President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.“Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff,” he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One as he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. When asked about aluminum, he responded, “aluminum, too” will be subject to the trade penalties.Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce “reciprocal tariffs” “probably Tuesday or Wednesday” meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases where another country has levied duties on U.S. goods.“If they are charging us 130% and we’re charging them nothing, it’s not going to stay that way,” he told reporters.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his willingness to threaten, and in some cases to impose, import taxes. Tariffs are coming much earlier in his presidency than during his previous four years in the White House, when he prioritized tax cuts and deregulation. Trump has alternately said he sees import taxes as tools to force concessions on issues such as immigration, but also as a source of revenue to help close the government’s budget deficit.Financial markets fell on Friday after Trump first said he would impose the reciprocal tariffs. Stock prices also dropped after a measure of consumer sentiment declined on Friday, largely because many respondents cited tariffs as a growing worry. The survey also found that Americans are expecting inflation to tick up in the coming months because of the duties.Trump on Sunday did not offer any details about the steel and aluminum duties, or the reciprocal tariffs. Trump previously threatened 25% import taxes on all goods from Canada and Mexico, though he paused them for 30 days barely a week ago. At the same time, he proceeded to add 10% duties on imports from China.Yet on Friday, he said he would also delay the tariffs on the millions of small packages often from fast-fashion firms such as Temu and Shein until customs officials can figure out ways to impose them. The small packages have previously been exempt from tariffs.Trump’s latest remarks stirred immediate worry from some global trading partners.South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, called a meeting with the country’s top foreign policy and trade officials on Monday to examine how Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum would affect its industries.The office of Choi, who also serves as the country’s finance minister, said officials discussed the potential impact and Seoul’s possible responses, but specific details of the meeting were not disclosed. The stock prices of major South Korean steelmakers, including POSCO and Hyundai Steel, dropped as the market opened on Monday. South Korea shipped about $4.8 billion worth of steel to the United States from January to November last year, which accounted for 14% of its global exports of the products during the period.
Superville reported from aboard Air Force One. Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
Christopher Rugaber and Darlene Superville, Associated Press
As many organizations implement return-to-office mandates, the debate around RTOs impact on performance and culture intensifies. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei joins Rapid Response to bust popular myths around in-person work, and reveal the surprisingand somewhat contradictoryintentions of many pro-RTO business leaders.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
There’s so much discussion right now about return to office, RTO, for federal employees and on the corporate level. Amazon, JPMorgan, others calling staff into the office full time. Why has this discussion popped up so much at this moment?
I’ll give you my hypothesis, which is that people of a certain age, of a certain income bracket, all uniformly really like to see people when they’re at work. They just like it. They’re used to it when they walk around. It just makes them feel better when the offices are full. It makes them feel like work is going on. And so, if you notice who is calling for these RTOs, the demographic is super narrowlike, by age, by shirt sleeve. I mean, it’s incredible who wants it. I personally believe it’s out of nostalgia. And I’ll tell you why. There is no evidence to support that it actually leads to better results. In fact, all of the evidence points in the other direction. So, what’s amazing to me is these otherwise pretty brutally performance-oriented people are willing to take a performance hit at the altar of their nostalgia.
You’ve been resisting this ideathis pullthat sort of statistically, numerically, it’s a bad idea. Can you explain that?
There are some places that you might have to do it. If you’re serving customers live and they’re pulling into the driveway, you gotta be there, right? But if you look at all of the evidence and all of the academic research, I don’t think there is any, like not a single study, that says unequivocally return to office helps. What it says is, employees value flexibility to a startling amount. And then what it also says is that productivitynot only does it not go down when you have hybrid work, because that’s really what it is, you know. So many of these places where employees could come in three days a week, and now they’ve changed it to five.
The value proposition for the employees just got a lot worse, and the value proposition for the firm got no better. It’s a super curious thing, and every study shows this.
And the idea that being in office all the time strengthens company culturelike, that’s just a myth.
It’s silly because, again, we’re going from three days to five days. What they like to do is say, “Oh, well, compare it to zero days.” I know very few companies that had all remote. This is typically a three-day-to-five-day thing. And what often happens, the rest of the research shows us, is that when people are there all the time, they come in wearing noise-canceling headphones because we didn’t give anybody a private office. If you did give them a private office, they shut the door. And then if you don’t have a private office, you put on noise-canceling headphones so that you can get work done.
Or you can all be on the same Zoom together in the same room, right?
With your laptops up, because that’s good meeting maintenance. What we’re doing is forcing people to be together for activities, even when they aren’t needed to be co-located. What you really want to do is bring people together when it’s valuable.
Can you give us sort of a snapshot of what’s happening right now? Who’s back? How often? Is it different in different fields?
So, most of the headlines are from the CEO who formerly said, “I care about performance. Employees are telling me that they’re going to do better work at three days. Let’s test it.” And everyone who did it saw engagement go up and performance go up. But they still didn’t like it because their sentiment went down. There was a period of like two years where CEOs were grumpy.
It was like, ughlike if you got them in private, they just couldn’t believe this remote work. Even if they had said, “We’re a hybrid-first location,” they all just resented it.
Because they’re paying for all that extra real estate that they’re
Well, I actually don’t even think it’s that as much as it is that they just want to see people. It just makes them feel better. Now, of course, this flies in the face of every single international organization in the world. You could only see a subset of the employees in any specific physical geography, but that is just lost.
