When a leader inherits a business in crisis, what decisions can they make to steady the ship and drive positive change? The Honest Company CEO Carla Vernón and National Womens Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman riff on counterintuitive methods for gaining employee trust after public scandals and share practical advice on reframing strategy.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Bob Safian and recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You each came into your leadership roles in crisis in a lot of ways. Honest Company was facing public scrutiny over some of its products. Cash reserves were dwindling. Jessica, at the NWSL, there were accusations of sexual misconduct around the team, and the league’s culture was talked about as toxic.
I’m going to start with you, Jessica. Those early days when you first get there, players are in revolt. Megan Rapinoe is saying, “Let it burn.” What do you do to address that from the start? I mean, I know you ultimately got a collective bargaining agreement that sort of changed the relationship between players in the leagues, but how do you get them to the place where you can even have that conversation?
BERMAN: Well, it’s definitely daunting to start a new job as a first-time commissioner, first-time CEO, and knowing that someone like Megan Rapinoe had just posted on Twitter, Let. It. Burn. And she was talking about the league . . .
It’s not a vote of confidence.
BERMAN: No. Well, the league was really at a crossroads, and the crossroads was: Do we go out of business and potentially restart? The history of this league is that there were three prior women’s professional soccer leagues that had failed. And so, that was a cycle that this sport had known before. And the alternative was that we go and hire a new commissioner and see if we could turn it around. And I think from my perspective, there were really two pieces.
First, I had a job when I got the call from the headhunter. So I felt like I could be very honest and transparent with the players and actually with the board of governors who hired me. I was asked to interview with them, and I sat with them and I said: “Do you see a world where you can trust this institution? Because if the answer is no, then I could be the best leader in the world . . .”
It’s not going to matter.
BERMAN: . . . then it’s not going to matter. And what I heard from the players was, while they lacked confidence in the league and had a very, very, very long list of gripes that needed to be addressed, that they actually did want the league to succeed. And what they expected was a leader who would show up with vulnerability and humility and actually join them in understanding their lived experience. And really respect and understand the labor relationship, and that the underpinning of professional sports in this country is the relationship between management and labor. And I’m a labor lawyer by training. Everyone always says, “Are you a soccer player?” I’m like, no, I’m a labor lawyer. And actually being a labor lawyer is what helped create the fabric and the culture that we have reset in NWSL.
Because you knew that building the trust was about having that relationship reset by this collective bargaining agreement, giving the players a stake in a different kind of way.
BERMAN: There is no business in professional sports without a constructive, productive relationship with your union and the players.
So Carla, you joined Honest from Amazon.
VERNÓN: Yes.
Much bigger entity. You ran a huge part of the business, all the consumables, household products, and food and beverage, and health and wellness and beauty. Then you come to Honest as the CEO, the team doesn’t know you, the business is kind of on fire. And so to gain their trust, you invoked cartoon characters. Why cartoon characters, and what was that about?
VERNÓN: Well, I feel like we have so much in common, Jessica, in our story. It’s important to back up and say, the Honest Company, for people who don’t know, is a very purpose-driven company. We were founded to really break up the personal care sort of old-school lens on things. So all of our products are very cleanly formulated to a high standard of clean. Which means we attract a very emotionally centered, purpose-centered employee base. And our employee base66% of my employees are millennials or Gen Z, so they’re younger. So I knew that I couldn’t bring the tools that I had from old corporate America. I used to work at General Mills, a 150-year-old company. Everything that you could Google about taking a team through change . . .
Wasn’t going to work.
VERNÓN: Old corporate America is not going to work. So, I am a mom of teenagers, and I remember going to see Inside Out, the first movie, with my kids. And I loved, as a mom, how it told me about the different pieces of the emotional psyche, how genuine they are, and how essential they are to all of us. And so I thought that might be a less corporate way to help my employees feel normal about the change and the fear or excitement that they had about me as an outsider and what I represented. So this kind of became a bit of our culture.
Yeah, now you’re dealing with this sort of internal culture at the same time. You’ve got this cash flow problem that you’ve got to fix at the same time that you want to expand the reach of the brand. I mean, that’s a tough balancing act to, like, we’re going to cut back but we’re going to expand.
