lot of my childhood was spent wondering about my own background and my own identity, said Hawa, a chef and entrepreneur who now lives in New York. For many years, I had this deep desire to find people like myself and tell that story.
[Photo: courtesy Ten Speed Press]
Hassans new cookbook, Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Communities from Eight Countries Impacted by War is the fruit of that longing.
To write it, Hassan spent three years travelling and interviewing dozens of chefs and entrepreneurs from Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, El Salvador, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, and Yemencountries perhaps better known to outsiders for civil strife than rich ingredients and complex flavors.
The chapters are divided by country, each one offering a brief history; lush photos of daily life; several recipes; and at least one interview with a local grower, restaurateur, or community organizer.
My number-one goal is to tell a different story about what it means to be from these places, Hassan said. I hope that when people pick up this book, they come for the recipes, but they stay for the stories.
In the DRC she spoke with a baker who found success delivering mikateor doughnutsto customers during the pandemic. A brewer from Baghdad reflects on building a new life in New York and highlights masgoufa grilled fish with tamarind sauceas a must-try Iraqi dish.
Though many of the people she spoke with have been displaced, Hassan said she intentionally focussed on food traditions and everyday life rather than conflict. This was much more about the idea of home rather than what the temperature of a country is, or what your politics are, she said.
Mikey Muhanna, a social entrepreneur featured in Hassans Lebanon chapter, said that perspective came as a relief. I was apprehensive at the beginning, he said. There’s a million orientalizing books, like, let’s go to war-torn countries and talk about real people on the ground, but the more I got to speak to her, and her collaborator [photographer Riley Dengler], I realized that they were coming from a place of real curiosity.
He said Hassans work offers a blueprint for how to report on communities other than ones own. Its really powerful to see somebody who has the life perspective that Hawa has tell these stories with integrity, patience, and curiosity, he said.
Hassan traces the roots of Setting a Place for Us more a decade back to a six-month stay in Norway, where her mother and siblings eventually settled. After so many years apart, Hassan said she had to learn to find her place again in her family. That’s when I started thinking about how I know it’s not only my family that has these big stories to tell about being othered or impacted by war or by family separation, she said.
Hassan was working as a model in New York at the time, but in Norway she spent hours in the kitchen with her mother making Somali food. When she returned to the U.S. in 2015 she started to lay the groundwork for her company, Basbaas, a condiment company with offerings like tamarind date sauce and coconut cilantro chutney.
In 2020, she published her debut cookbook, In Bibi’s Kitchen, which she cowrote with Julia Turshen. A collection of recipes from grandmothers in eight eastern African countries, it won the James Beard Foundation award for Best International Cookbook.
The sauce [company] has helped me to inch my way onto the American dining table, and tell a story of not just being a Somalian girl, but being an African girl, she said. She saw In Bibis Kitchen as an expansion of that storyoffering a glimpse of womens daily lives in East Africa.
Following the success of In Bibis Kitchen, she was approached by Food Network TV to host her own show. She starred in Hawa at Home, where she cooked dishes like Doro Wat and made piri piri sauce, bringing East African food to new audiences.
Her new book is a more intimate exploration of her life storyone that relates to millions of displaced people around the world. Setting a Place for Us is the next layer of who I am that I’m willing to share, which is a person who’s been impacted by civil unrest, displacement, and family separation, Hassan said.
But despite the heavy subject matter, the book is largely optimistica celebration of the places people have returned to after years away or that that they continue to long for from afar.
My philosophy is we have no sad stories to tell, Hassan said.
Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Communities from Eight Countries Impacted by War will be published on Tuesday, May 13, by Ten Speed Press.
In April 2024, Yahoo acquired Artifact, a tool that uses AI to recommend news to readers. Yahoo folded Artifactswhich was cofounded by Instagram cofounders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrominto its revamped news app to help surface and curate content for readers.
Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone came on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the acquisition, the companys approach to news curation, and what the future could hold for the private equity-owned company.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Yahoo acquired news discovery platform Artifact last year. Now, the technology is used in Yahoos revamped news app. Why did you acquire the platform?
Artifact had come up as a startup founded by the Instagram cofounders. It used AI and advanced algorithms to pull in really great content and also do a great job of surfacing it. When we read that they were going to shut it down, I reached out to Kevin Systrom immediately to say we should talk about acquiring it. We basically took the backbone of the Artifact app and made it the Yahoo News app.
We look to acquire companies if they can fill a gap for us. We’re not in the game of acquihires. It has to be a product fit. We’re the No. 1 news publication in the U.S. in terms of total traffic. We got to that point by being an aggregator. Were aggregating thousands of sources and then using algorithms to surface the right ones for each of our millions of users.