Even the CEOs of international companiesstill, they wanted to see people in their location. And so what happened is, there were a few first movers. And a few big dogs said, “We’re gonna do it, or else.” Made their employees furious. Their research suggests that the best employees are the ones that are leaving.
They feel like tough guys because they stood up to the employees.
And then the other people who were resentful were like, “Well, look, we have license to do it. He did it. He’s tough. We can do it.” And so I think right now they all feel like they’re getting away with it. Although the early evidencewhen they look at who’s leaving and the productivity gains that haven’t manifested and the engagement scores that have gone downthe early ones who are willing to look, because most people are just saying, “Don’t tell me.”
But the ones that are looking are like, “Oops.” So, I expect the pendulum to switch back.
They sort of falsely extrapolated that like, well, if three days is fine, why not five? And there are things that they didn’t get about that shift from three to five.
Well, yes, so from three days to five days, they thought, I want better performance, and this is the way to get better performance. If I said to you, I have a great idea to improve performance, it’s gonna make my employees less happy and like make them less individually productive.
Even if I don’t tell you what my black box idea is, are you going to be psyched to have it happen? The only person wo can push something like this through is an emotional CEO.
I could see an argument that it’s better to have one uniform policy for an office as opposed to different rules for different jobs. So, why shouldn’t we make it consistent?
We are optimizing on everything except for this blunt instrument. Why are we taking a blunt instrument to our entire employee base? It’s not for performance reasons. It’s for emotional reasons.
And, are there parts of itI mean, obviously about like control, trust, all those things sort of
Well, I think they, the problem is they reveal that they don’t trust their employees, and they reveal that they are not looking at the data. Because there’s no performance data to support them, and so they reveal two, I think, unpleasant things, which means the employees who have a choice, which are your best employees, they’re looking at their CEOs right now and if they’re not thinking this too shall pass, like my CEO just saw their friend do it and now they’re doing it, but you know, we just got to grin and bear it and it will change. But if they’re like, oh my gosh, my CEO really feels like they believe this, I’m gonna go to a CEO who cares more about performance than this, who wants to win and is not going to indulge their emotions at the expense of our performance.
I know you consult with and advise CEOs and business leaders. When you raise this with them, what do they say?
This is one of the few issues. . . . So I’m a very direct person and I have learned they can’t handle it directly. So this is an issue where you got to come at it from the side, but even then, otherwise rational people, otherwise performance-oriented people, they justthis is like a third rail. They just say, when we get down to it, they’re like, I just don’t like it.
If youve skimmed your feeds today, there’s a good chance youve seen many headlines exclaiming that around two million donuts have been recalled due to possible listeria contamination. However, these headlines are a bit misleading as the recall happened over a month ago.
Confused? Heres what to know about the listeria donut recall, whether your morning donut is safe to eat, and why youre just hearing about the recall now.
Whats happened?
Over the past day, the internet has been flooded with articles about a massive donut recall, with two million of the tasty treats affected. However, though this recall is widely being reported on nowthe second week in Februaryit was actually initiated at the beginning of January and has been completed for some time.
The recall centered around donuts that were produced and distributed by FGF Brands. On January 7, FGF initiated a voluntary recall of 60 of its donut products due to fears that they may have been contaminated with listeria. In total, about two million individual donuts were covered under the recall of the 60 products. This included some Dunkin branded donuts.
Given the flood of late reporting on the recall, FGF Brands has issued a statement clarifying that the recall now being reported does not implicate anything that is currently, or was recently on the market.” It has further declared that All donuts are completely safe to eat.
If the recall is old, why is it being reported now?
Food recalls should be taken very seriouslyespecially when they involve possible listeria contamination. This is why so many publications report on such recalls. When a food is recalled, its common for a notice to appear on the Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts website operated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
But thats not always the case. The FDA says no press release was issued about the original donut recall on January 7. As a result, the recall avoided media attention.
However, this month, the FDA published an enforcement report about the recall, designating the recall with a Class II status on February 5. It is this enforcement report that the media has picked up on. The FDA classifies recalled products into three categoriesClass I, Class II, or Class IIIbased on the level of hazard the recalled product represents to consumers:
Class I recalls involve products that can pose serious adverse health consequences or death.
Class II recalls involve products that may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.
Class III recalls involves a product that is not likely to cause adverse health consequences.
It can take about a month for the FDA’s enforcement report to appear publicly in its database. And once the class level is assigned, news outlets often pick up on the recall againor for the first time.
So are my donuts safe to eat?
When it comes to the January recall that has received so much attention today, FGF Brands says, it “was completed over a month ago (early January), and does not implicate anything that is currently, or was recently on the market.”
The company also says that no donuts or food surfaces ever actually ended up testing positive for listeria. (The voluntary recall was a precautionary measure.) And given that donuts dont usually last for more than a week at most, its highly unlikely that anyone still has a donut covered under the recall in their possession.
Thats why FGF Brands now says that All donuts are completely safe to eat.
A group of internet businesses, including Roblox, Google, OpenAI, and Discord, have cofounded a nonprofit called Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST).
The new organization will fund free, open-source tools for online businesses to promote online safety, says Naren Koneru, Roblox’s vice president of engineering, trust, and safety. The move follows years of efforts by Roblox to restrict inappropriate messaging on its platform, which is widely used by children and has at times come under fire for not doing enough to combat sexual content and adult sexual predators.
