The way Bran Ferren sees it, the future of warfare depends as much on creativity as it does on raw firepower.
The former head of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineeringthe elite R&D arm responsible for the entertainment empires secret saucethe 72-year-old Ferren has spent decades building a reputation for fusing art, design, and storytelling with serious technical and engineering know-how in pursuit of novel innovations and experiences. This pioneering approach to creative technology is the heart and soul of Applied Minds, the company Ferren cofounded 25 years ago to help clients from the Pentagon to Fortune 500 companies envision and test breakthrough technologies before they even realize they need them, from rapidly prototyping advanced robotics and vehicles to designing futuristic command centers and immersive simulators. If you can imagine it, chances are the artists and engineers at Applied Minds can make it a reality.
Now, with the United States gearing up for its next big war, Ferren and Applied Mindss unique brand of prototyping has never been more important. In a defense sector often constrained by bureaucracy and incremental improvements, the companys ability to think outside conventional silos and pull insights from unexpected fieldswhether theme park design, Hollywood special effects, or commercial techoffers a much-needed jolt of creative problem-solving and gives Applied Minds an edge in a defense landscape that increasingly demands speed and creativity over incremental improvements.
Weve turned into, for lack of a better word, an imagineering resource for hire, says Ferren in a recent interview with Fast Company.
The son of two artists, Ferren grew up surrounded by people doing art and technology, whether it was uncle Roy Ferren, the director of flight test for North American Aviation (now part of Boeing), or uncle Stanley Tonkel, the prolific Columbia Records recording engineer who helped produce tracks for famous musicians from Miles Davis to Frank Sinatra.
Ferrens early career encompasses a constellation of creative endeavors. In the 1970s and 1980s, he cofounded Associates & Ferren, a design and special effects firm that quickly rose to prominence for its work in film, theater, and high-tech installations. The company contributed to several Hollywood productions, providing innovative visual effects for movies including Altered States (1980), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), as well as special effects for Broadway plays like the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Crucifer of Blood and major concert performances by Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., and Depeche Mode, among others. Ferren distinguished himself by marrying the theatrical and the technological; among his more unusual projects includes orchestrating a nationwide tour of the Bill of Rights to mark the bicentennial of the document, a task that involved designing and building a special transportation vehicle from the ground up to house the fragile artifact as well as a traveling exhibit space to accompany it.
I really love doing new things that Ive never done before and that other people haven’t done before . . . theater, film, rock n roll touring. These were all early venues where you had the opportunity to do that, Ferren says.
His expertise in blending technology with storytelling caught the attention of Disney, leading to the acquisition of his company in 1993 and his installation as head of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, which is responsible for master planning all of the companys far-reaching creative endeavors, including theme parks.
Theme parks are story driven, Ferren says. It’s about bringing you into those stories.
Ferrens group was also responsible for prototyping and demonstrating next-generation products for Disney executives to provide insight into the technological trends shaping the entertainment industry, including desktop gaming consoles, ebooks, and on-demand digital video delivery. Ferren likens the role of Imagineering at Disney as the defined job of what ARPA or DARPA is for the defense community, which is to prevent surprise, he explains.
Imagineering was my home, but also from my perspective, my job was: How do I help bridge between different worlds, such as Silicon Valley and such as Hollywood, who often have very compatible goals, but speak different languages? he adds.
Renderings and illustrations adorn the walls of Applied Minds headquarters. [Photo: Jared Keller]
Always in search of the next big thing, Ferren left Disney in 2000 to cofound Applied Minds with computer scientist Danny Hillis, whom Ferren had previously recruited to Disney as a fellow in 1996, and entrepreneur Doug Carlston. Since then, the company has worked with major players across virtually every industry you can think of, from automakers General Motors and Ford and agricultural giant John Deere to geographic information systems pioneer Esri and defense primes like Boeing, as well as every branch of the U.S. armed forces. (The company declined to share the total value of its contracts but stated that its roughly an even split between military commercial clients).
In the process, Applied Minds has notched more than 1,000 patents that encompass everything from full-color and enhanced 3D night vision devices, customizable instrument control panels, immersive display environments, centralized controls for autonomous vehicles, modular vehicles, and even portable systems for communicating undergroundthe latter of which is of particular interest to the U.S. military ahead of a future conflict.
Applied Minds made a splash from the get-go. In what might be th companys most significant early innovation, Ferren and Hillis would end up playing a pivotal role in the development of pinch-to-zoom technology, the now-ubiquitous multi-touch gesture interface used on smartphones, tablets, and other touchscreen-based devices. (The pairs 2005 patent was at the center of a high-profile 2013 lawsuit which saw consumer electronics juggernaut Apple accuse competitor Samsung of infringing on its own patents, including pinch-to-zoom, which the former had popularized with the launch of the iPhone in 2007; Apples lawsuit was invalidated based on Ferren and Hilliss existing claim to the technology.)
Applied Minds also established deep roots in the defense world. Among its most notable projects are the Photographic Landing Augmentation System for Helicopters (PHLASH), developed in 2007 to help prevent brownouts during dicey helicopter landings in the deserts of the Global War on Terror, and the U.S. Armys Expeditionary Lab, a mobile workplace designed to help soldiers engineer technical fixes on the fly while deployed overseas. The company has provided the Pentagon with prototypes for advanced combat vehicles, sophisticated cockpit interfaces for the militarys upcoming sixth-generation fighter jets, next-generation workstations to streamline operations, immersive simulators to improve training, and new approaches to data visualization that look like theyre ripped straight out of a science fiction movie; it even participated in the Pentagons ill-fated effort to build a real-world Iron Man suit to protect troops engaged in high-intensity combat.