VERNÓN: It seems like it would be tough, but in a lot of cases, that old adage that you hear, “less is more,” turns out to be true in business. It is so helpful to define the core essential elements of what you are in business to do and what the people you serve really want from you, and in my case, from our brands. So some of the ability to say we are actually going to decide what we’re not going to do as much as we’re going to decide what we are going to do helped us to unlock the biggest pieces of our portfoliothe most profitable pieces, the pieces that were growing the mostand to really invest and focus in them. The other thing that we did, Bob, was make sure we had disciplined practices so that we just kept repeating and focusing on what was most important and not getting worried aout the stuff that’s on the edges.
I mean, it’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do, right? Everyone’s, yeah, we’re going to be disciplined, but we all get distracted by whatever.
VERNÓN: But if you’ve ever worked at Amazon, you will learn how to be disciplined.
Halloween might be over, but sky-watchers are in for a treat this week.
On Wednesday, November 5, the night sky will be illuminated with the biggest, brightest full moon of the year, also called the beaver moon. And it’s a supermoon, meaning it will be full at the same time it’s closest to Earth.
Here’s everything to know about this week’s sky-watching event.
What’s the best time to see the supermoon?
The best time to see a full moon typically is right after sunset, especially for a supermoon, when it appears biggest on the horizon, according to Live Science.
According to the Weather Channel, the best time to see the beaver moon is from dusk on Tuesday, November 4, through Thursday, November 6, based on clouds and visibility in your region.
In the U.S., prime time in the Northeast is forecast for Tuesday, November 4, and it’s Wednesday, November 5, for the Great Lakes region.
When will the supermoon be closest to Earth?
Per Astronomy, the beaver moon turns full at 8:19 a.m. ET Wednesday, when it is directly opposite the sun in the skybut only for a moment, and the change won’t be visible to the naked eye.
The full moon reaches its closest distance to Earth in 2025, called the perigee, some nine hours after it turns full, on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. ET, at 221,726 miles away, according to Space.com.
During perigree, full moons appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter, according to NASA.
Why is this full moon called the beaver moon?
November’s full moon originally got its nickname, the beaver moon, due to the “heightened activity among beavers around November, building dams and stocking up on food before winter,” says the BBC’s Sky at Night Magazine.
What’s the next sky-watching event to look out for?
The beaver moon is the second of three supermoons, starting with October’s hunter’s moon and ending with December’s cold moon, per the BBC.
The December full moon gets its name as the month marks the beginning of the coldest time of year. This full supermoon will take place on Thursday, December 4.
In late September, President Donald Trump posted a racist AI-generated video depicting House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries standing before a podium, wearing a Sombrero and mustache, while Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer says insulting things about Democrats.
In mid-October, the government of Ontario aired an anti-tariff ad in the U.S. featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan hammering home the futility of imposing tariffs on foreign goods. Trump charged, erroneously, that the video was an AI deepfake — Reagan, he claimed, in fact supported tariffs. While these two incidents — the first is AI disinformation, the second is labeling anothers video as such — may seem unrelated, theyre actually very much linked. This is more than just Trump lying and assuming others lie too. In fact, his dissemination of deepfakes and his accusations of deepfakery work together as parts of the same disinformation strategy.
The first part of the strategy is the distribution of high volumes of lies and half-truths via campaign speeches, social media, ads, or TV appearances. The second part is the continual labeling of actual news stories from legitimate outlets as fake news. Recall what Steve Bannon told the writer Michael Lewis in 2018: The real opposition is the media, the Trump advisor said, adding And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit, he said.
AI-generated deepfakes represent a dangerous technology upgrade to that same disinformation playbook. In the Schumer videos, Trumps circle spread the narrative that power-hungry Democrats want to provide healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants. In the case of the Ontario tiff, Trump labeled a credible video as an AI fake. As Trump and his allies create more of their own deepfakes, further sullying the information space, people are more likely to believe that real videos are fake too.