And while human moderators are part of that equation, AI and automation have become critical for intercepting real-time unwanted messages across the platform’s 85 million daily active users, Koneru says.
“These decisions need to happen within milliseconds,” he says.
Among the tools Roblox has developed is an open-source AI model that analyzes audio clips to detect profanity, racism, bullying, sexting, and other disallowed content. The model was released to the public last July, available on GitHub and the AI platform Hugging Face, and it’s since been downloaded more than 20,000 times. The company has since developed a new version of the model, with support for additional languages including Spanish, French, German and Japanese, as well as additional infrastructure for fine-tuning the model to particular needs. That will likely be open sourced by the end of the first quarter of 2025, and the company anticipates unveiling other open-source tools for classifying content later in the year.
By contributing to ROOST (and acting as co-chair of a technical advisory committee), Roblox will also be able support such open-source efforts, aiming to create AI models that can be used by organizations of all sizes to moderate content, especially around child safety.
“While large companies like us can invest in systems like this, ” says Koneru, “if you’re a small game developer and you want to build all these safety systems, it’s almost next to impossible today to do it right.”
Some AI systems may even be hosted by ROOST itself, allowing outside companies to easily integrate them via API calls rather than handling complex infrastructure, Koneru says.
“They may actually not just open-source models, but they will also possibly run these hosted services where you can just call an API, as opposed to even worrying about all of these nitty-gritty details of, how do you run this model in a super efficient way,” he says.
ROOST may also release open-source infrastructure for labeling sample training data, like examples of allowed and disallowed content, and manage how it’s used to train and refine AI systems. That includes technology to effectively manage large-scale human moderation efforts and ensure consistency in decisions around rules (to ensure AI models are trained on reliable samples).
In addition to the for-profit companies, ROOST is backed by a variety of philanthropic organizations, including the Future of Online Trust and Safety Fund, Knight Foundation, AI Collaborative and the McGovern Foundation. It’s raised over $27 million to support its first four years of operation.
In an interview with Joe Rogan last month, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg made a plea for companies to embrace more masculine energy. Zuckerberg went on to say, A culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits.
Never mind that Meta (then Facebook) became one of the worlds more profitable companies when COO Sheryl Sandberg ran its day-to-day operations. Or that Sandberg urged women to lean in by actively pursuing leadership roles and embracing opportunities in the workplace, sparking a global community dedicated to helping foster leadership, advancement and inclusion for women in the workplace.
When a very powerful CEO who has platforms that nearly half of the world’s population use says something like that, regardless of what his intent and his definitions are and his meaning of it is, there’s a whole lens around individual bias and how it will be perceived, says Samantha Katz, founder of business consultancy Actual Markets LLC in Manhattan.
Even before Zuckerbergs comments about male energy, women say they were noticing a resurgence of masculinity in the workplace. Senior male leaders are no longer hiding that they find it objectionable that they cant discuss certain topics or say certain jokes in the workplace, says Alma Derricks, founder and managing partner at REV, a business consulting firm in Los Angeles.
Zuckerbergs comment was an attempt to crush anything qualitative, Derricks says. To talk about mental health, wellness, and balance is seen as weak minded and it doesnt have a place in the workplace.
Heres how women are pushing back against toxic male energy in the workplace.
Don’t alienate allies
Be careful not to alienate potential male allies by conflating bro behavior with truly toxic masochistic behavior, warns Eliza VanVanCort, author of A Womens Guide to Claiming Space.
When we say, bros are doing this, we are taking out one section of the population who might actually be allies for us, and at this point, since our voices aren’t being heard, we need every ally possible, VanCort says. Someone can be masculine and still believe in equity, justice and inclusivity, she says.
I think the problem with calling it bro culture is it sends a message to young men that being a bro means being an aggressor, VanCort says. Instead of calling out the bro culture, she recommends calling out aggressive and dominating male behavior when you see it.
Ask ‘What do you mean?’
The easiest way to combat a microaggression is to ask, What do you mean? For example, when one of VanCorts clients was recognized for the profits she brought to the company, her boss said in front of all her male colleagues, Were so proud of you. You made so much money last quarter, and I hope that you didnt spend it all on a new purse.
Rather than taking the bait and getting angry, the client simply said, What do you mean? Her boss stammered and said, Well, you know, its funny. A new purse is funny.
When she further responded with, So, you think its funny that I would spend money on a new purse, a male coworker stepped in and told the boss his remark wasnt funny.
When you point out a microaggression by asking a question, its more difficult to be accused of being sensitive or overreacting, VanCort said.
Dont be complicit
Women are often told to stand up for each other in meetings yet that can be difficult, especially if you and your colleague havent discussed a plan for supporting each other. Your response to toxic behavior during a meeting doesn’t have to be profound. Simply respond by saying, Huh, VanCort says.
Aggressors depend on everyone around them being complicit when they hear passive aggressive comments or witness microaggressions, VanCort says. By saying, huh, you are very subtly saying, I am not going to follow you in this behavior.”
Talk about your salary
The best thing that you can do for other women at work is talk about how much money you make, says Allison Venditti, CEO and founder of Moms at Work in Toronto, Canada. Many U.S. companies have a presence in Canada, Venditti says, so its evitable that Canadian women will encounter similar attitudes in the workplace.
