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A culture of fear makes it easy to cloud our judgment For thousands of years, walking and horseback riding were the fundamental modes of transport, and settlement patterns were a direct reflection of transport options. Compact, low-rise villages and cities made sense based on how far people could reasonably travel on foot or by horse. This was true all the way up until the late 1800s. Then came an invention that let people travel incredible distances in seconds, entirely reshaping cities with dense population clusters. The technology was a sturdy box designed to transport multiple people at once, but often carried just one. I’m talking, of course, about the elevator. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-desktop.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Urbanism Speakeasy\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/\u0022\u003Eurbanismspeakeasy.com.\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453933,"imageMobileId":91453932,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Elevators transformed city planning in remarkable ways, long before automobiles sprawled life horizontally. Before elevators, buildings stayed squat because stairs limited height. Walking up two or three flights isn’t terrible. Carrying a briefcase up 10 flights of steep, dark stairs to the office is, pardon the pun, another story. It didnt take long for skylines to change following the invention of the elevator. Each early elevator had its own operator who mastered the timing and touch of hand-crank controls. These operators wore their Sunday best as a psychological reminder: “We will safely get you to your destination.” Brilliant minds innovated on the elevator, adding safety technology like automatic brakes, but it was the human touch that eased public nerves. It’s hard now to imagine feeling completely helpless in an elevator, but such was life in the early 20th century. Zero chance ordinary people like you and me were going to attempt to operate an elevator without rigorous training first. Full automation That changed dramatically with the September 1945 New York City elevator operators’ strike. Around 15,000 operators, doormen, porters, and maintenance workers walked off, halting service in over 2,000 buildings. About 1.5 million people avoided elevators, opting for stairs or staying home rather than risk operating the cars themselves. But self-service features like electric power, emergency phones, and push buttons were already spreading, so the strike helped open the doors to full automation. Self-driving elevators! You can practically hear the traveling public gasp. Walk into a box, let the doors close and lock you in, and trust that this thing would take you quicklybut not too quicklythe proper distance. Otis gets credit for installing the first fully automated elevator in 1950 in Dallas. But the transition took time, both for technology to improve and for a skeptical population to trust it. Operators were still employed in some cities 30 years later. Today, you can casually scan your hotel room key in a lobby that summons a box to whisk you to your precise destination without even pressing buttons inside. A public health crisis You and I will never have the time, energy, or need to read the thousands of opinion pieces about the dangers of autonomous technology as it relates to cars. And as robotaxis accelerate deployments in 2026, there will be no shortage of fear-based stories. There’s no scenario, with or without technology, that results in a danger-free life. The challenge for us is to identify and analyze trade-offs without being clouded by ideology or thwarted by lazy straw man arguments. I’m not a technology expert, so I don’t get too deep on what a particular shiny new object can or can’t do. I am a traffic safety expert, though, and I can tell you motor vehicle deaths remain a public health crisis. Every day, more than 100 people are killed in traffic crashes, and thousands more experience life-altering injuries. That’s the track record of human drivers for decades. Software can save lives by preventing people from driving too fast, running red lights, passing school buses, tailgating in bad weather, or committing other dangerous antisocial acts. If only 50 people are killed each day because of autonomous technology, isnt that worth celebrating? What if the technology could bring traffic fatalities down to nearly zero? It’s natural to be scared by emerging tech. Early elevator riders felt helpless stepping into a closing box with no operator to guide them. But people adapted because the status quo (stairs limiting how we could build and live) was worse, and incremental safety features built confidence over time. There are absolutely valid concerns about autonomous vehicles, like software hacking, or failure to recognize a one-way street. But remember that humans are not the safest operators, that our current state of mobility is a public health crisis killing tens of thousands every year. Autonomous vehicles programmed to operate safely are part of the quest to design for human flourishing. If we’ve entrusted machines to carry us sky-high without hesitation, we can approach transportation systems the same way: cautiously optimistic, evidence-driven, and open to progress that saves lives. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-desktop.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/12\/speakeasy-mobile.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cstrong\u003ESubscribe to Urbanism Speakeasy\u003C\/strong\u003E","dek":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/\u0022\u003Eurbanismspeakeasy.com.\u003C\/a\u003E","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"SIGN UP","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#f5f5f5","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91453933,"imageMobileId":91453932,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
Reading or sending emails may seem like an innocuous task, but sometimes, this simple act can trigger a dramatic bodily response. Like forgetting to literally breathe. Many of us have heard of sleep apnea: the condition where breathing gets interrupted during sleep. Dora Kamau, Lead Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher at mental health app Headspace, told Fast Company. Email apnea is a similar ideajust happening in the middle of your workday, When we’re intensely focused on a task, the brain will “switch off” certain unconscious functions to redirect its processing power to the task at hand. In that state, a lot of people unknowingly alter their breathing, taking short sips of breath, or sometimes holding it altogether. The term for this phenomenon was first coined by Linda Stone in the late 2000s in an article published by HuffPost. After noticing her own breathing became shallow when sat at her computer checking her emails, she decided to invite 200 participants to take part in a study at her home. She found that 80% of the participants also breathed more shallowly when stationed in front of a screen. Those who didnt had received some kind of formal training in breathing as either athletes, dancers or musicians. When we open an inbox, scroll through a feed, or get pulled into something on a screen, our nervous system shifts into low-grade alert mode, explains Kamau. In these moments, the body is doing what has been designed to do: to protect us. Its a human, biological response to perceived uncertainty, threat or danger, which in the modern world, an overflowing inbox can feel like. If you dont think you do this, the tricky thing about email apnea is that its easy to miss, because it happens in the background of something else youre doing, says Kamau. Do you reach the end of a work session feeling inexplicably tired, even if you havent done anything physically demanding? Do you suffer from tension headaches or a tight feeling across the shoulders and chest? Do you find yourself taking a big, involuntary sigh or deep breathing without really knowing why? These are all signs of email apnea. That sigh is your body self-correcting, trying to restore balance after a period of shallow or held breath, says Kamau. When we hold our breath or breathe shallowly for extended periods, carbon dioxide builds up in the bloodstream, signaling to the body to stay on high alert. Even after you’ve closed the email, that stress response keeps running, holding on to that tension long after your laptop is shut. It also negatively impacts cognitive function, Kamau explains. When we’re not breathing fully, we’re not getting optimal oxygen to the brain, which means decision-making, creativity, and focus all take a hit. Ironically, the very things we need most at work. Next time youre racing to hit inbox zero, take a beat and notice your breath. Slow diaphragmatic breathing, expanding the lungs fully and breathing into the stomach, signals to the body it can relax. It reduces the heart rate, lowers blood pressure and can even help us make better decisions. Its also important to designate mini-breaks to keep email apnea at bay. At Headspace, we just created and launched a Pomodoro timer specifically designed with this in mind, says Kamau. Making micro-adjustments to the way you sit can help, too. Hunching over a screen compresses the lungs and makes full breathing physically harder, she says. Simply sitting up slightly, rolling the shoulders back, and dropping them away from the ears creates more space for the breath to move in our bodies.