An Applied Minds rendering of the companys vision for the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) that U.S. Special Operations Command sought to develop for ground troops. [Photo: Jared Keller]
Among Applied Mindss latest victories is a critical fix for the U.S. Air Forces next-generation KC-46 Pegasus tanker, considered a critical aerial refueling capability for extending the range of tactical and transport aircraft amid a high-intensity future conflict. Unlike traditional tankers, which feature a boom operator positioned at the tail with a direct line of sight of a target aircraft for the delicate dance of lining up the refueling boom, the KC-46 instead transmits digital imagery from the so-called Remote Vision System (RVS) to operators at a high-tech Aerial Refueling Operator Station nestled in the body of the aircraft. But initial testing had revealed that the RVS feed was marred by image distortion, inconsistent lighting, and depth perception issues that made it consistently unreliable during refueling operations. Without an accurate picture of the outside world to work from, operators simply cant do their job, rendering the KC-46s core mission of keeping other aircraft fueled and ready to fight effectively moot.
At the behest of Boeing, the prime defense contractor on the system, Applied Minds eventually rolled out a fix in the form of the RVS 2.0, which features enhanced cameras and a full-color high-definition display to improve depth perception and counteract glare and shadow.
Now, youd say, Clearly the U.S. Air Force Research Lab and Boeing and Rockwell Collins were working on this, they dont need a few more engineers and computer scientists to solve things. . . . Why would we have expertise in this? Ferren says. Its because we actually come from the film business, so some of us have expertise on how you make good looking images.
Bran Ferren at the Applied Minds Electro-Optics Test Range at the companys headquarters, where employees evaluated their fix for the KC-46 Pegasus tankers Remote Vision System. [Photo: Jared Keller]
While Applied Minds operates in the defense technology space, it doesnt function like a traditional defense contractor. Instead of competing for massive military contracts or manufacturing hardware at scale, the company has positioned itself as an elite think tank and prototyping powerhouse, working on a project-by-project basis and helping organizations rapidly develop creative solutions to complex technical challenges. This approach allows the company to remain agile, moving between industries while maintaining a small, highly specialized team of engineers, designers, and technologists.
Indeed, those skills Ferren honed as head of R&D at Disney Imagineeringarchitecting immersive, intuitive experiencestranslate surprisingly well to a military context. To wit: One of the Applied Mindss specialties is the development of military command centers, those high-intensity spaces where critical information and life-or-death choices collide. The company has designed installations including the
With tax season fast approaching, its the perfect time for parents to take advantage of valuable tax deductions and credits that can reduce their tax bill or increase their refund.
Lisa Greene-Lewis, a tax expert with over 20 years of experience, has made it her mission to break down complex tax laws in a way thats accessible and actionable for families. As a trusted voice in the industryfeatured on programs like The Ellen Show and The Steve Harvey ShowLisa shares her insights on the most important tax breaks parents should know about.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
What are the top tax breaks parents should take advantage of before filing?
Navigating tax season as a parent can feel overwhelming, but there are several valuable tax deductions and credits designed to ease the financial burden of raising children. Understanding these benefits can help you maximize your refund and keep more money in your pocket.
One of the most well-known tax benefits for parents is the Child Tax Credit, which provides up to $2,000 per child under the age of 17. Even if you dont owe taxes, you may still be eligible for a refundable portion of up to $1,700.
For parents who rely on childcare to work or search for a job, the Child and Dependent Care Credit can help offset costs. You can claim up to $1,050 for one child or up to $2,100 for two or more children under 13. Even summer day camps and sports camps qualifythough overnight camps do not. If your child has a disability, there is no age limit for this credit.
If youre working and earning an income, you may also qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which can provide a significant boost to your refund. The amount depends on your income and number of children, with families of three or more kids eligible for up to $7,830 in 2024. Many eligible taxpayers miss out on this benefit, so its important to check if you qualify.
For parents with college-aged children, there are additional tax credits to help with higher education costs. The American Opportunity Tax Credit offers up to $2,500 per dependent child for the first four years of college, if they are pursuing a degree and enrolled at least half-time. If your child is taking courses beyond the first four years of collegewhether for a degree or simply to improve job skillsyou may still qualify for the Lifetime Learning Credit, which provides up to $2,000 per return. Additionally, if youre paying student loan interest for your child, you may be able to deduct up to $2,000 per tax return.
Its important to note that only the person claiming the child as a dependent can take advantage of these education-related tax benefits. If your child files their own taxes and claims these credits, you wont be able to do so. A conversation between parents and students is key to determining who should claim these benefits.
Finally, if you are a single parent who provides more than half of your households financial support, filing as Head of Household can increase your standard deduction to $21,900significantly higher than the $14,600 deduction for those filing as single.
Make sure to review your eligibility each year and consult a tax professional if needed to ensure youre maximizing your benefits.
Are there any last-minute moves families can make to lower their taxable income or increase their refund?
First, gather all your documents in one place before you beginthis helps ensure you dont overlook any important deductions or credits. One surprisingly common mistake is entering incorrect Social Security numbers, so double-check that you have the accurate numbers for yourself and any dependents. This is especially important for claiming valuable tax benefits like the Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit.
Dont forget about opportunities to reduce your taxable income. You can still make a 2024 contribution to your IRAup to $7,000 (or $8,000 if you’re 50 or older)until the April 15 deadline, and you may be able to deduct these contributions. Similarly, if you have a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), you can contribute up to $4,150 to a Health Savings Account (HSA) if you’re on a self-only plan, or up to $8,300 for a family plan, with potential tax deductions available.
What steps should families take now to prepare for next years tax season?
One of the most effective is maximizing contributions to a 401(k) plan. In 2025, you can contribute up to $23,500or $30,500 if you’re 50 or older. Plus, thanks to the Secure Act 2.0, individuals aged 60 to 63 can contribute even more, up to $34,750. Not only do these contributions lower your taxable income, but they may also make you eligible for the Retirement Savings Contribution Credit, which offers up to $1,000 for single filers and up to $2,000 for those married filing jointly. This credit is essentially free money for prioritizing your retirement savings.