Share information with female colleagues, especially younger female employees, about how to succeed in the workplace, how to get promoted and how to negotiate a higher salary, Venditti says.
Use your buying power
Women control 85% of household spending, according to TechCrunch.
Women pick where we buy our cars, do the research for buying minivans, we buy all our kids’ clothes, we decide where we go on vacation, Venditti says.
One of the easiest ways to push back on male energy is with your buying power, Venditti says. She is urging women to cancel their Amazon accounts after the company scaled back its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and to stop shopping at Target after the company began phasing out its DEI programs. If you’re not standing up for women, why would I shop at your store?
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.andFast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you cansign up to get it yourselfevery Monday morning.
Consumers will spend a whopping $27.5 billion on Valentines Day this year, up from $25.8 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
For 1-800-Flowers.com, the purveyor of candy, cards, andyesflowers, February 14 is a bit like its Super Bowl, with year-long planning for the holiday.
Beyond bouquets
Founder, chairman, and CEO Jim McCann, who started the business in 1976 when he acquired a flower shop in Manhattan, says Valentines Day has expanded from an observance of romantic love to an opportunity to give gifts to friends, loved ones, and even pets. Historically, men made up 90% of purchasers during the holiday. We now see men making up less than 70% of our customers who purchase for Valentines Day, and the recipient has broadened beyond the sweetheart to moms and sisters and children, McCann says. Thats resulted, frankly, in it becoming a bigger holiday for us.
The retailer has responded in kind, introducing pet-themed items (pet owners are expected to spend $2 billion on Valentines Day) and a collaboration with lifestyle brand LoveShackFancy featuring pastel-hued cookies and flowers suitable for Galentines Day celebrations of female friendship. The company also offers trending items such as black roses, designed to appeal to Gen Z. In all, the company says it will deliver 24 million flowers for Valentines Day.
Fixing make-or-break tech
When I asked McCann how he leads his organization through demand surges, I expected him to talk about supply chain, marketing campaigns, and staffing. Instead, he openly spoke about the companys work to correct problems caused by the implementation of a new order management system at the companys Harry & David fruit and prepared foods unit during the December holiday season. The system had trouble managing some complex orders, which caused delivery delays, frustrated customers, and some canceled orders. Though his seasoned team has deep experience in the business, sometimes mistakes happen, McCann says. Flower delivery and other units such as Sharis Berries and The Popcorn Factory dont use the same system, but they share a common customer service platform that was overwhelmed by the holiday season snafu.
On a recent earnings call, 1-800-Flowers.com executives said many of the issues with the order system have been resolved. We can hopefully come out a better management company as a result of it, because we cannot escape the changes of technology that are upon us and coming ever faster, McCann tells me.
Embracing the flops
McCanns willingness to own up to mistakes is nothing new. He frequently writes about mistakes hes made in his career and even maintains a Wall of Shame at company headquarters dedicated to celebrating every stumble, flop, and facepalm moment our team has had over the years, he says.
Of course, leaders and companies have to do more than just own up to their errorsthey have to learn from them and figure out how to take calculated or mitigated risks. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson writes about intelligent failure in her book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. She contends that failing well is necessary if companies ever expect to break new ground.
McCanns unabashed embrace of his own failures is a stark contrast to many other founders, who swagger about with an air of infallibility. (For more on these imperious folks, check out Inc. editor-at-large Bill Saporitos story on The cult of the entrepreneur.) Indeed, when I asked McCann if 1-800-Flowers.com benefitted from having a founder as CEO, he demurred.
There are other people who are better at managing, and there are things that I could do that they cant do because of the unique situation Im in, having lived and breathed [this business] my whole adult life and having such a passion for it, he says. I dont think Im the best CEO thats ever lived. I think Im pretty good at envisioning what we are and what we can be.
What’s your biggest ‘my bad’ moment?
Do you have a wall of shame at your company? What was your biggest failure, and what did you learn from it? Send your comments to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to share some of your insights in an upcoming newsletter dedicated to failure.
Read more: on failing
The Silicon Valley man obsessed with failure
The biggest business failures of 2024
3 successful designers on the lessons of failure
The cover process at The New Yorker is a beautifully inexact science.
Each week, longtime art editor Françoise Mouly presents editor David Remnick a range of optionssome still in sketch formand Remnick chooses the one that feels most apt for the cultural moment. It could be a cover about a breaking news story; it could be a seasonal cover, an evergreen cover (Mouly banks the latter two types throughout the year). But inevitably, somehow, whatever he chooses feels organic to the publication, if not inevitable.
What makes The New Yorker unique is that, as a general-interest magazine, our covers aren’t tied to feature stories but spring from the artists’ own observations and interests, Mouly detailed in an email exchange as she worked to finish production on the magazines landmark 100th anniversary issue. The New Yorker cover stands as one of the last bastions of wordless storytelling in our culture, a place where an artist’s singular vision can still speak directly to readers. In an age when were all flooded with a torrent of anonymous, manufactured images, these carefully crafted covers serve as an antidoteeach one signed by an artist, each one attempting to crystallize a moment or catalyze an idea.