With Artifact, how are you using AI to personalize a users newsfeed?
We hope the end user doesnt think about it at all. It’s just about the Yahoo News app getting smarter at delivering the right content to you at the right time. We’re very pro publisher and we are a big part of the ecosystem. We send them traffic and give them revenue as part of it. We’ve been doing that for over 20 years.
That is, in some ways, pro publisher, but AI summaries come up on search and articles get summarized via bullet points. That means users may not actually read the articles, and media companies will get fewer page views.
I would think about it a little bit differently. If you go back to the beginning of how Yahoo has always worked with publishers, we’re a huge part of the ecosystem in sending traffic out. It’s very important to us to keep the ecosystem very healthy, at least how it historically was. I understand your point, and certainly that’s a new factor for publishers to worry about in terms of AI companies sucking in all their data. Everything we do is with the publisher. We brought all of our publisher relationships to Artifact. Even when there’s a summary, it’s not trying to [stop people looking at] the article, it is trying to pull out the highlights of [the article]. We will also summarize a topic across publishers just for helpful understanding. But again, it all goes back to sending people down the funnel to [media] properties.
But they would only go down that funnel if they want to learn more, right?
I don’t know how much time youve spent with any of these apps, but I’d say they’re bullet points, short tidbits at the top. They’re really not summarizing the whole article.
A news algorithm designed for people can contribute to their biases. Yahoo’s role is nonpartisan, but how do you think about balancing the goal of providing a customer service with preventing the information that only reinforces a reader’s beliefs?
We think a lot about it. We try to be very nonpartisan. It’s a hard job. One of the signs we’re getting it right is I get nasty emails from people on both sides. Part of our job with the algorithm is to make sure readers don’t go too [far] into the rabbit hole and that [they] actually can continue to see a balance of things. At the same time, our job is to customize for them as an individual, so the algorithms take that into account. But there are a couple other things happening. We also balance [AI curation with] human curation, which is part of Yahoo being the trusted guide for all these years. Then of course, we are working with trusted publishers that we have long standing relationships withnot sharing user generated content.
How does the app fit into Yahoos business strategy?
In any given month, we are usually the No. 2 ranked property on comScore in the US multiplatform or in the top five across desktop and mobile. We’re in the top five with Gen Z, and 90% of internet users in the US touch Yahoo in any given month. So monetization of one property is not our issue. We monetize very well. Most of it’s through advertising, like with any major freemium publisher or product. A certain percentage of our users subscribe to our more premium offerings in given categories like sports or finance or email. News is just a part of that.
You’ve said job No. 1 is making every one of these products and brands under Yahoo superstrong on their own within the categories in which they operate. There’ve been news reports saying you might want to spin off different products and take them public. There’ve been other reports saying you might want to take the company public as a whole. I guess I’m trying to get a sense of what you think the future is for Yahoo.
I would answer that maybe two ways. It’s our job to create value and grow the business, which 30 years old. But for those who don’t know, we were spun out of Verizon by Apollo, the world’s largest private equity firm in September 2021, then I came in as CEO.
Most private equity firms want returns.
There are two ways to get a return. If you’re a private equity firm, you could go public or you can sell. It is also possible that your investors feel that they have a tiger by the tail and want to hold out longer. I’ve founded startups, I’ve worked at big public companies. It doesn’t matter the size of your company, the name of the game is growth either way. That’s also a sign of a healthy company. It’s a sign that you’re delivering for users. We’ll create a very valuable company, whether it’s us stand-alone going public, or it’s someone acquiring the company. That said, we definitely have inbounds all the time, especially because it is owned by private equity of people trying to pick off part of our pieces of our company. Part of the private equity game is probably to listen to everybody and understand what your options are.
Every search engine tech company that puts out any kind of content or that aggregates content is partnering with LLMs like Open AI or Anthropic. Who are you partnering with?
Going back to the late 2000s, Yahoo has had a longstanding relationship with Microsoft, which led to an easy relationship with Microsoft copilot. We have the second largest email platform after Gmail, it’s in the hundreds of millions of users. Even a year before Apple announced this Apple Intelligence series of products that would show up in their mail product, we announced AI in Yahoo Mail, helping you serch mail, summarize it, write, edit, and more. That partnership was done with OpenAI. We also are partners with Anthropic, with Google, and others on other products that we have. We work with everybody so far and we’ll continue to do so. Were also internally building a bunch of our own AI products. I think it’s too important to leave it purely to third parties. We have to have our own expertise there.
