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Anderson Cooper, who has reported for CBS’ “60 Minutes” for the past two decades in addition to hosting a weeknight news program on CNN, said Monday that he’s leaving the CBS broadcast to spend more time with his family.His decision comes at a time of turmoil at “60 Minutes.” Cooper appeared on the show Sunday night, introducing a brief piece on filmmaker Ken Burns. It’s not likely to be his last time on the show; he’s expected to finish the current broadcast season, which ends in May.“Being a correspondent at ’60 Minutes’ has been one of the great honors of my career,” Cooper said in a statement. “I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crew in the business. For nearly 20 years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs and CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.”Cooper’s exit from what remains the most prestigious show in television news is sure to raise questions about whether it had anything to do with the leadership of Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News since last fall. Cooper’s spokesperson said Monday he had no additional comment.He has contributed stories to “60 Minutes” since the 2006-2007 television season in a unique job-sharing arrangement with CNN. His prime-time cable news show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” has aired since 2003.In a statement, CBS News praised Cooper for his two decades of work.“We’re grateful to him for dedicating so much of his life to this broadcast, and understand the importance of spending more time with family,” CBS said. “’60 Minutes’ will be here if he ever wants to return.”His exit comes at a time of unease at the Sunday night newsmagazine known for its ticking stopwatch. At Weiss’ direction, the show in December held off at the last minute showing a report from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about the Trump administration’s immigration policy. She said a greater effort was needed to get an interview with administration officials, while Alfonsi complained privately that the decision was political in nature. The story aired a month later with additional administration comments, but no on-camera interviews.President Donald Trump sued “60 Minutes” for how it handled an interview with his 2024 election opponent, Kamala Harris. Much to the consternation of many at the broadcast, CBS’s parent company Paramount Global settled with Trump out-of-court.Cooper’s exit from CBS was first reported by the online news site Breaker. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social. David Bauder, AP Media Writer
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E-Commerce
Today marks the start of the Year of the Fire Horse, which in Chinese tradition is all about action, boldness, and taking on new challenges. And what better way to celebrate a year that should be full of red hot, blazing energy than with a hand-crafted cowboy hat from Stetson? The color? Red, of course. The company, started by John Batterson Stetson in 1865, invented the cowboy hat. Today, it’s still known for embracing the spirit of the West with its quality hats, boots, and outerwear. And to mark the year of intensity, which hasn’t happened in 60 years, the brand is partnering with Gold House to turn an iconic cultural itemthe cowboy hatinto a modern-day crown fit for 2026. A good year to celebrate and support Asian-Pacific founders The partnership is all for a good cause, too. The one-of-a-kind hat, handcrafted in Texas, will be auctioned off (specific details about the auction are forthcoming), with all funds going directly to the Gold House Foundation in order to further the nonprofit’s work in supporting Asian-Pacific culture and entrepreneurs. Celebrating while redefining our most storied beliefs, symbols, and rituals is core to Gold House,” Bing Chen, CEO of Gold House, said in a statement shared with Fast Company. We are honored to partner with Stetsonan originatorto re-honor who created and who gets to wear the United States most pronounced crownthe cowboy hatfor the Year of the Fire Horse. Given that this year is also America’s 250th birthday, celebrating Asian-Pacific culture makes sense. While history often fails to mention it, America’s pivotal Transcontinental Railroad was primarily built by Chinese laborers. Its construction inevitably led to the Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s that kick-started America’s economic boom. The Stetson-Gold House hat is mostly bright red, but it features a gold horse and gold trim meant to honor those contributions. While cowboy culture and fashion will forever be relevant in America, this partnership is a timely reminder that it’s also ever-important to revisit our country’s true history, especially the pieces and people who are far too often left out of history books. Hats off to that.