[Photo: Leila Abazine]
Its a visual lineage that will be celebrated in the magazines centennial issue out this weekand in LAlliance New Yorks exhibition Covering The New Yorker, which runs through March 30. Co-curated by Mouly and Abrams Vice President and Publisher Rodolphe Lachat, the show features something readers have not seen before: original cover artwork from such luminaries as Maira Kalman, Barry Blitt, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Roz Chast, Anita Kunz, Saul Steinberg, and many others.
Artist & Curators group shot at January 21st opening. Top, from left: Jenny Kroik, Barry Blitt, Richard Siri, Ed Steed, Mark Ulriksen, Art Spiegelman, Kadir Nelson, Ed Sorel, Peter de Sve, Gracie Lynn Haynes, Victoria Tentler-Krylov, John Cuneo, Front: Françoise Mouly, Tatyana Franck, Rodolphe Lachat, Gayle Kabaker. [Photo: Rebecca Greenfield]
Speaking of those artists, Mouly considers the greatest accomplishment of her 30-plus year run to be the careful balance she has maintained between established contributors and new creatives who illustrate the covers. I’ve never had to sacrifice new voices for old ones, or vice versa, she says. As for the inexact science that underpins the cover process, she adores the job because it lacks formula, and says shes amazed the work remains as challenging as when she first began. The fact that I still can’t phone it in after all these years is perhaps the greatest gift of this role.
[Photo: Leila Abazine]
With the magazine turning 100 this week, we asked Mouly to select the top five New Yorker covers from her tenure. She admits that her selections would likely change on any given daybut either way, today these covers still land with the same power as they did when they first met the cultural moment in our mailbox. Or didnt, regrettably, in the case of the last one
Missed Connection by Adrian Tomine, November 8, 2004. [Image: Adrian Tomine and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Adrian Tomines Missed Connection (Nov. 8, 2004)
Adrian Tomine is a perfect example of the kind of artist I love working withhes a marvelous short story teller. Cartoonists are intellectual athletes in that way: They have a lifetime habit of compressing complex ideas into a few pen marks. When Tomine first approached The New Yorker as a young, relatively unknown cartoonist, he already had a stylistically sharp ligne claire style. Unlike other artists whom I would take to our library to study covers from the 1930s and 40s, Tomine just needed the right story to tell.
Having just arrived in New York, he noticed things that natives often forget, like how subway cars running on parallel tracks offer glimpses into other lives. When I asked him to consider ideas for our fiction issue, he began sketching this subway encounter. I suggested having the two characters read the same book. Tomines masterful composition makes this image perfect: We see only tese two faces, and follow their gazes to each other. The use of color draws our eyes to the lightly sketched book. We know the trains will move in different directions and these strangers will lose each other. This is what I lovea picture that tells a complete story.
The Man in the Mirror by Saul Steinberg, January 12, 1998. [Image: Saul Steinberg and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Saul Steinbergs The Man in the Mirror (Jan. 12, 1998)
One of my greatest privileges when I started in 1993 was to be Saul Steinbergs editor. I would go visit him regularly in his home, and spend wonderful hours in conversation (he talked, I listened). He told me about baseball, architecture, the O.J. Simpson story, Las Vegasthere was so much he loved about America. Then wed look through his flat files, fishing for ideas. He was in his eighties then, and he would search through his thousands of sketches and doodles for ideas he hadn’t yet transformed into New Yorker covers. He was always careful not to repeat himself.
When I discovered this particular drawing, it resonated deeply with meit captured what artist Maira Kalman would later call The Optimism of Breakfast. It brought back memories of my own father singing in the bathroom while shaving. Though Steinberg was dubious about whether the image was substantial enough for a cover, I encouraged him to develop it. Later, he gave me the original drawingthis one is yours, he saidwhich is why the original is included in this exhibition.
I learned so much from Steinberg: less is more, use color only when necessary, let ideas shine through simplicity. As Steinberg said of his work, Once youve seen it, you cant remember not having seen it. A good image can become a building block of thought, like implanting a new word into the language. Thats an awesome power for artists to have.
9/11/2001, by Art Spiegelman & Françoise Mouly, September 24, 2001. [Image: Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Art Spiegelman and Moulys Black on Black (Sept. 24, 2001)
On Sept. 11, 2001, my husband, Art Spiegelman, our daughter, and I stood four blocks away from the second tower as we watched it collapse in excruciatingly slow motion. Later, back in my office, I felt that the only appropriate solution would be to publish no cover image at allan all-black cover. Then Art suggested adding the outlines of the two towers, black on black, which I drew. It conveyed something about the sudden absence in our skyline, the abrupt tear in the fabric of reality. From no image came the perfect image.
Iya Ni Wura (Mother Is Gold) by Diana Ejaita, May 13, 2019. [Image: Diana Ejaita and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Diana Ejaitas Iya Ni Wura (Mother Is Gold) (May 13, 2019)
Diana Ejaita, who divides her time between Lagos and Berlin, created this Mother’s Day cover as her first of many contributions to the magazine. I love that the image evokes patterns and colors that are common in Nigeria, and was delighted to see she included the keke in the background. It gives you a sense of place, yet its also universal, capturing an emotion every parent knows.
The composition tells the story perfectly: A mother kneels to meet her child at eye level, making herself fully present. The child’s posture, the way she holds herself, suggests that shes asserting her independence. It’s a tender portrait of maternal love preparing to let go.