Beyond retirement planning, parents can also find tax savings in everyday expenses. Keeping receipts for qualifying expensessuch as sending your child to summer campcan help maximize available deductions or credits. Additionally, if youre able to itemize your deductions, now is a great time to declutter and donate to a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. These donations can be deducted, offering financial benefits while supporting causes you care about.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
If you have been on the job market recently, you know how challenging it can be. Lots of tech companies, for example, are pulling back on hiring. Federal workers are being laid off by the thousands. And some types of jobs are simply not as available as they once were. Particularly in short supply are those prized white-collar positions paying $94,000 or more.
So, any serious job seeker must sharpen their skills to land a job. You can increase the likelihood of a successful search by avoiding the following six big job search mistakes:
Mistake No. 1: Applying for too many jobs
The first mistake is applying for too many jobs and, as a result, not giving enough time to any one application. Some individuals send in applications for 100, 200, or even 400 jobs. That is far too many.
Statistics reveal that job seekers who apply for 21 to 80 jobs have about a 30% chance of receiving a job offer, while candidates who apply for more than 81 jobs have only a 20% chance of receiving an offer. More applications typically get worse results.
To get that next big job, focus on applications where you’re a decent fit, and give more attention to each one.
Mistake No. 2: not customizing your résumé
The second (and very common) mistake is sending every company the same generic résumé. Contrary to popular belief, most hiring companies do scrutinize résumés. After the interview, its the second-most-important vehicle for assessing a candidate. Providing boilerplate wont often get you the job.
Focus your work history and the bullet points under each job youve held. Align this material with the job youre applying for. For example, dont put down that you optimized supply chain operations if you are applying for a leadership role. Instead, say you led a supply chain team. Avoid jargon and technical language that might be misunderstood.
Be sure to include only relevant work experience. If you have waited on tables at your university or worked in a donut shop, leave it out unless youre applying for a service- or people-focused job.
Mistake No. 3: Not tapping into your network
A third job search mistake is overlooking your network. A LinkedIn study shows that 70% of job seekers get their jobs through successful networking. Dont go it alone.
Ask those you know for leads and introductions. Successful networking is usually a multistep process. Most of the time, success is not through your first-degree network but through your second- or third-degree network, writes career coach Sarah Felice on LinkedIn. This means you have to have a lot of conversations, coffee meetups, Zoom meetings, and phone calls.
If you are interested in a position in a particular industry, approach an acquaintance who is knowledgeable about that field. Ask them to connect you to relevant people. If you’re interested in moving up within your company, do your research and find out which department head you should talk to. Introduce yourself with a well-written letter. Such steps may take time, but they will be much more likely to get results.
Mistake No. 4: Poor interview prep
To ace the interview, you’ve got to research the company and the job, prepare a script to guide you, and develop answers to possible questions.
The knowledge you gain as you prepare will enable you to align your background with the companys culture and the job. It will also help you ask intelligent questions and show that you take the company and the job seriously.
An interview script will provide an all-important guide for you. It doesnt have to be memorized or delivered verbatim. It simply will remind you how you want to open the conversation, what your message is, how you are going to develop your message, and how you will close the conversation.
Without a script to guide you, you wont come across as clear-minded and confident. (For more discussion of how and why to prepare a script for your job interviews, see my book, The Job Seekers Script.)
Mistake No. 5: Using weak language
Be mindful of the words you use throughout the interview process.
Eliminate anything that has negative overtones. That includes phrases like I cant, I dont, Im not sure, or I dont know. Eliminate filler words like um, ah, and you know. Avoid overly casual speech like You guys. And dont judge the questions by saying things like, Thats a good question. You’re there to answer questions, not evaluate them.
Apologetic language, such as Im sorry, also tests poorly. You may think you are being thoughtful when you apologize, but doing so can make you sound weak.
Mistake No. 6: Not following up
The final job search mistake to avoid is not following up after your interview or a conversation with someone you networked with. Write a note of thanksan email or an actual written noteand do so promptly. People appreciate that thoughtfulness, and often it will make all the difference if somene is deliberating about hiring you.
Barbara Corcoran is one of Shark Tanks longest-running sharks, with an estimated net worth of approximately $100 million. But shes also one of 10 kids from a working-class family. By age 23, shed held more than 20 jobs. By 52, she sold her real estate company for $66 million.
Corcoran knows how to build wealth. Her financial strategies are bold and unconventional. They buck traditional financial wisdom andfull disclosurethey can be also risky.
But could they help you build wealth?
1. Dont Bother Saving Money
Ive never saved a dime my whole life, Corcoran told CNBC Make It in 2023.
Rather than letting her money sit idly in a bank account, Corcoran immediately identifies the best way to spend anything she earns, often investing it into something with the potential to grow her wealth.
Of course, investing all your earnings is risky. No one knows when an unexpected expense or income loss is coming and youll need to live on your savings.
But consider the root of Corcorans advice: How much money can you safely risk investing in yourself or a business venture you believe in? How much money could you reasonably put into a stock or other fund with the potential to grow at a higher rate than your savings account?
2. Be The Highest BidderOn Valuable Assets
I am always willing to overspend on any property thats good, Corcoran said in an interview. Overspending on anything might sound counterintuitive, but Corcoran is specifically referencing quality assets with high growth potential.
Corcoran especially believes in using this principle for real estate investments. She says that if youre willing to spend more than anyone else on a property you know is quality and be patient, you will eventually make that extra money back and then some.
3. Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
One piece of advice people hear all the time, and I just dont believe it, is Diversify. Dont put all your eggs in one basket, Corcoran told CNBC Make It. Diversification is investing in different areas so you dont lose everything from a downturn in one area of the economy.
