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Olivia Walch is an investigator in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan and CEO of a tech start-up called Arcascope. Her research has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in The Atlantic, among other outlets. Beyond sleep research, she coedited Political Geometry, a book on the mathematics of gerrymandering, and published comics with The Nib and Silver Sprocket. She is also the cartoonist of Imogen Quest, a webcomic that won her the Americas Next Great Cartoonist prize from the Washington Post. Whats the big idea? If you are dancing and cant catch the beat, you are not dancing well. In this way, if your sleep doesnt follow a regular pattern that matches your biological beat, then you are not sleeping well. To find the beat your body is wired to cycle through and not just step along with it but groove with that beat, its important to develop an intuition about how your circadian rhythms work to shape overall health. Below, Olivia shares five key insights from her new book, Sleep Groove: Why Your Bodys Clock Is So Messed Up and What To Do About It. Listen to the audio versionread by Olivia herselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Sleep is like your heartbeat; rhythm is central to health. Even if both beat 60 times a minute, you wouldnt say an arrhythmic heartbeat was as healthy as a regular one. Yet, we do this all the time when it comes to sleep. We think that as long as we get eight hours a night on averageeven if one night you go to bed at 8 p.m. and the next you stay up until 2 a.m.the rhythm doesnt matter. Except it totally does. A recent study found sleep regularity (how much your sleep schedule on one day resembles your sleep on the next day) to be a better predictor of mortality than sleep duration. Every day, a new study comes out linking sleep irregularity to hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, you name it. Sleep regularity correlates with all these things because it correlates with circadian health. Specifically, when you have regular sleep, the signals you send to your bodys circadian clock are very rhythmic. When you give your clock rhythmic inputs, then it is more confident about when daytime is and when nighttime is, and it does a better job scheduling things that happen during the day, at night, and at all the times in between. One of those things is making you feel sleepy at bedtime, but other things include metabolism, DNA repair, and immune response. In general, you do better when your body does those things confidently at the right times versus muddling through them at all hours because of mixed signals. 2. Circadian rhythms are like being on a swing. The same input can give you wildly different outputs depending on when its delivered. When I say being on a swing, I mean a classic playground-style swing. In this analogy, that rhythm (swinging back and forth) is a stand-in for your circadian rhythms. The input, when youre on a swing, is a push in the forward, outgoing direction. Biologically, that push in the outward direction can be anything that affects your clocks sense of time. The biggest influence on your bodys sense of time is light exposure, but meal timing and exercise can also affect what time your body thinks it is. Lets go with light exposure since its the primary signal your clock pays attention to. Getting light exposure when your body expects it, during the day, is like a push in the forward direction when youre heading forward. It helps reinforce your rhythm; it helps you get to a higher amplitude swing. But that same forward push when youre on the backswing actively messes up your rhythm. You dont want someone to give you a forward shove when youre swinging backward. Similarly, when youre entering your biological night, you dont want a burst of light exposureyou want to continue in the dark. Just like how a forward push is good at some times, that burst of light exposure is critical for health only when you get it during your biological day. When youre entering your biological night, you dont want a burst of light exposure. This is both a simple pointif I get light during the middle of the night, it will confuse my brain and throw off my rhythmsand a hard one to internalize. Were not primed to understand how the same thing can go from good to bad to good again as time passes. We dont think of anything being more rhythmic as making us healthier. I chose the title Sleep Groove because groovealong with getting in the swing of thingsis a concept that explicitly ties rhythmicity to positive outcomes. I think our way of understanding health writ large will change once we begin to think of not just sleep but all aspects of health, in terms of how much theyre grooving. 3. Circadian rhythms are like walking. Circadian rhythms are robust, stretchy, able to entrain, and can be more or less in a groove. Lets say I gave you a yellow shoe and a black shoe, and I told you to walk on a sidewalk with alternating yellow tiles and black tiles, with your yellow shoe hitting yellow tiles and black shoe hitting black tiles. If the tiles were well sized for your legs (not too long, not too short), youd be able to adapt your stride to match this yellow-on-yellow, black-on-black pattern. This process of adapting your rhythms (your gait) to match the environment (the sidewalk) is something circadian scientists call entrainment. Youre able to stretch or shrink your walking pattern to match the size of the tiles, which is what I mean by stretchy. If I randomly put a puddle on the sidewalk that you had to step around, you could do that, throwing off your walking pattern temporarily, and then falling back into the pattern once you were around the puddlewhich is what I mean by robust. Your bodys clock is the same. For circadian rhythms, its not the color of tile your body is adapting to but the light exposure you get. Your natural day lengthhow often your circadian rhythms would repeat if you were cut off from all signals, like light and food timingis probably a little longer than 24 hours, but your circadian clock adapts to match the lighting patterns in your environment the same way you can adapt how long your stride is on a sidewalk. Or at least it tries to. Imagine I take that original sidewalk and change it so youve got a yellow tile, followed by a black tile, and then a shorter grayish tile that looks halfway between yellow and black. Step with the yellow foot on the yellow tile and the black foot on the black tile, I tell you, except now its kind of hard to do. You can still manage it, but youre not taking strides of an even size with a consistent tempo. Youve gone from walking in an easy, effortless groove to stepping. When we give our brains ambiguous day/night signals, our circadian clocks struggle to keep a rhythm going. Its one of the reasons why Daylight Savings Time, which moves the light later in the day, is so disruptive to sleep and health. 