Venus on the Beach by Roz Chast, August 4, 2014. [Image: Roz Chast and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Roz Chasts Venus on The Beach (Aug. 4, 2014)
Though cell phones have dominated our reality for decades, The New Yorker rarely features them on its covers. If the magazine published every phone-related submission, thered be room for nothing else. This exception to the rule, by Roz Chast, is particularly successful, however. Usually images of people on their phone focus on the screen. Here the phones all function as arrows, pointing us toward the alive and surprising. And this twist on Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus is a clever way for the cartoonist to use one old cliché to shed light on another.
Kamala by Kadir Nelson. [Image: Kadir Nelson and The New Yorker. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]
Coda: Kamala by Kadir Nelson (Nov. 18, 2024)
On Nov. 5, 2024, I was preparing a cover that would celebrate the first woman presidentjust as I had done for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Kadir Nelson had created this painting as a celebration of the first woman, first Black and first Indian-American president. Despite editor David Remnicks repeated requests for a Plan B, I had no other approved sketch in the works. Around 9:30 p.m. on election night, it became clear that the Harris cover would never be published. I turned to a rough sketch that Barry Blitt had sent in. I called him and asked for a finish. When do you need it? he asked. Now, I told him. I asked him to draw it very small, very quickly; to keep it gestural, to just spew it out. The resulting image was published in the morning.
Powerful covers often emerge not from advance planning but from living through and feeling the moment. This is as true for me as the art editor as it is for the artists. And in the show, I just love the juxtaposition of these two images: the huge, masterful oil painting of Harris, which took weeks to complete and carried so much hope, and the tiny, dark ink stain next to it. It speaks volumes.
In news outlets, business publications, and scholarly journals, there is a crescendo of commentary about the combined power of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Without question, that convergence is already yielding exciting discoveries in many fields.
Yet a third, equally crucial, kind of intelligence is being left out of the discussion: natures intelligence.
The idea that nature itself displays the hallmarks of what we understand as intelligencethe ability to learn, to encode those learnings in new, more effective models, and to continually adaptis not altogether new. Leonardo da Vinci understood this well. Nature was his teacher and his inspiration. Nothing escaped his intensive observation: water, soil, plants, birds.
Part of his expansive genius was to perceive the hidden systemsthe invisible forces and lawsthat govern everything from the workings of the human body to the movement of objects through the air. Today, we build on da Vincis wisdom when we analyze the intricate chemical communication of plants, the swarm intelligence of insects, the complex click patterns of whale songs. We are coming to see, with some humility, that nature is far more intelligent than we humans have ever understood.
But what seemed to fascinate da Vinci the most was the interconnections among these systems and across disciplines. When he studied the human body, designed machines, or created masterpieces of art, he did so holistically, drawing on his ever-widening range of understanding, and producing work that is greater than the sum of its parts. This approach to innovation has never been more relevant or more possible than it is today. The fusion of natural, human, and machine intelligencea synthesis that I call polyintelligencepromises solutions to some of the worlds most intractable problems.
Indeed, this integrated framework is already beginning to revolutionize biotechnology. From drug development to generative synthetic biology, polyintelligence is enabling breakthroughs that no single form of intelligenceor even the convergence of twocould achieve on their own. Take the example of the Human Genome Project, which completed its mapping of the blueprint of human DNA in 2003. More than two decades later, that union of nature, human intelligence, and AI continues to yieldamong other thingsnovel DNA and mRNA sequences that could unlock new breakthrough medicines.
Or consider how scientists are using polyintelligence to learn the language of proteins, enabling us to craft new proteins that dont exist in nature with specific therapeutic functions. Just as words and grammar define a spoken language, AI analyzes vast amounts of protein data to understand the rules that dictate protein structure and function. This knowledge allows scientists to design novel proteins by writing new sequences within natures linguistic framework, surpassing traditional limitations, and developing innovative treatments for complex diseases.
Beyond biomedicine, polyintelligent thinking, polyintelligent systems, and polyintelligent solutions will have wider applicationsand, I believe, unmatched power to mitigate climate change, increase agricultural yields in a sustainable way, and address other complex, global challenges. Again, this is not theoretical. Natures intelligence, supercharged by AI, is being applied to accelerating the evolutionary process of staple crops such as corn, wheat, and soybeans to enable them to grow in a hotter and drier environment.
The promise of polyintelligence is clearly even greater than our hopes for AI. It is vitally important, therefore, that we manage this transition effectively and judiciously. The principles we set todayand the decisions we make regarding governance, ethics, and biasfor the use of AI should advance the goal of enabling polyintelligence. To realize its full potential, we must prioritize interdisciplinary collaboration by fostering cross-disciplinary research and integrating diverse expertise across sectors. By uniting policymakers, scientists, industry leaders, and educators, we can harness the collective strengths needed to both understand and address the worlds most pressing challenges. From urban-resilience planning and conservation of biodiversity to optimizing energy production and distribution, polyintelligence can catalyze sustainable solutions with wide-ranging impact.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, polyintelligence will also require a shift in human intelligence. In particular, we must stop seeing ourselves as the ultimate arbiter of what is good, correct, or intelligent. Whether were talking about the bodys complex and shifting methods of disease resistance, or a recent study showing that horses can think strategically and plan their actions, we should have the humilityas da Vinci, a true genius, didto recognize that much of the natural world operates beyond our ability to comprehend it. Our knowledge is and will always be incomplete. But it is expanding significantly, in exciting waysreshaping the very nature of discovery itself.