[A] skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence, legal experts Danielle Keats Citron and Robert Chesney wrote in a 2019 law review article. This skepticism can be invoked just as well against authentic as against adulterated content, a problem Citron and Chesney dubbed the liars dividend. The problem may intensify as AI models improve and generate video indistinguishable from real, camera-shot video.
As the line between truth and lies disappears, news consumers seeking objective truth eventually grow fatigued. For those who want to create an environment where disinformation thrives, that is a very good result — and not at all a new idea. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists, Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, her 1951 book chronicling the rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
So far, much of the AI-generated video produced or shared by Trump and his allies — like the recent one of the president in a fighter jet dropping excrement on thousands of No Kings demonstrators — has been quite obviously fake. Much of it reprises classic own the libs memes. But the administration has been edging toward deepfakes designed to deceive.
In mid-October, Trump loyalists in the National Republican Senate Committee, hoping to blame Democrats for the ongoing shutdown, produced a deepfake video showing Schumer saying every day it gets better for us, words taken out of context from a print interview Schumer did with Punchbowl News. The implication: that the Democrats care only about scoring political points during the standoff, not about the damage it has done — and will continue to inflict — on normal Americans.All that separates that video from being a pure deepfake is the fact that the (AI-generated) senator is shown vocalizing his own words. At the end of the video, Schumer smiles broadly, suggesting that he is cynically enjoying the shutdown. That smile is all AI.
While some states, including California, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington, have added specific language prohibiting AI deepfakes to their election laws, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has not followed suit. The FEC considered passing a new regulation specifically targeting deceptive AI-generated content in 2023, but dropped the idea in favor of relying on existing rules on deceptive campaign media, fearing that broadly banning AI-generated content might be beyond its jurisdiction, and that any rulemaking might fail to withstand legal challenges based on free speech rights.
On the Hill, Minnesotas Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar explicitly warned about AI-generated deepfakes in elections in 2024. Like any emerging technology, AI has great opportunities but also significant risks . . .and we have to put rules in place, she said in a hearing in April of 2024. In 2024, Klobuchar and Alaskas Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski co-sponsored the AI Transparency in Elections Act, which sought to require disclaimers on political ads that use AI-generated or modified imagery or audio. The bill never made it out of committee.
Many AI companies have included in their terms-of-service rules against using their generative models to create synthetic media that imitates real people without their consent. Most have used some form of visual watermark or hidden data to indicate that an image is AI-generated. However, sources say that its not hard to find an open-source model that uses none of these safeguards.
Meanwhile, numerous experts have expressed concern that as AI tools mature and become more accessible, more people (including foreign actors) have the resources they need to actively spread falsehoods about political issues, causes, candidates, or campaigns. A 2024 Harvard survey found that 83% of respondents (n=1,000) worried that AI could be used to spread false election-related information.
In a tight congressional election next year, and especially in the 2028 presidential election, all restraint could go out the window. Think he wouldnt go that far? According to the Washington Post, Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements during his first term. He was willing to see the Capitol mobbed and defaced if it meant staying in office.
To Trump, a truth is no better than a lie, no matter the format. Theyre both just a means to more power.
Over the past several days, millions of low-income Americans who use SNAP, the nations biggest food aid program, have been left wondering how they will pay for basic necessities this month amidst the ongoing government shutdown. Today, they have an update: In a court filing submitted on November 3, the Trump administration said that it would pay just 50% of recipients normal allotments this month.
Last year, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program helped 41 million people (or about 1 in 8 Americans) buy their groceries, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children. To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of fours net income cant exceed the federal poverty line of around $31,000 per year. Normally, the debit cards that SNAP recipients use to buy food at participating stores are loaded each month by the federal government. But amidst the ongoing government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) planned to freeze payments to SNAP on November 1, citing a lack of funding.
However, just a day prior to the freeze, two federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that the government had to extend the funding, offering the Trump administration some leeway on whether to offer full or partial funding in November. Now, the Trump administration says it will use money from an Agriculture Department contingency fund to offer partial payments for Novemberthough the exact timeline of the funds distribution remains uncertain. Heres what to know:
Why were SNAP benefits about to freeze?