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E-Commerce
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. More than 600,000 podcasts released 27 million episodes in 2025. Keeping up with even a tiny fraction of those 70,000-plus daily releases is impossible. So Ive been exploring new ways to keep up with audio: podcast summaries, audio digests, and cool new tools for finding and saving audio highlights. Podsnacks: Get podcast summaries by email Get podcast summaries delivered to your email with Podsnacks. Catch up on shows you dont have time to listen to. The free digest includes AI-generated summaries drawn from 25 of the most popular news, business, and tech podcasts. For $5/month, you can get a daily digest of any five podcasts you want. Snipcast is an alternative that offers 2 summaries a month for free or 50 episode summaries for $8/month. TL;DL by Headliner: Listen to podcast digests If you want to listen to podcast summaries, try TL;DL. Pick up to five podcasts to summarize in 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes. I like that its not just an AI-voiced synthesis, but includes excerpted audio clips. You can always click through to hear the full episode. Caveat: Expect to wait at least five minutes for each summary, and its still in beta. I run into occasional errors. Examples: Listen to this summary from my recent podcast interview with Azeem Azhar. Or try this summary of an episode of Shankar Vedantams terrific Hidden Brain podcast. Snipd: My favorite podcast app Snipd keeps improving. I rely on it mainly because it lets me save highlights from podcasts Im listening to by tapping my AirPods. The app also provides detailed podcast summaries so I can decide what to listen to. Among the new features I like most: Skip intros and outros that clutter up many podcasts. AI chat with any episode to ask for best quotes, must-listen moments, key takeaways, clarification of a complex idea, or whatever else you want. I love the new mentioned books tab. It shows all the books discussed on a particular podcast. Click on a cover to learn more about the author and to see a list of podcasts where that book was discussed. Search by guest. Find and listen to all the podcasts where your favorite author/musician/guru has been interviewed. Listen and highlight audiobooks. Connect a Libro.fm audiobook account and import books with one click to listen to and highlight on Snipd. (Libro supports your local bookstore.) Alternatively, find free public domain audiobooks at LibriVox. You can manually upload your own audiobooks. Podcast Magic: Save a key audio moment When youre listening to a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and want to save a highlight, take a screenshot and email it to podcastmagic@sublime.app. Podcast Magic will email you back an audio clip and transcript of the key moment to save or share. Its a clever way to easily save and share a quote or anecdote. Example: One show I highlighted recently was Audio Flux, which The New Yorker picked as one of the 10 best podcasts of 2025. The all-star audio duo commissions and spotlights bold short-form audio stories. (You can also follow Team Audio Flux on Substack.) Listen Notes: Search for podcast mentions With Listen Notes, you can find podcast episodes where youre mentioned. Type in your name or the name of your organization and search. Or look for interviews with a favorite author or musician. Other useful features: Curated Lists: See recommendations from publications, like the 6 healthcare podcasts or 7 podcasts for bookworms the NYTimes recommended. Listen Later: Make and share a curated podcast playlist. The playlist has an RSS feed that you can add to any major podcast player. Heres a playlist of a few shows I like. Heres a longer list of my favorites. Podchaser is a good alternative when youre looking by topic. I discovered new podcasts about tennis and classical music. Also try the new advanced search by combining terms. EarBuds Podcast Collective, founded by podcast guru Arielle Nissenblatt, shares well-curated podcast recommendations. Each week a guest picks five shows to recommend. Example: 5 podcasts about bodies and how we see ourselves. Also: CBCs Podcast Playlist (RIP) was a great show featuring highlights from all sorts of podcasts. The archive is full of great episodes. Perplexity Voice Mode for Web, iOS, and Android When I dont have my computer, I prefer searching with my voice over thumb typing on my phone. Querying Perplexity verbally when Im walking or when my fingers are freezing is convenient because it answers with audio quickly and accurately. I can ask follow-ups for clarification or elaboration. These iterative search conversations let me steer the exploration toward whats most useful. (iOS and Android) Example: Here’s a screenshot of Perplexitys short reply when I asked what voice search is useful for. Tip: Ask Perplexity for its sources to verify its results; voice searches dont surface those unless you ask. Voicebox: Collect audio feedback Create your own inbox for voice input. Give anyone your Voicebox link or QR code, and they can leave you an audio message. No typing, no downloads, no forms to fill out. They just share their thoughts in a simple voice memo. Its like an answering machine for the digital era. Voicebox is marketed as a B2B tool, but anyone can use it as an individual. Try it: Leave me a voice message about one thing you do that AI will never be able to replicate. Optionally, include your name and email. Send an audio note: Tuttu is a super simple free site where you can record and share a voice note. Then email a link to that audio or embed it. Heres a quick example I recorded about 3 ways you can use Tuttu. Alternative: VideoAsk is a slick tool for collecting video or audio feedback instead of a dull form. You can gather 20 minutes of input each month for free. Collecting 100 monthly minutes costs $24/month billed annually. Rover AI: Get audio briefs to answer questions Rover is an early-stage app that answers your questions with AI-generated audio briefs. Type in a query, wait a few minutes, then listen to your 2-3 minute audio conversation between two AI hosts. Unique feature: Choose from three alternative responses to your query. Example: Listen to a short audio debate about whether Jonathan Franzen is overrated or a genius. Alternatives: NotebookLM, which Ive written about, does a fantastic job of creating audio summariesor even debatesexploring complex topics. And Huxe, which I wrote about last week, creates useful personalized audio updates. Rover is an earlier-stage experiment, by contrast, focused on brief audio answers to eclectic queries. Become a tester to try it out. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