It’s a simple idea. Aside from its electrical components, the Hoop Table Lamp by Finnish furniture company Vaarnii is made completely from pine timber and pine veneer. The result is a warm, natural statement lamp without any fuss.
Released last week, the lamp is available in two sizes. It retails for about $360 for the medium and about $260 for the small.
The appropriately-named London designer John Tree designed the lamp, which has a solid wood base created from a knot-free block of solid pine timber. The Hoop table lamp is topped by a pine veneer shade that’s cut thin enough to allow a glow of light through. All in all, the lamp is made up of only two pieces, and a gorgeous example of reductive minimalism that still conveys a sense of warmth.
[Photo: Vaarnii]
“Hoop is about reduction of form and an unambiguous use of quality pine wood,” Vaarnii says. “Simple yet painstakingly engineered, monolithic yet delicate, this is an effortless and essential lamp for illuminating any space with warm pine-filtered light.”
Vaarnii sets itself apart from other furniture companies by creating its products from raw materials, including chairs and tables to ceiling lights all made from materials sourced from Finland.
The wood for its Hoop Table Lamp comes from Finnish Scots Pine trees that the company says are sustainably managed and slowly grown. That means each piece is unique with its own grain pattern, and because pine changes as it ages, the color of the lamp deepens the longer you have it until it settles into a honey tone.
The natural simplicity of the Hoop table lamp proves it doesn’t necessarily take much for timeless, sustainable design.
The Trump administration’s fight against electric vehicles includes everything from trying to get rid of the EV tax credit to freezing funding for charging stations. But EV company Rivian says its strategy hasn’t changed.
We talked to CEO RJ Scaringe about why his long-term vision isn’t dependent on current policy, and the company’s future plans for its products. The company makes luxury SUVs and trucks, including 2024’s bestselling premium SUV in California (electric or gas); next year, it will launch a more affordable vehicle that starts at $45,000.
Construction on a new factory outside Atlanta is set to begin in 2026, with a $6.57 billion loan guarantee that the Department of Energy finalized just before Biden left officethat legally, Trump shouldn’t be able to take away.
The Trump administration is pushing to cut EV incentives, including the $7,500 federal tax credit. What impact do you think that will have on the EV market in the U.S.?
There’s a lot of emphasis right now on the very short termwhat happens in the next months or even weeks with policy. But the way we make decisions as a company, were looking at this on a much more long-term basis. The product roadmap we built, the technology we’ve developed, the way we’re designing and building and growing the businesses, is really being architected around a long-term view that the market will move over time to 100% electric.
RJ Scaringe [Photo: Rivian]
In that transition, it’s critical that there’s a collection of great companies being built in the United States, employing the U.S. workforce, developing the technology, building the products, and making sure that we as a country maintain leadership and what undoubtedly and unavoidably is going to be the core of personal transportation. Combustion will become an increasingly small percentage over time.
Even though youre focused on the long-term view, how much do you think current policy matters in terms of pushing EVs forward faster?
Policy, of course, matters, but its not the only driver, especially in a situation like this where the end state is so clear. Were paying very close attention to [policy]. But we will adjust around whatever the policy is. When I started the company [in 2009], I didnt start with any idea that there would be policies that are either tailwinds or headwinds. We just said that this is something that needs to happen. And its going to happen with the collective efforts of companies that are innovating with technology and creating compelling products.
I think the other thing to recognize, in all the noise and the discussion of electrification and how it’s become politicized, there’s one thing that’s very consistent that’s on all sides of the political spectrum: Creating jobs in new technology, creating manufacturing in the United States, building a really robust ecosystem of companies that are facing that future state is something everyone’s aligned on. We have a plant today in Normal, Illinois and a plant that were building just outside Atlanta, Georgia, with support from both states. They’re different very different states politically, but the amount of excitement and reception we have in both states is outstanding.
If some legacy automakers pull back from EVs because there are fewer incentives, does that give you a competitive advantage?
We talk about making decisions in the context of our [kids’ futures] . . . I think its really important that every manufacturer is investing heavily in electrification and creating products that are so compelling and so exciting that regardless of whether they’re electric or gasoline theyre going to draw customers in. If we really want to accelerate the speed at which we electrify, the speed at which that transition happens, it’s going to require a lot of choices [for consumers]. Certainly, a lot more than we have today. I say all that because I do think it’s important that other manufacturers invest. If I looked at it purely through the lens of what’s best for Rivian, I think that manufacturers pulling back, myopically, is actually better for Rivian. It [hurts the] competition. But I don’t think that’s good for the world.
If some other U.S. automakers do retreat temporarily from EVs, how much is China’s EV industry likely to get farther ahead?
If you’re optimizing for the next quarter, I think you can make bad decisions as a business and bad decisions for us as a country. But every business is going to make decisions [based on] what they believe is going to maximize value for their shareholders. Its not an easy challenge, especially in a world where youve got a legacy business that is maybe highly profitable, and youve got a lot of experience. Its a hard decision to say were going to go build products that, by definition, pull demand from our legacy products. Those new products, by virtue of being lower volume and the technology being different, may not have the same profitability to start. Over time, I think electric vehiclesgiven the dramatically enhanced simplicity and fewer partswill become not only cost-competitive, but theyll have a cost advantage relative to combustion-powered vehicles. But theres a lot of work to do in battery technology to get there.