In Spring 2025, you might hesitate to even put all your literal eggs in one basket, but Corcorans advice here is about investing in areas where you have expertise rather than diversifying just for the sake of it. Corcoran has historically focused all her money in real estate, where she can constantly leverage her knowledge and experience to evaluate current and potential investments.
Corcoran isnt alone in this view. Warren Buffett famously called diversification protection against ignorance. His late Berkshire Hathaway cochair Charlie Munger also referred to the practice as diworsification. Both investors made billions by focusing their investments in industries where they were already experts.
Focused investments can lead to outsize returnsbut also outsize losses, so the expertise piece of Corcorans advice is vital.
Dont just toss all your money into one thing you dont understand, she said. Stick to what you know.
A few years ago, if you turned on the heat in an apartment in Helsinki, the energy typically came from coal. But the citys power company shut down one coal plant in 2023, and the remaining one closed this weekfour years earlier than a target set by the national government.
Within two years, we have completely phased out coal, says Olli Sirkka, CEO of Helen, the power company, which is a subsidiary of the city.
The city has one of the worlds biggest district heating systems, with a network of underground pipes filled with hot water that deliver heat to buildings. It takes a huge amount of energy to run. One large chunk of that now comes from wind power, which has more than doubled in Finland since 2020. Helsinki is now building the worlds largest heat pump, which will send heat to 30,000 homes when it starts running in 2026. At the site of one of the closed coal plants, the city is also building a new facility that will capture heat from the Baltic Sea.
Some of the energy also now comes from wood pellets, which Helsinki is using temporarily as it transitions completely away from combustion. (Wood helped replace natural gas from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, but isnt a good long-term solution. Burning it still produces CO2, it puts pressure on forests, and its more expensive than other alternatives; Finland plans to phase it out completely by 2040.) Helsinki also uses some hydro and nuclear power, and as much waste heat as possible. That includes capturing heat from local data centers and wastewater.
Though the coal plants shut down quickly, the push to close them started more than a decade ago. In 2015, a campaign called Coal Free Helsinki convinced the city council to commit to closing the first coal plant. I think activists played a really big role, says Amanda Pasanen, who previously studied the coal phaseout and is now a city councilmember. It was very much due to public pressure that they decided to quit coal burning.
At that point, it still wasnt clear how it could happen. Then, it was considered a completely impossible goal, says Sirkka. It was only maybe four years ago there was a solid decision that this has to happen. And then it started to roll really, really fast.
[Photo: Helen Ltd]
The steep drop in the cost of wind power, thanks to technological advancements and scaled-up production, was key. Wind power decreased electricity prices so much that its actually a very good business case to replace coal with electricity, he says. On the day we talked, it was windy enough that electricity prices in Finland had dropped to zero. (Finland is a fairly windy place and well suited for the technology; while it also has some solar power, it’s so far north that it isn’t sunny in the winter, and solar can’t really be used to power heating.) The power company continually monitors energy sources, shifting from one source to another to optimize costs.
The city’s layout, with the district heating system, helped make the switch easier than if every single building had to be retrofitted with different technology. “It’s easier to implement these environment-friendly solutions in a centralized system where you have district heating and where you can use your economies of scale,” says Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen.
Other factors also pushed the company to act quickly. The EUs emissions trading system increased the price of coal as carbon prices rose over time. In 2019, Finland passed a national law to phase out coal by 2029 as part of its climate plan. Changes in national tax policy made coal more expensive and clean power cheaper. In 2021, Helsinki decided to speed up its own plan to become carbon neutral, moving the target date from 2035 to 2030.
“There is broad political consensus on the issue [of climate action],” says Vartiainen, noting that when he took office in 2021, there was nearly unanimous agreement that Helsinki should move faster on its already-ambitious plans to cut emissions. Yet even with that political mandate, it wasn’t guaranteed that the change would happen quite as quickly as it did.
“It’s been quite surprising, Vartiainen says, to see how fast this shift to electricity has taken place.
When President Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariffs against America’s trading partners around the world, Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar were paying close attention.
As the cofounders of the single origin startup Burlap & Barrel, they do business with dozens of small farmers around the world. They source berbere from Ethiopia, adobo from Puerto Rico, black Urfa chili from Turkey. We bring in spices from countries where they are grown in particular ways, using heirloom varieties, says Zohar. We cannot just buy these spices here in the United States. Many are not grown here at all.
All of the U.S.’s trading partners has been hit by tariffs; the question is just how big the tariff is. Burlap & Barrel is just one example of a small American company whose business will be adversely hit by these tariffs. Yesterday’s news means Zohar and Frisch will now have to pay at least 10% more for the products they import. The business partners are now scrambling to figure out how to manage this crisis. We’re a small business, Frisch says. We don’t have strategic reserves, or relationships with big banks. We’re particularly sensitive to these price fluctuations.
Economists say that businesses will make up for these losses by increasing prices to customers, potentially driving up inflation, or paying their suppliers less, which could profoundly harm workers in poor countries. For now, Burlap & Barrel’s founders have decided to do neitherand absorb these costs internally by halting spending on innovation and special projects.
More broadly and alarmingly, they are reckoning with how they can continue building relationships with farmers around the world, when the United States now seems like an unstable, unreliable trading partner.
An Ancient Profession
Frisch and Zohar launched Burlap & Barrel in New York in 2016, which now has a staff of 20, in an effort to make high-quality spices accessible to more home cooks.
They see themselves as part of the ancient spice trade that goes back thousands of years. Their business relies on going to remote corners of the world where small farmers have been growing particular spices for centuries. For instance, they partner with women in Afghanistan who harvest wild cumin, and Guatemalan farmers who harvest cardamom. Part of their mission as a company is supporting communities in developing countries.