Burnout is a pervasive issue that can be damaging to individuals and costly to organizations. As Fast Company has reported previously, 82% of workers feel at risk for burnout and could be costing companies an average of $21,000 per year in lost productivity.
And while theres no shortage of advice about how to prevent burnout, prevention isnt always a level playing field. Here are some situations that may leave you more prone to burnout than others:
1. If youre in the wrong work environment
Kandi Wiens, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the universitys masters in medical education program, says that some people may be more at risk for burnout than othersespecially those who are working in environments that arent compatible with their personality or temperament.
Wiens, author of Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Relationships at Work, says that burnout, especially in the workplace, ultimately comes down to a misalignment, or sometimes referred to as a mismatch, between someone’s personality or temperament and the environment that they are in.
So if you are an extrovert and were working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, that might have led to burnout, while your more introverted colleagues may have thrived. If youre curious and open-minded and your workplace shuts down that kind of inquiry or experimentation, you may burn out faster.
Clues that you might be in the wrong work environment include feeling resistance to the companys work style or ideas. Wiens suggests people pay attention to that resistance and check themselves. Practice vocalizing your concerns about that resistance with someone you really trust. What would that look like, and how can you do that in a way that is healthy for you? she says.
2. If youre prone to fawning
Those who are constantly overextending themselves in an effort to please others in the workplace and are unable to set healthy boundaries are fawners, says clinical psychologist Ingrid Clayton, author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselvesand How to Find Our Way Back. This chronic people-pleasing is a hybrid response to trauma, Clayton says, noting that its an alternative to traditional fight, flight, or freeze responses. Its this hyper-attunement and managing other peopleappeasing other people in a hyperarousal kind of way, she says. But its also hypoarousal, where there is a disconnect from ourselves, so we dont know were fawning.
In her book, Clayton cites the example of a Harvard-educated law firm partner who was suffering signs of burnout. Through working with him, she helped him realize that the external validation he was seeking, as well as his inability to set boundaries, was leading to burnout. Such extreme people-pleasing can cause us to overwork and take on too much, ultimately leading to burnout.
Our worth is tied to these external markers rather than a connection with ourselves, Clayton explains. So, burnout is not just about outputthe exhaustion of overdoingbut our loss of autonomy, authenticity, and knowing who we are at all. This is survival mode, and we are not meant to live there 24/7. Something has to give.
3. If you lack self-awareness and self-advocacy skills
When youre encountering challenges in the workplace, whether theyre related to the culture being out of alignment with your personality and traits, or if youre slipping into people-pleasing behavior, advocating for yourself is an important part of burnout protection. However, Wiens says that self-awareness is essential to understanding the issues that are causing friction with your personality or temperament and then being able to address them.
Once you identify the issue, you can begin to take steps to mitigate it. For example, if youre isolated and extroverted, you can purposefully design other ways to get the interaction you need. If your creativity is being stifled, you may be able to find other outlets for it.
Wiens suggests thinking of it this way: What is it in the environment that is a mismatch or misalignment with that thing that is triggered in me, and then what can I do to either change it or change the way I think about [it]? She notes that people who lack self-awareness and the ability to examine their feelings face a fundamental hurdle in addressing the issues that could lead to burnout.
Clayton notes that if youre unable to advocate for yourselfincluding asking for what you need and setting boundaries when necessaryyou may be more prone to burnout.
Fighting burnout
The good news, Clayton says, is that boundary-setting can be practiced and built like a muscle. Start by asking for what you need when the stakes are lowin a restaurant order, for exampleto get in the habit. Some people can kind of laugh this off if they don’t have this experience, but it’s very real that if you don’t have an experience of speaking up or setting a boundary where it felt safe and it was successful, you have to start to build that experience, she says.
While several factors may contribute to burnout, these three issues may accelerate it. However, through awareness and practice in mitigating these factors, workers can find a measure of protection from a pervasive malady.
Artists and cultural workers are falling through the cracks of our economy at a time when their work has never been more needed in society. Their ability to exist and thrive is threatened by the cost of living and housing affordability crisis, our increasingly precarious economy, and cuts to grant funding under the new administration.
Many exist in a structural grey area between independent gig workers and small business owners. Their work is often episodic, making them easily left out of safety net programs like unemployment and healthcarethis is especially true for artists from historically marginalized communities.
To address these challenges, we need new systems and solutions to increase economic equity and ensure that our communities have access to creativity and culture. One such area weve seen a wave of interest and experimentation around the potential of in recent years is guaranteed income.