[Photo: Rivian]
How long will that take? Isnt it right that some EVs are at cost parity with their counterparts now, if you look at total cost of ownership? How far away are competitive sticker prices?
I think it depends on the segment. In the premium segment, it’s there. As evidenced by us. We only sell our flagship products today (our R1T, R1S) and the average transaction price is over $90,000. It’s the bestselling premium SUV in Californianot premium electric SUV, preium SUV. It’s doing really well. If you look at other premium SUVs, you could even say it’s priced at a discount. It’s much higher performance. In a premium product like that, there’s a lot of other contributors to cost, so that the relative cost of the battery to the rest of the vehicle is not as significant. To get to cost parity on something that is a $20,000 car, $25,000 car, the battery then makes up such a a large percentage of its price that today it is still difficult. I think over time we’re going to solve that, but it’s a few years out. Whether it’s three years out or five years out, when you squint, you can see it. We’re getting close to it. It’s not, like, 20 years away.
Youre launching a more affordable EV next year, right?
Yes, and Im so excited. Its probably the most excited Ive ever been for a product were developing, which is funny because I didnt think I could be more excited than when we launched the R1, something Id been working on since I started the company. R2 takes all of the learnings from R1. The cost for us to make it is less than half of R1, and the price is quite a bit lowerit starts at $45,000.
[Photo: Eric Anderson/Rivian]
You mentioned the idea of designing a car thats compelling not just because its electric but for other reasons. What does that involve?
It’s important to have a really clear vision for what both the product and the company stand for and represent. I mean that not just in philosophical ways, but in terms of product/attribute tradeoff. The best products, whether they’re cars or electronics or furniture, are the products that feel really holistically thought through. Where despite the fact that maybe hundreds or maybe even thousands of people have worked on that product, it feels like a singular vision. Apple has done an amazing job of this. Of course, I think we did a really nice job on it with our R1 products. What we’re trying to do with R2 is to capture that.
For us, it’s really blending the aspiration of something that feels premiumthe materials are nicely executed, we’re thoughtful in the selection of materialsbut at the same time, the fact that it’s aspirational doesn’t take away from its usability. You can get it dirty. You can fit a lot of gear into it. We often think of it as a platform to go generate the kinds of memories that you’re going to want to hold on to for many years to comethe kinds of things you want to take photographs of. [The cars also] accelerate incredibly well. They’re very capable on road. They’re very capable off road. But we really want all the attributes, all the characteristics of that mosaic, to come together into this feeling. Like this vehicle is your adventure partner.
When you look into the future, how do you see EV technology continuing to change? With battery technology, for example, how is that evolving?
The most important element is getting cost down, both through the chemistry in the batteries and the rest of the battery packconcepts like cell to pack where were minimizing the amount of structural overhead that exists in the pack to take the overall cost down. And we see with our own products that the cell costs have come down, the pack costs have come down, modules have been massively simplified. I expect that innovation to continue. Of course, [there’s] competition between all the different manufacturerseveryones trying to drive cost down on this system. We have thousands and thousands of people across many different companies that are working on this problem. Its great to see the healthy and, Id say, highly productive competition between different companies in trying to address costs.
What about something like solid state batteries? Are they likely to be in cars in the market soon?
I think it’ll make its way into cars. It depends on how you define soon. I’d say within the next 10 years, for sure, but within the next two years, not likely, and not at scale. You may see some premium applications sooner, but they’re going to be really expensive because there’s lots of different ways you can accomplish solid state, but the industrialization of solid state still has a ways to go.
Last year, you made a $5.8 billion deal with Volkswagen that lets VW access your vehicle software. How do you think about technology differently than some of the legacy automakers?
We don’t have large teams of people that used to do something in the old waywe’ve only architected the business around a future state. So, obviously, that means we don’t have an engine design department. And our propulsion team has only ever worked on electric propulsion. There’s not an electric division and a gas division. The existing manufacturers can develop motors, develop battery systems. I think a more challenging aspect for them has been building out software teams and the computer design teams, the electronics design teams. And the reason is it’s so different from what they’ve done historically.
[Image: Rivian]
How does your “zonal” electrical architecture work?
Over time, [other car companies] had this massive proliferation of what are called ECUseffectively little comuters across the car. A modern car might have 75 to somewhere north of 100 ECUs. It was never architected in a proper way. [We have controllers in a few larger zones] versus all these little computers, and we built an entire software operating system and software stack around it that is a very different topology than what incumbents have. It represents various essential cost savings, but importantly, makes managing software many orders of magnitude easier.
[Photo: Elliot Ross/Rivian]
What’s coming next for Rivian?
We have some products that we’re already planning that essentially extend our brand into different segments, different form factors. Obviously, it should be different price points. [Editor’s note: One of the next products is the R3, an even more affordable car.] With the form factor and the overall aesthetics of the [R3], you sort of find yourself saying, is it a hatchback, is it a crossover, is it an SUV? We really wanted something that gave us a chance to demonstrate what we felt really strongly about, which is that the brand we’re building and the company we’re creating has a lot of elasticity. It represents an idea that’s bigger than just a single segment of cars. It’s this idea of, as I said before, enabling the kinds of adventures you want to take photographs of.