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E-Commerce
For the past decadeand really, for its entire 84-year historythe laundry detergent brand Tide has been trying to simplify the process of doing of laundry. From its original all-in-one powder to 1980s-era liquid soap to the 2012 introduction of the packet-based Tide Pod, the brand and its parent company Procter and Gamble have regularly reformulated the core product to accommodate the seemingly simple but highly diverse act of washing one’s clothes. “There are 55 unique steps we’ve identified in the laundry process,” says Marchoe Northern, president of North America fabric care at Procter and Gamble. “Our job is to continue to think about ways to solve today’s modern need challenges.” [Image: P&G] That’s why Tide has spent the last 10 years creating a new kind of detergent product in the form of a fabric-like tile called Tide evo. Developed to streamline the way people add detergent to their laundry load, Tide’s new tile format requires little more than dropping a pre-dosed tile or two into a washing machine. The Tide tile is a new form factor, but not just for novelty’s sake. The tile was developed by a team of 15 PhD-level chemists and engineers to eliminate the need for any fillers or non-cleaning ingredients. Unlike typical powder or sheet detergents that rely on fillers and liquid soaps that are dissolved in water, Tide evo is a 100% concentration of cleaning ingredients like surfactants, enzymes, alkalinity builders, and polymers. Detergent designed for four senses It took the company a decade to figure out how to do this, using a proprietary approach to spin these cleaning ingredients into fibers that can be woven together. Each Tide evo tile is made up of more than 15 miles of these fibers, which gradually dissolve when added to water. In contrast to other detergents that have plastic packaging and weights that increase shipping-related emissions, Tide evo is lightweight and comes in a fully recyclable box. The tile is safe to touch, and in more than two years of market research Tide conducted among consumers in Colorado Spings, Colorado, the company found that people wanted to do more than just touch them. “Typically, people pick up a tile, they kind of flex it to see if it’ll break or crumble, and then they put it up to their nose to smell it,” says Northern. [Image: P&G] Leaning into consumers’ sensorial inclination, Northern explains that the company designed the tile itself to be a visually appealing diamond, and engineered its recyclable paperboard box to make an audible click when it’s closed. “This actually engages four of your five senses,” she says. The fifth sense, taste, is one Tide definitely does not want to engage. In 2018, the brand had a major PR catastrophe on its hands when people on the internet created the “Tide Pod challenge,” daring each other to eat the candy-colored detergent pods. This proved incredibly dangerous. Many people were hospitalized, and there have been incidences where the ingestion of detergent pods has led to death. The Tide evo is comparably visually simple, with its diamond shape, a monotone color, and a pliable, fabric-like feel. A sample box sent by the company pops open to reveal two neat rows of eight tiles, with no other adornment or packaging. Picking up a tile, it feels like a dense sponge. It is as unappetizing as a fuzzy piece of felt. Chemically, though, the tile mimics the innovative function of the Tide Pod, which separated its stain removal, whitening, and brightening capabilities into the capsule’s multicolored chambers, allowing them to be deployed at different times during the wash cycle. Tide evo does this through its six layers, which are made up of woven fibers of surfactants, and embedded with cleaning ingredients formulated to perform different tasks, from breaking down stains to whitening to removing odors. “This is really first-of-its-kind technology,” says Jennifer Ahoni, Tide’s scientific communications director and principal scientist. On a recent video call, Ahoni offered a science class demonstration of the tile in action. She placed a single layer of the Tide tile on top of a beaker and began slightly soaking it with a stream of water from a squeeze bottle. Within a few seconds, the tile began to dissolve, eventually opening up a hole in the center and leaving a pool of soapy water below. In another beaker, she fully dissolved a single layer of a tile into water with a few twirls of a tweezer before dropping in a small piece of polyester-cotton fiber that had been soaked with bright orange chili oil. Almost immediately small globs of the orange oil can be seen lifting out of the fabric and rising up to the surface of the soapy water like the inside of a lava lamp. “What you’re seeing here is that concentration. When you’re taking out the extras, the fillers, the water, and just focusing on the cleaning technologies, you can get this instant activation which translates to instant clean,” she says. Getting to this point has required a large but undisclosed investment. Procter and Gamble has filed 50 different patents related to the product, from the tile itself to the manufacturing process required to produce it. None of the company’s existing facilities were capable of producing the tiles as they’ve been developed, so an entirely new plant had to be built in Alexandria, Louisiana. But Northern says the time and expense will all be worth i. “We have high degrees of confidence because it’s arguably our most tested product before launch,” she says. Internal projections forecast annual sales to reach up to $500 million. Tide evo will officially be hitting stores across the U.S. in April.
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E-Commerce
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