The founders had been closely following Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. But they were surprised by the broad sweep of tariffs the Trump administration announced yesterday. There is now a flat 10% tariff across all of America’s trading partners, and additional tariffs on many other countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Malaysia. Burlap & Barrel sources from many of these countries.
The expanse of the tariffs was much greater in magnitude than any economist expected, says Joshua Stillwagon, associate professor of economics at Babson College. I expected there to be a phasing-in of the tariffs or some kind of implementation, but that didn’t happen.
Last year, the Burlap & Barrel paid $1 million for the cost of goods; this year, they expect this to go up to least $1.4 million. This money needs to come from somewhere. The founders decided from the outset not to pay their suppliers less. We’re a social enterprise, so paying our farmers less is just a nonstarter, says Frisch. We work with small farmers with little access to other income. We have seen firsthand how hard their lives are, and cutting their income could be devastating.
Difficult Decisions
But they’ve also made the decision not to raise prices, at least in the short term. Part of the mission of their business is to make good quality spices affordable to more people; they charge $9.99 per bottle for everything on their site. Zohar also points out that if the United States goes into a recession, more people may choose to eat at home rather than go out for meals. So if they don’t inflate their prices, people may see them as a resource during turbulent economic times. We didn’t want to jump to increasing prices for our consumers, says Zohar.
Burlap & Barrel does not have the option of switching to domestic suppliers because most of their spices are not made in the United States. But even in industries where there are American manufacturers, switching suppliers is not such an easy calculation, says Alex Field, professor of economics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Domestic producers often sell their products at higher prices than their foreign counterparts, he says. So either way, it is going to cost more.
Economists expect many companies to pass on cost increases to consumers; unchecked, this will eventually lead to inflation. Stillwagon says the first prices to increase will be on perishable goods, like fruit. But over time, as companies go through their current inventory, it will eventually trickle into many other products. As costs go up, there could be a recession. As companies raise prices on necessities, people are going to be spending more of their budget on those things, he says. As people pull back their spending, they are going to make less profit and hire fewer employees.
While the tariffs are causing businesses a lot of stress, Field says that the sheer instability of the economic situation is even more crippling. The Trump administration has rolled out these tariffs in a chaotic manner and there is uncertainty about whether he will renege on them. So Burlap & Barrel’s decision not to increase cost to consumers in the short term makes sense. Trump is so changeable in his views that you may just want to take a ‘wait and see’ approach, and take a hit on profits to see whether the matter resolves itself before you change your catalog pricing and make your customers unhappy, he says.
Killing Innovation
Frisch and Zohar need to figure out how to make up for the hundreds of thousands of dollars they now have to pay in tariffs. They’ve decided to spend less on innovation. In their case, this refers to things like developing new products, creating interesting partnerships with restaurants and celebrities, and doing special projects. For instance, many people had been asking Burlap & Barrel to create a holiday advent calendar with spices. Frisch says the entire team had been excited about this. But they’ve decided to stop work on it immediately. The packaging for the calendar is now more costly, they were going to source new spices for it, and it was going to take employees’ time.
Burlap & Barrel’s approach of cutting back on extraneous spending is going to happen at businesses across the country. And it will have a profound impact on the American economy as a whole. At a time of instability, companies have to be prudent and pull back on investments, including things like buying equipment and spending in innovation, Field says. But this is a key driver of spending and it is what gave American businesses their edge.
America is No Longer a Reliable Trading Partner
Since launching their business, Frisch and Zohar have been all over the world to build relationships with suppliers. In the past, many of these small farmers were eager to work with American brands, because the country positioned itself as an ideal trading partner. It meant income for them, but it was also a source of pride, says Frisch. They were excited about sending their cinnamon or black pepper to American consumers.
But now that Trump has upended the global trading system, this won’t be true for much longer. Countries around the world now see the United States as hostile and unreliable, which could have long-term consequences, even if Trump quickly reverses these particular tariffs. And eventually, this image of America will trickle down to the rural farmers that Frisch and Zohar have worked closely with. Everything has changed, says Zohar. There’s been a radical shift in how the U.S. engages with the rest of the world, and what the American economy represents.
The nonstop cavalcade of announcements in the AI world has created a kind of reality distortion field. There is so much buzz, and even more money, circulating in the industry that it feels almost sacrilegious to doubt that AI will make good on its promises to change the world. Deep research can do 1% of all knowledge work! Soon the internet will be designed for agents! Infinite Ghibli!
And then you remember AI screws things up. All. The. Time.
Hallucinationswhen a large language model essentially spits out information created out of whole clothhave been an issue for generative AI since its inception. And they are doggedly persistent: Despite advances in model size and sophistication, serious errors still occur, even in so-called advanced reasoning or thinking models. Hallucinations appear to be inherent to generative technology, a by-product of AI’s seemingly magical quality of creating new content out of thin air. They’re both a feature and a bug at the same time.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
In journalism, accuracy isn’t optionaland thats exactly where AI stumbles. Just ask Bloomberg, which has already hit turbulence with its AI-generated summaries. The outlet began publishing AI-generated bullet points for some news stories back in January this year, and it’s already had to correct more than 30 of them, according to The New York Times.
The intern that just doesn’t get it
AI is occasionally described as an incredibly productive intern, since it knows pretty much everything and has superhuman ability to create content. But if you had to issue 30-plus corrections for an intern’s work in three months, you’d probably tell that intern to start looking at a different career path.
Bloomberg is hardly the first publication to run head-first into hallucinations. But the fact that the problem is still happening, more than two years after ChatGPT debuted, pinpoints a primary tension when AI is applied to media: To create novel audience experiences at scale, you need to let the generative technology create content on the fly. But because AI often gets things wrong, you also need to check its output with “humans in the loop.” You can’t do both.