What is guaranteed income? It refers to unrestricted recurring cash payments that people can use however they see fit to cover their basic needs and reach their personal and professional goals. Guaranteed income programs can be focused geographically on specific cities, on specific communitiesfor example young people, entrepreneurs, or parentsor a mix of both.
Springboard Executive Director Laura Zabel announces Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists Expansion, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
At Springboard for the Arts, weve been delivering one of the longest running guaranteed income programs in the country since 2021, focusing on both urban and rural artists and creative workers in Minnesota. Our 100 recipients to date include painters, sculptors, hiphop artists, singers, composers, teaching artists, performers, and writers who are receiving $500 a month over a five-year period.
This has given us the opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned and what insights we can offer to others thinking about doing this work.
Artwork by Alicia Thao, Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity Cohort Member. [Image: courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
Adapt each program to the historical, cultural, and economic extractions in that community
At its best and most effective, guaranteed income is a tool for justice and repair by supporting populations who have been exploited by social, cultural, and economic systems in America. These programs should be tailored to a communitys needs by considering the connection points between the economics, culture, and physical design of our cities and the impact of policy and planning harms from the past.
Both cities and rural places bear the generational impact of economies based on the extraction of natural or cultural resources including redlining, land theft, the interstate highway system, and placement of industrial infrastructure, like trash burners, that has caused generations of environmental harm and adverse health impacts. The results of these policy decisions fall disproportionately on American BIPOC communities and neighborhoods, particularly Native and Black communities.
Artists Respond Cohort Member Briuana Williams live drawing at Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
For our work in Saint Paul, weve focused our efforts in Frogtown and Rondotwo neighborhoods that are culturally vibrant, resilient, and community oriented, yet that continue to be disproportionately impacted by historical disinvestment, discrimination, and extraction. Rondo, for example, is a historically Black neighborhood whose cultural and business corridor was destroyed in the 1950s and ’60s by highway construction, causing generational economic and cultural harm that residents deal with to this day.
Our rural work is focused in Otter Tail County, in West Central Minnesota. This community, like many rural areas across the U.S., is in the midst of economic transformation, including the loss of major employers, lack of affordable housing, and increase in predatory businesses like dollar stores and payday lending. Here, guaranteed income can be a tool for attracting and retaining the creative people these communities will need to imagine a different future.
The focus on artists and creative workers is rooted in the idea that, like caregiving and community work, cultural work is a form of labor that communities depend on to be healthy but is not adequately valued by our current economy.
Artists Talk in rural Minnesota by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
Use artists to help change the narrative about guaranteed income programs
While the idea of guaranteed income is gaining traction across the country, there are still embedded cultural and political beliefs that limit how far economic justice policy change can go. These are often harmful tropes like: Do people deserve it? How do they spend the money? Why dont they just get a job?
One of the most effective ways of countering these questions is for people to experience the stories of these programs on a human level, which can transform pervasive narratives about inequality and poverty into belief systems of belonging, deservedness, and inherent selfworth. In this way, artistsparticularly those participating in guaranteed income programs and who are locally rooted in their communitieshave a unique role to play in guiding and delivering a narrative shift around guaranteed income.
With this in mind, we created a project within our wider guaranteed income work, collaborating with a cohort of artists on Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity. In this program, artists created public projects highlighting the root causes that lead to the need for guaranteed income, and its impact on families and communities. (These projects were supported separately and outside of artists’ participation as guaranteed income recipients.)
Guaranteed Income is the G.O.A.T billboard by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
Artists have designed projects that range from podcasts and coloring books, to postcards, a public installation, and a collaborative performance/dance meditation made available on YouTube, all of which use messages that are reflective of their local communities. A billboard on rural Highway 210 by artist Kandace Creel Falcón looked at guaranteed incomes connection to rural values, with the message In Rural We Tend to the Herd as a way to root messaging in the collective values of that community and counter individualistic narratives that attempt to malign safety net programs.
Artist and GI Pilot participant Mickey Breeze speaks during Basic Income Week at Springboard for the Arts, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
Cross-sector investment and collaboration are key
Our original pilot was a cross-sector partnershipdesigned in collaboration with the City of Saint Pauls Peoples Prosperity Pilot guaranteed income program and supported by local and national funders including the McKnight, Bush, Surdna, and Ford Foundations. We recently announced the expansion of this work, which includes extending the Saint Paul pilot and adding additional participants to the pilot in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, totaling 100 artists across both locations and committing to five years.