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E-Commerce
Accessibility is often treated as a technical problem. Does it meet standards? Is it ergonomic? Is it safe? Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. Many products fail not because they dont function, but because they make the user feel singled out. Shame is one of the most powerful barriers to product adoption, and it is rarely discussed in design reviews. People delay using canes, grab bars, hearing aids, or mobility supports even when they would meaningfully improve daily life. Why? Because many products still communicate something the user does not want to say out loud: Something is wrong with me. If we want accessible design to succeed, and we want people to get the utility of these products, we have to design beyond function. We have to design for dignity, and we have to recognize that design has the power to remove stigma. ADOPTION IS EMOTIONAL A product can meet every ergonomic benchmark and still sit unused. Emotional adoption determines real adoption. When design feels institutional, clinical, or stigmatizing, it does not matter how useful it is. The user experiences a cost that is not in the price tag. The cost is identity. Great design reduces that cost. It normalizes support. It invites pride. It says, You belong here, not You are an exception. We have seen this shift before. Years ago, eyeglasses were considered medical devices. Kids were teased as four eyes. Glasses signaled something was wrong. Then design and culture evolved. Frames became expressive and stylish. Today, glasses are fashion accessories, and many people wear them without prescription lenses because they like how they look. A stigmatized object became a form of self-expression. The same pattern played out with bicycle helmets. They used to be awkward Styrofoam brain buckets, worn only by the most concerned riders, who were often teased for their appearance. Over time, design improved and so did perception. Helmets became lighter, sleeker, and more personal. Colors got bolder. Styles emerged, including playful options for kids like watermelon themes, mohawks, and distinctive graphics. Today, many children and young adults would never consider biking without a helmet. What was once stigmatized became normal, even a point of pride. This is what design can do. It can shift the cultural meaning of an object. WHAT SHAME LOOKS LIKE IN DESIGN Shame shows up in visual language and cues: Products that look medical, cold, or utilitarian Aesthetic choices that communicate equipment instead of object Forms that feel like warnings rather than invitations Branding that talks down to the user or overexplains This is not about hiding disability. It is about refusing to equate disability with ugliness, awkwardness, or compromise. We have found that most people do not reject support, but many reject what the support implies about them. DESIGN FOR PRIDE Design that reduces shame does a few things consistently. It respects the home. Accessible products should feel like they belong in a thoughtfully designed environment, not like they were borrowed from a hospital. It respects identity. People want tools that fit their aesthetic, their personality, and their sense of self. Options matter. And since no single brand can ever create the perfect widget for every body, real options only become possible when accessible design becomes cost of entry across categories, not a special edition for a small audience. It respects emotion. The experience should feel affirming. A product should make someone feel capable, not corrected. This is the heart of emotional accessibility. When people feel good using a product, they use it earlier, more often, and for longer. That improves independence, safety, and quality of life. REDUCING SHAME IS A BUSINESS STRATEGY There is a direct business consequence to stigma. If people delay adoption, they are not only losing out on joyful life experiences and often putting themselves in danger, but brands lose demand. If products are purchased reluctantly, loyalty erodes. If the category feels embarrassing, growth slows. Design that reduces shame expands markets. It turns an avoided purchase into a desired one. It transforms I need this into I want this. That shift changes everything. It also creates a new kind of brand equity. Companies that design with dignity earn trust, and trust is the rarest currency in consumer experience today. THE NEW GOAL FOR ACCESSIBLE DESIGN The future of accessibility is not compliance. It is cultural. It is designing products that support human vulnerability without amplifying it. Design is on the verge of destigmatizing aging and disability across our activities of daily living. When we get this right, we do more than make products usable. We make them desirable. We make them typical. We make them something people are proud to bring into their lives. The real test is not whether a product can be used. It is whether people want to use it, openly, confidently, and without shame. Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