The typical approach thus far is to slap a disclaimer onto the content. The Washington Posts Ask the Post AI is a good example, warning users that the feature is an “experiment” and encouraging users to “Please verify by consulting the provided articles.” Many other publications have similar disclaimers.
It’s a strange world where a media company introduces a new feature with a label that effectively says, “You can’t rely on this.” Providing accurate information isn’t a secondary feature of journalismit’s the whole point. This contradiction is one of the strangest manifestations of the application of AI in media.
Moving to a close enough world
How did this happen? Arguably, media companies were forced into it. When ChatGPT and other large language models first began summarizing content, we were so blown away by their mastery of language that we weren’t as concerned about the fine print: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” And it turns out that for most users that was good enough. Even though generative AI often gets facts wrong, chatbots have seen explosive user growth. “Close enough” appears to be what the world is settling on.
It’s not a standard anyone sought out, but the media is slowly adopting it as more publications launch generative experiences with similar disclaimers. There’s an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” aspect to this, certainly: As more people turn to AI search engines and chatbots for information, media companies feel pressure to either sign licensing deals to have their content included, or match those AI experiences with their own chatbots. Accuracy? Theres a disclaimer for that.
One notable holdout, however, is the BBC. So far, the BBC hasn’t signed any deals with AI companies, and it’s been a leader in pointing out the inaccuracies that AI portals create, publishing its own research on the topic earlier this year. It was also the BBC that ultimately convinced Apple to dial back its shoddy notification summaries on the iPhone, which were garbling news to the point of making up entirely false narratives.
In a world where it’s looking increasingly fashionable for media companies to take licensing money, the BBC is architecting a more proactive approach. Somewhere along the waywhether out of financial self-interest or falling into Big Tech’s reality distortion fieldmany media companies began to buy into the idea that hallucinations were either not that big a problem or something that will inevitably be solved. After all, “Today is the worst this technology will ever be.”
Think of pollution and coal plants. Its an ugly side effect, but one that doesnt stop the business from thriving. Thats how hallucinations function in AI: clearly flawed, occasionally harmful, yet toleratedbecause the growth and money keep coming.
But those false outputs are deadly to an industry whose primary product is accurate information. Journalists should not sit back and expect Silicon Valley to simply solve hallucinations on its own, and theBBC is showing there’s a path to being part of the solution without evangelizing or ignoring the problem. After all, “Check important info” is supposed to be the media’s job.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Andy Merolla is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jeffrey Hall is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kanas.
Whats the big idea?
Individually, most day-to-day interactions may seem trivial, but they add up to an important personal and societal opportunity. We all engage in our own unique ecosystem of everyday communicationour very own social biome. Meaningful engagement with others is critical to health and wellbeing, but we live in a time when any kind of engagement is dwindling. So, even if we dont get every moment just right, its worth prioritizing human contact and kindness so that we can cultivate happiness within and around us.
Below, coauthors Andy Merolla and Jeffrey Hall share five key insights from their new book, The Social Biome: How Everyday Communication Connects and Shapes Us. Listen to the audio versionread by Merollain the Next Big Idea App.
1. We all inhabit unique communication ecosystems that define us.
We come to know ourselves and others through communication. This includes the full range of daily face-to-face and mediated interactions, from passing hellos and office chit-chat to heated conflicts and heart-to-hearts.
But its hard to conceptualize all this interaction. We coined the term social biome to help people understand how our lives are lived out in everyday communication. A social biome is our ecosystem of day-to-day talk. Its the totality of our moments of communicationin-person and digitalwith loved ones, acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, customers, clerks, and complete strangers. Our biomes include interactions we choose to engage in, those thrust upon us, and those we just happen to bounce in and out of.
The term biome comes from biology and ecology to describe what life is like in specific regions, including its plants, wildlife, and climate. Every human has their own unique microbiome, composed of the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and viruses living in and on our bodies. These microbes shape our health and well-being in fascinating ways, and although our microbiome is subject to the choices we make, such as the foods we eat, its also shaped by innumerable factors beyond our control. This includes where we happen to be born and the spaces we live and work in.
Our social biomes, too, are products of choices we make and many factors beyond our control. You can choose to be as kind as you can to those around you, but in many situations, you simply dont get to choose whos around you, nor how they communicate with you. When we start viewing our lives as lived out in social biomes, we recognize how consequential our moments of everyday interaction are for shaping our self-concept and worldview. We also understand the limits of what we can do.
Any individual moment of interaction can seem inconsequential, but at scale, our habits of interaction are anything but. Respect, dignity, and trust, as well as hate, indifference, and disdain all play out in small moments of communicationsmall moments that, over time, accumulate, crystallize, and calcify into our view of the world around us as a generally welcoming or inherently intolerant place.
Ultimately, a social biome perspective compels us to scrutinize how we spend our time and why, how we choose to treat others, and what adjustments we can make to social habits to make our livesand the lives of those in our social biomeshealthier and happier. Moves as small as a text to let a friend know you were thinking about them, or pausing an extra beat to acknowledge a coworker you might usually ignore, can initiate new and, hopefully, enduring, routines of connection that can scale up and reverberate across people.
2. There is no such thing as just right when it comes to communication.
Its incredible how much people value good communication skills. In one survey, over 90% of parents said that good communication skills are essential for their kids to thrive. Compare that to the percentage citing math skills (79%) or science skills (just 58%). Its not just parents. Corporations prize communication abilities in hiring. This makes sense, as research indicates that communication problems are at the root of billions in corporate losses each year.
People instinctively know that if they could just communicate better, it would help to address a lot of problems they face. But what exactly is better when it comes to communication? It is a harder question to answer than you might think. Despite decades of research, simple definitions of good communication are hard to find.