This new announcement follows an ongoing back-and-forth over whether the federal government had a legal obligation to continue providing SNAP funding despite the government shutdown, which has been in effect since October 1.
On one side, the Trump administration said it wasnt allowed to use a USDA contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. On the other, Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states said that money from the contingency fund couldand mustbe used, arguing in a legal finding on October 28 that the USDA could also tap into another appropriated fund worth about $23 billion for the cause.
Ultimately, two federal courts came down in favor of using contingency funding for SNAP. In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled that the government must use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, requiring an update from the administration by November 3.
“There is no doubt, and it is beyond argument, that irreparable harm will begin to occurif it hasn’t already occurredin the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food for their family,” McConnell said during the hearing, according to ABC News.
In the Boston, Massachusetts case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani called the SNAP suspension unlawful, similarly calling for contingency funds to be used for the program.
What’s happening now?
In response to these rulings, the Trump administration said in its own filing that it plans to use the $5 billion contingency fund to pay 50% of eligible households current allotments, adding that the expenditure will mean “no funds will remain for new SNAP applicants certified in November, disaster assistance, or as a cushion against the potential catastrophic consequences of shutting down SNAP entirely.” The administration opted against tapping into the additional funds identified by Democrats to pay the monthly benefits in full. Normally, the USDA spends $8 billion per month on the program.
So far, its unclear when SNAP recipients will have access to the half funding. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said of the distribution, Theres a process that has to be followed. So, we got to figure out what the process is. President Trump wants to make sure that people get their food benefits.
Meanwhile, local food banks, shelters, and state governments have been scrambling to prepare for an influx of hungry people. States including Louisiana, New Mexico, Vermont, New York, and Nevada have all acted to provide emergency funding for residents in need, while smaller organizations like food pantries are working overtime to get ready.
When you take SNAP away, the implications are cataclysmic, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of the nationwide food bank network Feeding America, told the AP last week. I assume people are assuming that somebodys going to stop it before it gets too bad. Well, its already too bad. And its getting worse.
Global competitors are pouring billions into agricultural research and emerging technologies, while American farmers are being asked to do more with less. The pressure on farmers is real: Net farm income for row crop producers remains persistently low, public investment in agricultural research has plummeted to 1970s levels, and the technologies that could reshape our industry too often stall before reaching the farm gate.
At Land OLakes Inc., we believe theres a better way forward rooted in cooperation, trust, and a ground up approach to innovation. We believe the cooperative mindset is what it will take to overcome the challenges ahead.
Its a mindset that shows up in how we invest, innovate, and grow. For example, our recent announcement of AgRogue Growth Partners shows how we aim to harness the strength of the cooperative model by working together with our local agricultural retail owners to fast-track the discovery, investment, and adoption of breakthrough technologies.
This isnt simply a funding initiative. Its channeling deep, generations-old relationships and a mindset of continuous productivity improvements to better support the businesses, farmers, and communities that feed the world.
REAL INNOVATION STARTS WITH SYSTEM-LEVEL THINKING
The future of agriculture depends on our ability to bring stability and predictability to an industry that too often feels like a roller coaster. The pressures were facingweather volatility, rising input costs, and international competition wont be solved by any single tool or tactic. We need system-level thinking and long-term partnerships.
Innovation shouldnt be about chasing the next shiny object. Its about helping farmers make smarter, lower-risk decisions, acre by acre, season by season. Whether thats through precise application technologies, AI-powered insights or new business models that reduce exposure, our innovation-focused goals should be simple: Make farming more resilient and more profitable for those who feed the world.
HOW TO CRACK THE CODE TO FARMGATE ADOPTION
The problem isnt a lack of ideas. Every year, new technologies emerge with the potential to transform how we farm, from AI-powered analytics to cutting-edge crop inputs. But the simple truth is that many promising solutions never scale, not because they dont work but because they cant break through the noise, earn trust, or integrate into the systems growers rely on.
Bringing local agricultural retailers and producers together for pilot testing and performance discussions is central to finding practical and scalable solutions. Sitting at the kitchen table with farmers provides invaluable data and feedbackthey know the land, the seasons, and the day-to-day pressures associated with the crop or livestock they raise.