The majority of the pilots taking place across America have been 12 to 18 months, in part because that’s the amount of time that cities were able to raise and access relief funds during the pandemic. These are a great start, but to have the kind of longevity that will allow us to make a meaningfulnot just temporaryimpact requires bringing more and different kinds of partners on board and moving from pilots to policy.
This is an area where philanthropy has an opportunity to be a true partner by seeding longer-term pilots in more geographies and by supporting advocacy and policy work.
Artists Respond Cohort Member Kashimana performs during Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts]
Research and evidence matters
When it comes to expanding the reach and impact of guaranteed income, research and evidence matters. Groups like Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, led by Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, are integrating learning and research from local pilots into state and federal policy recommendations. Springboard for the Arts is working with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research to collect data through community-led participatory research in both rural and urban locations, allowing us to understand whats working and how people are using these funds.
Emergent themes from this research are compelling, with monthly income contributing to general financial stability; participants’ ability to do longer term planning toward healthcare, savings, business ownership and housing; and increasing financial security so artists can generate creative work for their community and stay in their neighborhoods. This money is going toward rent and supplies but its also being put to everyday expenses like fixing a car so that an artist can get to their job or buying snow boots for their children.
Being able to point to these tangible impacts allows us to bring in more partners and more effectively advocate for policy. Even if it feels tedious, having a growing body of data will bolster all of our efforts for both individual programs and the movement as a whole.
The experience with our pilot has shown us that guaranteed income works as a tool for supporting both an individuals economic security and their ability to contribute to their communities in creative ways. As our economy becomes even more stratified, there is an urgent need to advocate for policy innovations, like guaranteed income, that offer more Americans the freedom to take care of their families and communities and imagine and build a better future.
The article was adapted from the chapter Artists as Allies in Economic Justice in the recently released Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
Email: Its one of the more evil of the necessary evils. We all spend a significant chunk of our days wading through messages, to the point that it can feel like a never-ending task. Save us, artificial intelligence!
The good news: AI is revolutionizing how we interact with our email. And the best part? Many AI email tools offer free tiers that are actually useful.
If you’re looking to supercharge your Gmail experience, reclaim your time, and take a bit of work out of your workflow, look no further.
Compose AI: Effortless email drafting
Ah, the dreaded blank email draft. Thanks to AI, its days are fortunately numbered.
The Compose AI extension integrates directly into your Gmail compose window and offers intelligent suggestions as you type.
Simply provide a few keywords or a brief description of what you want to say, and watch the AI craft a well-written draft for you.
Theres also a super handy one-click email-reply feature, which suggests quick replies based on the context of messages you receive.
The free version offers 1,500 AI-generated words per month, while premium plans unlock additional generations and access to more advanced writing styles. Paid plans start around $10 per month.
InboxPurge: Cut the clutter
An overflowing inbox can be a needless source of stress, but AI-powered extensions are stepping in to help you regain control.
InboxPurge offers a free plan focused on helping you declutter your Gmail.
It uses AI to identify and categorize emails and allows you to quickly unsubscribe from identified newsletters and delete or archive entire categories of messages.
InboxPurge offers 20 free cleanup actions each month, while premium plans start at $4 per month and unlock more advanced automation features. Theres also a onetime $5 plan that unlocks all features for a weekperfect for periodic binge-decluttering sessions.
Mailmeteor: Enhance email productivity
Mailmeteor is primarily a mail-merge tool, with a free plan that offers features for boosting your email productivity and organization.
Use it to send follow-up emails at the perfect time, even if you’re not online. With the free plan, you can run three campaigns concurrently and send 50 personalized emails each day to multiple recipients.
Paid plans start at $5 per month and unlock higher sending limits for mail merge, more detailed tracking features, the ability to personalize emails with more variables, and integrations with other tools.
Concisely: Summarize emails automatically
Don’t have time to read every lengthy email in detail? Neither does anybody else. Thats why AI-powered summarization tools are such lifesavers.
The free Concisely extension can quickly analyze long emails and provide you with a brief overview of the key points, boiled down to a single sentence.
Its especially useful for newsletters, reports, or lengthy discussions where you only need the core information. The extension is free at the moment, with no paid plans available.
Grammarly: Watch your tone
AI-powered tone analysis extensions can help you communicate more effectively. Grammarly has a free version that analyzes the tone of your messages to let you know how you might sound to the person on the other end.
There are lso built-in grammar-checking features, of course, which help you come across more clearly and professionally to your recipients.
The free version of Grammarly offers grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks, as well as basic tone detection, plus some limited AI text generation. Paid plans start at $12 per month and unlock more advanced tone suggestions, clarity-focused rewrites, vocabulary enhancement suggestions, and plagiarism detection.