First off, consider how messy everyday communication is. Of the thousands of words we typically speak each day, we tend to communicate in six-word chunks that are chock full of vocal fillers like um and ah, hesitations, starts, stops, interruptions, and trail offs. Add to that the constant digital distractions that tax the cognitive processing abilities of even the most Zen among us, and you get a good sense of what everyday communication is like. It bears little resemblance to the polished turns of talk we see in a typical Netflix series.
Further, many of us think about communication in the wrong way. We use the word communication as if its a singular entity. But its not. We all operate from different sets of assumptions about what good communication entails. We even differ in our view of what communication is for. The meaning of communication is always co-constructed between people, and those people might be operating from very different understandings of what demarcates the communicative good from the communicative bad.
Many communication challenges result from our tendency to put too much pressure on ourselves (and others) to get communication just right. But just right is always dependent on the unique standards people apply, and those standards dont always align between communicators. When we fully appreciate that there is no such thing as just right, we can feel freer to connect with others in ways that feel authentic, knowing there are many paths to good communication.
3. Were living in an Age of Interiority.
Time-use data, which tracks how people spend their daily lives, has shown that we spend less and less time socializing. This trend started long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Time spent alone has been increasing for at least three decades. Social changes, such as food delivery apps, online shopping, and self-checkout lines, make it possible to avoid human interaction for tasks that once required it. Its becoming increasingly possible for people, especially highly resourced folks in the Global North, to live in ways that circumvent face-to-face interactions.
Were not just hanging out with friends less often; were able to orchestrate a more disconnected life thats finely tailored to our own needs. If we remember that people within social biomes are interdependent, then we see that each persons shift toward a more interior life limits opportunities for social connections. When it comes to belonging, we are all in it together.
Disconnection, moreover, is self-reinforcing. When we become less comfortable interacting with people, even in mundane moments of everyday life, our social skills can atrophy. Social inertia sets in, making it increasinly energy-intensive to re-engage and build new relationships.
The reason for this interior shift across society is not solely due to personal choices. The social world controls us as much as we control it, and innumerable structural factors are pulling and keeping people apart. Long work hours. Precarious economic conditions. Lacking access to reliable and high-quality child and eldercare. These factors deplete people and lead them to want nothing more than to retreat from the social worldoften toward a screen where they get some semblance of control. On top of it, ongoing segregation and political sorting intensify divisions, so even when we connect with others, its most likely with like-minded others.
There are both personal and societal costs when we live more interior lives.
4. Connection and restorative solitude are linked.
Alone time is important. A well-connected and socially satisfying life requires contented solitude. Research shows that communicating with others, including highly enjoyable conversations, requires a lot of energy. To replenish that energy, we need to recharge, often in solitude. Importantly, though, satisfying interactions make our time alone feel better.
In a study Jeff and I conducted a few years ago, we found that peoples overall satisfaction with their life was associated with their daily survey reports of how content they felt when alonefeeling contented while alone is most likely to occur following positive social interaction experiences.
For many people, though, solitude isnt contented or chosen. Instead, its inescapable. When we find ourselves alone but dont want to be, it reflects the kind of disconnection and loneliness that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and many others have so admirably called attention to in recent years.
Social connection is highly uneven. Some people are doing greattheir days are full of enjoyable interaction, and their calendars are packed with fun social events. Meanwhile, many others dont have reliable access to the rewarding interactions that facilitate vital feelings of belonging.
This is again where a social biome perspective can be helpful because it reminds us that we can do our best to look out for other people around us, particularly folks who dont have as many opportunities for social interaction and support. This includes acquaintances, neighbors, and people we work with. Our efforts to reach out can rekindle connections for people badly needing them.
5. Hope is an interpersonal phenomenon.
If were in an Age of Interiority, we could just as easily contend that were in an Age of Hopelessness. People have lost faith in institutions and feel less trust in the people around them. People with marginalized identities feel under attack by people in positions of great power. Fears of climate change. The existential dread of AI. Pick your poison.
But what exactly does it mean to feel hopeless or hopeful? In day-to-day conversation, we say things like were holding out hope or trying not to get our hopes up. Such comments suggest that hope is, at best, an intentional suspension of disbelief or, at worst, willful ignorance of the cold, hard reality of life. This view of hopeas a foolish illusion or dangerous obliviousness to the way things really areis one held by some of historys most famous philosophers. Hope was among the evils inside Pandoras box.
Over the past 70 years, however, social psychologists have offered a radically different view of hope tied to the way we think about and pursue goals. The late psychologist C. R. Snyder and his collaborators helped us see that many of our most important goals are linked to other people. These goals can be both big and small. When we see friends giving their full attention to one another or small acts of kindness between strangers, that is hope in action. People are choosing to prioritize their finite attention and energy on others. These are building blocks of connection and, over time, give us a sense of hope to pursue larger, more challenging goals.
When we accept the idea that hope is communal and not just personal, we better appreciate how much is riding on our treatment of one another in everyday moments of talk. Small moments of acknowledgement and compassion arent the antidote to all the worlds ills, but its hard to envision a world of rebuilt trust and a better future for our kids if we dont try to spread kindness and dignity, moment by moment, across our social biomes.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Are you prepared for when the power goes out? To prevent massive wildfires in drought-prone, high-wind areas, electrical companies have begun preemptively shutting off electricity. These planned shutdowns are called public safety power shutoffs, abbreviated to PSPS, and theyre increasingly common. So far this year, weve seen them in Texas, New Mexico, and California.
Unlike regular power failures, which on average last only about two hours while a piece of broken equipment is repaired, a PSPS lasts until weather conditions improve, which could be days. And these shutoffs come at a steep price. In 2010 alone, they cost California more than $13 billion. A 2019 analysis of shutoffs in Placer County, California, found that they harmed 70% of local businesses.