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E-Commerce
At 12, I was walking around a very affluent neighborhood with my father and he said, Mikey, all these people in these nice houses, not one of them could run a gas station. That stuck with me. The gas station test isnt about intelligence or ambition, its about aptitude for running a successful business. As a strong student, then an investment banking analyst, then a private equity associate, I was in this jetstream towards a career in investing. But can investors run gas stations? Does it matter? This concept was always in the back of my mind. I dove so deep into business details as an investor that my interest actually inhibited my performance. I was propelled into the operating world. As someone who made the transition from the investing world, albeit relatively quickly after four years, I get asked a lot about what attributes make someone successful in an operating role versus in an investing one. OPERATORS GO DEEP What stands out to me as the most basic difference between operating and investing comes back to the gas station. Most people in those nice houses I walked by at 12 years old probably werent interested in details like convenience store inventory. When you work in the operating world, you are in the weeds of your business. For example, at SoFi I knew all the nuances of different types of student loan forbearance programs and at Brex I knew the minutiae of the Mastercard transaction chargeback rulesthough not an expectation of my role at either company. This contrasts with my experience as a private equity investor where I look at purchasing a business ranging from a chain of laundromats to Ancestry.com within the same month. In private equity, success often came down to three things: underwriting growth, paying the right multiple, and adding leverage. There is no way to distill what it is like to run a business, especially one as complex as Figure, into such a simple framework. The most successful operators enjoy going deep. PROACTIVITY VERSUS PROCEDURE In terms of behaviors that make someone successful in the operating world, proactivity stands out. My experience in fintech has been that everything is breaking all the time. I wake up each day to problems new and old. While high-growth industries like fintech exacerbate this, all operating roles have all kinds of changing dynamics and customer issues that create challenges. The way to combat this chaos and thrive is to proactively anticipate issues. The moment that most exemplified my proactivity was at Brex when I managed the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. I had been tracking the issues at the bank early, and I was able to swiftly reduce almost all of Brexs exposure, enabling the company to be offensive in the wake of the crisis, and add over $1 billion of deposits in a weekend. On the investor side, work life is a lot more procedural. There is an investment processand that itself differs across private and public investing. But regardless, there is a relatively defined set of steps investors take. Evaluating an investment in a gas station or chain of them is very different than actually operating one. The former allows you to calmly consider the supply and demand dynamics, commodity price forecasts, etc., but there is almost no chance you will be screamed at by an unhappy customer or feel the visceral worry about the liquidity to fund your business. The process is much calmer and more controlled. That doesnt make investing easier, but the challenge is more intellectual rather than operational. PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IS THE JOB The operating world is all about people. The people who get to the top are most often the best managers of people. They know how to set goals and mobilize large teams towards those goals, because, at scale, leadership is less about individual contribution and more about creating the conditions for an organization to succeed. This seems very basic but its at the core of what differentiates operating roles from investing ones. My time as an operator meant managing a range of teams from accountants to mortgage loan officers to executives. The common approach I have taken is to understand peoples motivations and how I can help the company and role best fulfill them. Contrast this to my investor experience, where people management was a very small part of the picture. Most of the people were highly motivated and compensated in a competitive environment. Feedback was rarely given and what determined promotions was opaque. THE POINT IS HOW YOURE WIRED If the idea of going deep on messy details, waking up to problems, and spending most of your time thinking about how to get the best out of other people excites you, you are probably wired to be an operator. You dont need a perfectly defined process to be comfortable; you need ownership. If, on the other hand, you enjoy pattern recognition across new areas of learning, structured decision-making, and optimizing within a defined framework, investing may be a better fit. Its a very real craft, and often very lucrative. Early in my career, I assumed that operating was simply a more hands-on version of investing. Its not. Its a different job entirely. Running a business, whether its a fintech company or a gas station, requires a willingness to live inside complexity rather than analyze it from a distance. Not everyone wants to run a gas station, and thats fine. But if you find yourself drawn to depth over breadth, proactivity over procedure, and people over process, you might want to step out of the jetstream, and into the operators seat. Michael Tannenbaum is CEO of Figure.
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E-Commerce
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