When innovation flows through this channel, its far more likely to be understood, adopted, and create lasting value. Ultimately, retailer partners provide the local support, operational know-how, and market access that startups crave as they look to scale innovation.
Weve seen it work time and again with the latest innovations in seed and crop protection; theres no reason we cant do it again with the most promising ag tech solutions. The last-mile connection between innovation and implementation is where a cooperative structure and retailer network will truly shine.
A CALL TO COLLABORATE
The challenges facing agriculture and Americas farm families are not something any one business can solve alone. It will take cooperation and cross-sector partnerships to ensure U.S. agriculture remains globally competitive.
So, the cooperative approach offers a blueprint worth consideringespecially for industries wrestling with the same adoption gaps and trust barriers that agriculture faces. Capital alone isnt enough. Relationships matter. Local connections matter. And innovation that ignores the end user is destined to stall.
Our message is clear: If youre building for the farm, you need to build with the farmer by tapping into the systems they already trust. True success in agriculture depends on solutions that work where it countsin the hands of farmers.
Brett Bruggeman is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Land OLakes, Inc.
Last week, YouTube TV ditched over 20 Disney-owned channels, after the two companies failed to reach a new content distribution deal ahead of the deadline. But now, YouTube TV is trying to make it up to subscribers who are reeling from their diminished viewing options.
According to multiple reports, YouTube TV seems to be (quietly) offering $10 credits on subscriber bills for six months, for a total savings of $60. But there’s a catch, which is that that credit won’t be automatically applied. It looks like users will have to do some digging through your YouTube TV account’s settings in order to opt in.
Here’s how to check for the credit:
According to TechRadar, you’ll need to login your YouTube TV account on desktop in order to find out if your account will receive the credit. Go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Membership’, then ‘Manage Plan’. If the credit is available, you should see a message that says “Redeem your offer.” When you accept, the credit should appear on your next statement.
However, dozens of Reddit sleuths who have already tried to redeem the credit have come up empty, indicating that everyone may not be eligible.
Customers are still disgruntled
Either way, many users don’t feel that $10 a month makes up for losing over 20 channels they are paying for, like ABC, Disney Channel, FX, Nat Geo, as well as popular live sports channels. “$10 aint gonna cut it for no ESPN,” one commenter wrote on a popular Reddit thread. “At a bare minimum its going to cost $30 to get ESPN, so thats a starting point. Add an extra $10/mo for the hassle and a $40 discount is what it would take for sports fans to stay with YTTV.”
Confusing credits
The $10 credit has also confused some users, especially because YouTube first proposed a $20 credit on Oct 23. “We know this is a frustrating and disappointing outcome for our subscribers and we continue to urge Disney to work with us constructively to reach a fair agreement that restores their networks to YouTube TV. If their content remains off YouTube TV for an extended period of time, well offer subscribers a $20 credit.”
Fast Company reached out to Google to find out the exact credit YouTube TV users can expect to see, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
An ongoing dispute
Previously Fast Company reached out to Google over the dispute and was directed to an Oct. 23 YouTube statement. Last week, Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers, the post on YouTubes blog read. Theyre now following through on that threat, suspending their content on YouTube TV. This decision directly harms our subscribers while benefiting their own live TV products, including Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.
Unsurprisingly, Disney pointed the blame at Google. “Unfortunately, Googles YouTube TV has chosen to deny their subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for our channels, including ESPN and ABC. With a $3 trillion market cap, Google is using its market dominance to eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms weve successfully negotiated with every other distributor.”
The two companies remain in talks. And, in a statement provided to Deadline, a Disney spokesperson said the company asked YouTube to restore ABC to the service for election day on Nov. 4.
Despite the impasse that led to the current blackout, we have asked YouTube TV to restore ABC for Election Day so subscribers have access to the information they rely on. We believe in putting the public interest first and hope YouTube TV will take this small step for their customers while we continue to work toward a fair agreement.
Google did not immediately respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.