I am a business school professor who studies how people pay for things, including during emergencies. As I point out in my new book The Power of Cash: Why Using Paper Money Is Good for You and Society, many people have abandoned paper money and switched to electronic payments such as credit cards and mobile apps. This can become a big problem during an emergency, since these systems need electricity to operate. The switch to electronic payments is making the world less resilient in the face of increasing numbers of major natural disasters.
So if a public safety power shutoff strikes and you dont have any cash, you may be doubly vulnerable. On the other hand, keeping cash can protect youand not just you and your family but also local businesses and your community. After all, keeping the economy moving during shutoffs reduces the financial damage they cause.
Why do they keep turning off the power, anyway?
Its all about risk.
The world has experienced a number of very destructive wildfires recently. In 2025, large parts of Los Angeles burned to the ground, with more than 18,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. In 2023, wildfires in Hawaii killed more than 100 people. Massive wildfires have also occurred recently in South Korea, Portugal, and Australia.
Governments, people whose houses burned, and insurance companies are all looking for someone to blame and pay for the damage. Climate change, which is increasing the worlds average temperatures and drying out trees and grass, is setting the conditions. Since Mother Nature cannot be sued, utilities make handy scapegoats with deep pockets. Electrical utilities are sued because their power lines, transformers, and other equipment often start blazes.
So to prevent lawsuits as well as fires, power companies are increasingly turning off the power when the conditions are ripe for a catastrophic blaze. Theres no uniform set of standards for when to impose a shutdown, but in general power companies do it when there are hot, dry, and windy conditions. For example, a PSPS is triggered in Hawaii if theres a drought, wind gusts are over 45 mph, and relative humidity is under 45%.
Power shutoffs are a relatively new idea. They were proposed in California in 2008 and first allowed in 2012.
Since then, power companies across the entire western U.S. from Texas to Hawaii have adopted these plans. Shutoff plans also stretch from southern border states such as Arizona to northern border states such as Idaho and Montana.
Shutting off the power is a huge problem, since it causes massive disruption to communities. People depend on power to run medical equipment, work, and keep communities safe. Even people with a desperate need for electricity, such as those on medical life support, are not immune to a safety shutoff.
How to prepare for a PSPS
As the world warms, the chance of being caught in a preemptive power shutoff increases. What can you do to minimize the impact?
Having solar panels wont protect you: Utilities shut off customers with solar panels to block those panels from pushing power onto the grid, since the whole goal is to shut off the grid. The only way for you to still have power is to buy a battery storage system and a transfer switch, which allows you to take your system completely off the grid. But this is very expensive.
Getting a portable generator is only a partial solution for a multiday hutoff, since most last only 6 to 18 hours on a single tank of gas. Plus, generators run very hot, which creates its own fire risk.
Another way to minimize the impact of both a power shutoff and a wildfire is to create a small disaster relief kit, or go bag. Creating one is relatively inexpensive. It should contain key items such as water, your medicines, some shelf-stable foodand importantly, some cash. Even some government websites forget to mention this.
Its also important to use paper money before a shutoff happens. I have all too frequently seen gas station attendants, supermarket checkout clerks, and restaurant servers have no idea how to handle cash.
Recently at my local supermarket, for example, I paid with a $20 bill. The cashier had to ask another employee which kinds of coins to use to make change. If people dont know how to handle cash during normal times, it ceases to be useful during emergencies.
As the world warms, public safety power shutoffs will occur more frequently. The shutoffs clearly highlight the trade-off between economic and social disruption versus preventing dangerous wildfires. These shutoffs show there are no easy solutions, only hard choices.
There are a few sensible and easy steps to take to reduce the impact of these shutoffs. One is to understand that during one of the very moments you might really need to spend money, modern payment systems fail. Holding and frequently using old-fashioned cash is a simple and low-cost way to protect yourself and your family.
Jay L. Zagorsky is an associate professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Chalk it up to bad timing: Some Home Depot customers are furious after a recent April Fools’ Day prank from a tool review website suggested that the home improvement giant would start charging parking fees due to inflation.
This was no laughing matter, as anxious Americans awaited President Donald Trump’s tariffs news, expecting higher prices on goods and services. So the April 1 date didn’t register with angry viewers right away. Many took to social media, some creating a Reddit thread about the supposed fees, with one duped X user even proposing #BoycottHomeDepot. Desperate for some damage control, Home Depot responded on its official X account, posting, “this is an April Fools’ post from a tool review website. We do not charge for parking.”
So, what exactly happened? On April 1, Pro Tool Reviews, an online product review site, published a fake news article that said Home Depot would start charging for parking to combat inflation and “offset increasing operational costs [to] keep prices competitive,” and that the modest parking fee (“$2 for up to two hours in central Florida, to $5 for a full day of parking in Los Angeles”) would help the company avoid passing those extra costs directly on to customers.
Unfortunately for Home Depot, as the target of the joke, American consumers are now particularly sensitive about retailers passing the cost of tariffs on to them.
Pro Tool Reviews told USA Today that the article’s high viewership was “truly humbling,” indicating the traction this apparent PR nightmare has received, with editor-in-chief Kenny Koehler adding, “we hope our friends over at Home Depot were able to laugh as well.” (We’re not so sure about that, Kenny.)
This isn’t the first time an April Fools’ Day joke has caused trouble. In fact, there is a long list of brands whose pranks have gone awry, from Google to Volkswagen. In 2016, Google announced a new Gmail feature that it claimed would add a GIF of a yellow animated “Minion” character dropping a microphone at the end of an email. Google later apologized. And in 2021, the German carmaker claimed it was changing the name of its American division to “Voltswagen,” causing the stock to rise, as well as a great amount of confusion.
The origin of April Fools’ Day dates back to 16th century France, when Charles IX decreed that the new year would no longer begin on Easter, but instead on January 1. Those who refused the change were named, you guessed it, “April fools.”