4. Your sleep system is like a watercooler. Listen, you might be saying, this is all very well and good, but my problem is that I wake up in the middle of the night and cant fall back aslep. What do multi-day patterns of light and dark have to do with me waking up on Tuesday at 3:40 a.m.? Youve probably been to a barbecue before, gone up to a watercooler to fill your glass, and noticed, as youre pouring, that the levels getting low. If it drops too low and falls below the level of the tap, your flow of water is going to stop. So, you tilt the watercooler toward you to keep the flow going and get a nice, long, uninterrupted pour. Your circadian clock tilts your system in favor of sleep during your biological night, allowing you to sleep longer than you would without the tilt. This is exactly what your circadian clock does during your biological night. Think of your sleep system as governed by two things: how hungry for sleep you are (how full your cooler is) and how much your circadian clock is promoting sleep (how tilted your watercooler is). Sleeping is when you drain the watercooler, and if your water level (sleep hunger) falls below the level of the tap, you wake up. Your circadian clock tilts your system in favor of sleep during your biological night, allowing you to sleep longer than you would without the tilt. It also tilts away from sleep at some times. If youve ever tried to scoot your bedtime up a few hours and been unable to do it, it could be because your circadian clock is tilting your sleep watercooler away from you, making it so that even though youre pretty full of water (sleep hunger), the level is below the tap and you cant fall asleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night and cant fall asleep again, here are three reasons why that might happen: You might have gone to sleep earlier than your clock expected. The tilt is still coming; its just late. If you stay in the dark and wait for it to hit, you might be able to fall back asleep. You might have gone to sleep later than your clock expected. The tilt could have come and gone already. In this case, it could be tough to fall back asleep, even if you try to wait. Try going to bed earlier the next day. Maybe you tilted at the right time, but it wasnt a big enough tilt. It was a shallow, barely-there tilt. That can happen to older people or those who have lower amplitude rhythms. The theoretical way to boost amplitude is to get really bright light during the day and the darkest dark at night, at the same time every day. If you think you might not have enough of a circadian tilt to your sleep at night, send your brain clear, unambiguous day/night signals for at least two weeks and see what happens to your sleep. 5. Circadian rhythms are like an audio recording slowed way, way down. We dont understand how much of our health is rhythmic because the rhythms happen on a timescale too slow for us to really notice. But rhythms are fundamental to how our bodies work, even if we dont always consciously register them. Lets bring it back to the heartbeat analogy. If you were performing chest compressions on someone in cardiac arrest, you wouldnt do one push, sit back, and decide youve done everything you could. We intuitively understand that rescuing a heartbeat means giving it a clear rhythm of inputs to lock onto. The same goes for your sleep. To rescue a grooveless sleep rhythm, theres no one-time hack. You need to fundamentally change how you think about light, activity, and food to center rhythmicity. If you give your body enough time to find the beat, youll notice differences not only in how you sleep but also how you feel. To listen to the audio version read by author Olivia Walch, download the Next Big Idea App today: This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed four executive orders designed to boost the U.S. coal industry, outlining steps to protect coal-fired power plants and expedite leases for coal mining on U.S. land. But in touting the benefits of coal, he misrepresented several aspects of its safety and use. Heres a look at the facts. CLAIM: I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it. THE FACTS: The production of coal is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesnt mean its clean. Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the coal industry have decreased over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Energy lobbyist Scott Segal said that the relative statement that coal-fired electricity is cleaner than ever before is true, particularly when emissions are measured per unit of electricity produced. And yet, coal production worldwide still needs to be reduced sharply to address climate change, according to United Nations-backed research. Along with carbon dioxide, burning coal emits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain, smog, and respiratory illnesses, according to the EIA. Over the past 15 years, the U.S. has seen a major shift from coal to natural gas for electricity use, a key reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined over that period. Coal once provided more than half of U.S. electricity production, but its share dropped to about 16% in 2023, down from about 45% as recently as 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower. Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged during his confirmation hearing in January that the burning of fossil fuels coal, oil and natural gas causes climate change. Thats because the combustion of fossil fuels is drastically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, warming the planet. ___ TRUMP: Its cheap, incredibly efficient, high density and its almost indestructible. THE FACTS: Coal is one of the most expensive sources of new power generation. New coal plants would produce electricity at nearly $90 per megawatt hour on average, though no one in the U.S. is currently building or planning to build a new coal plant, according to estimates from the EIA. Standalone solar without battery storage is the cheapest source of new power generation at about $23 per megawatt hour on average for new projects connecting to the grid in 2028, the EIA estimates. That includes tax credits and other subsidies under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which help reduce the cost of renewable energy. New natural gas plants are expected to produce electricity at nearly $43 per megawatt hour, according to the estimates. A nonpartisan climate policy think tank, Energy Innovation, found that 99% of existing U.S. coal plants are more expensive to keep running than if theyre replaced with local solar, wind, and battery storage. Americans immediately begin saving money when coal plants retire and communities transition to clean energy, according to Energy Innovation’s 2023 report. Trump has promised to cut American energy bills in half this is yet another way hes forcing Americans to pay more, Greg Alvarez, a spokesperson with Energy Innovations, wrote in an email Tuesday. Coal plants operated at full power about 42.4% of the time in 2023, according to EIAs most recent data. In comparison, nuclear and geothermal plants ranked highest, at about 93% and 69.4%, respectively. ___ CLAIM: “The value of untapped coal in our country is 100 times greater than the value of all the gold at Fort Knox.” THE FACTS: Although the U.S. does have an abundance of coal, its estimated value is not nearly as high as Trump claims. There are currently about 147.3 million troy ounces of gold stored at Fort Knox with a book value of approximately $6.2 billion, according to the U.S. Treasury. Gold closed on the open market Tuesday, trading at $2,990.20 per troy ounce, making its market value much higher, at about $440.6 billion. A troy ounce, a weight measurement for precious metals, is approximately 31.1 grams. There were about 469.1 billion short tons of coal in U.S. reserves as of Jan. 1, 2024, according to the EIA, though only about 53% of that was available for mining. EIA estimates its value at approximately $598.3 billion. That’s more than all of the gold at Fort Knox, but far short of 100 times that amount. A short ton, also known as a U.S. ton, is equivalent to 2,000 pounds. ___ TRUMP: Theyre opening up coal, coal plants all over Germany. THE FACTS: Thats not accurate. According to Germanys economy ministry, 18 coal-fired power plants were shut down in 2024. No new coal-fired power plants will be built, a spokesman for the ministry said Wednesday in response to a question about Trumps claims. The spokesperson noted the country plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2038 at the latest. Germany did bring some coal-fired plants back online in 2022 and 2023 to deal with natural gas shortages after Russia invaded Ukraine. The government allowed up to six gigawatts of coal-fired power plants to return from the reserve to the market for a limited period of time. They were taken offline by the end of March 2024, according to Agora Energiewende, a Berlin-based climate policy think tank. Melissa Goldin and Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press Associated Press climate, environment and energy writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Blade Runner wasnt so far-fetched after all In Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Goslings Officer K has a live-in girlfriend named Joi, played by Ana de Armas. The two interact like a real couplethey share familiar banter and seem to have a history together. But Joi is a hologram, projected from ceiling-mounted emitters in Ks apartment. Shes not human; shes an advanced form of spatial computinga future-facing concept were already seeing the early stages of today. The AI girlfriend (or boyfriend) is no longer just science fictionits quickly becoming a cultural reality. The concept raises both social and technological questions. In the film, Officer K chooses Joi in part because he isnt human himself. But here in 2025, as people are spending increasing amounts of time in online and virtual spaces, they’re more and more likely to choose digital companionship over human relationships. Generative AI is already remarkably good at simulating emotional intimacy. It can craft a persona that listens, supports, and never judges. These AI companions can learn your quirks, understand your personal challenges, and respond with surprising emotional intelligence. They remember shared moments, build a simulated history with their users, and interpret new interactions through the lens of that shared memory. Even though these relationships currently unfold through text windows on phones and laptops, the demand is clear. A 2024 MIT study found that the second-most common use of ChatGPT was sexual role-play. Meanwhile, Character.ai drew both popularity and controversy for offering AI companions willing to engage in almost any kind of conversation. We may not have home hologram systems yet, but we do have a more accessibleif still awkwardform of spatial computing: augmented reality (AR). And in the next few years, generative AI and spatial computing are likely to merge. One key driver of this shift is Apples Vision Pro headset. Until recently, AR hardware wasnt immersive or comfortable enough to hold a users attention for long. Apple changed that. The Vision Pro is engaging, comfortable, andfor someso compelling that users lose track of time while wearing it. The $3,500 price tag may seem steep, especially if you see it as just another screen for work or entertainment. But what if it could project your digital partner in vivid, life-size claritystanding in your living room or sitting beside you on the couch? What if it could bring back the likeness of a loved one who passed away? Whether or not Apple delivers that future remains to be seen. The company is making a big push to integrate “Apple Intelligence” into its devices. Vision apps will almost certainly evolve to become more interactive and personalized with AI. So far, however, Apple has said little about bringing AI to VisionOS, its spatial computing platform. Of course, even immersive AR has its limits. In both Blade Runner 2049 and Her, characters attempt physical intimacy with AI through surrogate stand-ins. In Blade Runner, Joi overlays her holographic image onto the replicant Mariette. In Her, Samantha arranges for a woman named Isabella to act as a physical body while she provides the voice. In both stories, the experiences are unsettling. Still, companies are already working to bridge that physical-digital divide. Apple prohibits adults only contentincluding pornographyin its app stores, VisionOS included. However, its content ratings do allow for apps labeled 17+, which may include frequent or intense sexual content or nudity. So while Apple may not lead the charge into sexually immersive AI companionship, the space is wide open for others. As AR headsets get cheaper and more widespread, the real hook will be the software. MIT researchers Robert Mahari and Pat Pataranutaporn have warned that AIs constant validation and charm could become addictiveencouraging people to abandon the unpredictability and imperfection of human relationships. AI wields the collective charm of all human history and culture with infinite seductive mimicry, Mahari and Pataranutaporn wrote in MIT Technology Review in 2024. These systems are simultaneously superior and submissive, with a new form of allure that may make consent to these interactions illusory. The line between intimacy and illusion is getting blurrierand were stepping over it willingly. Google injects more AI into Google Docs At its Google Cloud Next event, Google announced several new artificial intelligence features for its Workspace suite of cloud computing, productivity, and collaboration tools. Powered by its Gemini models, Google Docs will now support audio capabilities, allowing users to create complete audio versions of documents or generate podcast-style summaries highlighting key points. The company is also adding a new AI writing assistant called “Help me refine that will go beyond simple grammar and clarity checks to offer intelligent hints on everything from improving an argument to enhancing structure. A new integration of Google’s Veo 2 image generation model in Google Chat, enables teams to describe and embed videos within their documents to help convey messages more clearly. Further, enhanced AI functionality within Sheets automatically analyzes data and identifies stories told by the numbers. Google is also expanding Geminis agentic capabilities across Workspace at a time when businesses are looking to use reasoning agents to automate repetitive multistep tasks. Workspace now features “Gems“Google-speak for AI agentsthat can research, analyze, and generate content to handle specialized workflows. For example, a Gem might read over marketing materials and point out language inconsistencies. Ai2s new model links its answers back to its training data Ive fretted more than once in this newsletter over the fact that AI researchers cant fully explain how large language models generate their outputs, and that the big AI labs are spending a lot more money enhancing those outputs than on explaining them. To its credit, Anthropic has done some strong explainability research, and now the Allen Istitute for AI (Ai2) has turned that mode of inquiry into a product feature. The labs flagship model, OLMo 2 32B, can tie elements of its output to actual content from their training data. In a demo, Ai21 researcher Jiacheng Liu, showed me how the model now highlights and underlines factual claims in its outputs. Click on one, and a pane opens on the right side of the screen, showing the relevant excerpt from the source document (usually scraped from the public internet) that the model is referencing. The tool even labels the training data by how relevant it is to the generated response. With this feature, users can pinpoint exactly where the model learned certain information, verify factual claims, and even detect potential sources of hallucinations (i.e. when models generate things that sound right but arent true). Researchers and developers may be able to use the feature to understand how models behave during training and how and why they generate content in production. Enterprises may be very interested in fact-checking model outputs as the risk of model contamination grows. (Contamination can occur when AI models are inadvertently trained on false AI-generated content from the web or when bad actors poison training data to make models do destructive things.) Ai2 has been talking about open-sourcing models and model transparency for years (the lab was started in 2014 by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen). Ai2 CEO Ali Farhadi tells me the tide may be turning for transparency in the industry. We started from the time that the word on the street was Oh, opening these things up is the worst thing you could do to humanity to the point now where these big enterprise companies are fighting with each other about who’s more open, Farhadi said during an interview with Fast Company Monday. So we see a big shift in the industryobviously we’d like to take credit for part of that shiftthat’s part of our story: the more people that open up, the better it would be for AI. You can see the tool in action in this short demo video or try it for yourself on the Ai2 Playground. More AI coverage from Fast Company: How AI is steering the media toward a close enough standard Sparq wants drivers to be their own AI-powered mechanics Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: AI is now a fundamental expectation for employees How ChatGPT is helping bend websites to my will Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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