Last week, Amazon became the latest company to announce massive layoffs. In a memo, senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, revealed that the company would let go of approximately 14,000 employees, citing AI innovations and a fast-changing world.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology weve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” Galetti wrote. “Were convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Amazon is hardly the only company shedding employees. UPS cut 48,000 jobs this year, and just days before Amazon’s announcement, Target eliminated 1,800 corporate roles after a turbulent year.
And while Amazon’s recent announcement blamed AI for the move, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had suggested otherwise. Last week, Jassy said on an earnings call that the layoffs were about the company slimming down and speeding up.
The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and its not even really AI-driven, not right now at least, he said about the job cuts. Its culture.
Jassy added that, when thinking about transformation, its important to be lean, its important to be flat, and its important to move fast.
Still, Amazon’s own numbers suggest that the company may be preemptively slimming down to pay for its technological advances. “Free cash flow decreased to $14.8 billion for the trailing twelve months, driven primarily by a year-over-year increase of $50.9 billion in purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds from sales and incentives,” according to an October 30 news release revealing Amazon’s third quarter financial results.
It’s true the company is majorly ramping up its spending, specifically around its Trainium2 chip subscriptions and data center expansion. Chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said during the firm’s earnings call on Thursday that the company would be very aggressive in spending on data centers, investing $125 billion this year and said he expects the amount “will increase in 2026.”
Since the Amazon layoffs hit the news, many have taken to social media to offer their own explanations for the company’s reorganization. “Time for your periodic layoff reminder: do not take seriously the stated ‘reasons’ for layoffs,” Drew Harry, vice president of data science at Thumbtack, wrote in a social media post. “Amazon laying off corporate staff is not proof of anything regarding realized AI efficiencies or management inefficiency. They can say whatever they want.”
Harry added, “The only explanation you really need is that Amazon wants to cut costs and (likely) redeploy the money elsewhere.”
I always dream of the same mall.
So begins a recent post on the popular subreddit r/The MallWorld. The subreddit was first created in 2021, and currently has 10,000 monthly visitors detailing their recurring dreams of eerie, often empty spaces. The description reads, Have you been to one of these common dream locations?
The post continued: It has a very vintage feel to it. It always has warm amber lighting and wooden guard rails. It has 3 main floors, and one secret lower floor.
The lower floor is usually kept pristine, a time capsule of the 90’s. The stores are closed, but the merchandise remains. It smells like my kindergarten class did..
If this dream sounds familiar, you are not alone. The post is among thousands on Reddit and TikTok who say they also dream of the same space, collectively referred to as Mall World.
But this is no ordinary shopping mall. While not always identical, many say their mall worlds share similarities. It has endless stairwells, forbidden floors, and looping elevators. Some have dreamed of the same food court, others of an arcade. Sometimes the dreamscape is not even a mall at all but a water park or an airport. People have tried to draw maps of Mall World. I finally dont feel alone, wrote one on Reddit. I feel so much relief in not being the only one.
The dreamscape has recently seen a resurgence in interest. One TikTok user said she discovered the Mall World subreddit after searching for answers about a recurring dream she was having.
She explained, Finding the Mall World has literally changed my life because there are 20 thousand people having the same exact dreams as mine. The video was posted earlier this year and currently has over 400,000 views.
So why is everyone having the same dream? There are a number of theories circulating the internet.
One suggests it is related to Carl Jungs theory of collective unconsciousness the idea that all humans share a deep, inherited layer of the unconscious mind that shapes how we think and dream. Others have linked the idea to astral travel, where the physical body is left behind to go explore other planes of consciousness. Another conspiracy theory links these shared dreams to the gifted and talented program in the 1980s and 1990s.
Or perhaps the real reason is less intriguing. Most of us have been to a mall at least once in our lives and our brains tend to feed off existing mental maps and memories to construct our dreamscapes. As Dylan Selterman, an associate teaching professor at the Johns Hopkins University department of psychological and brain sciences, told The New York Times, sometimes people dream about weird stuff. Liminal spaces have been a source of online fascination for years. A simpler explanation may be that the online discourse is unconsciously influencing peoples dreams. If youve not visited Mall World and are feeling left out, just reading about Mall World might be enough to trigger a visit.
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D.R. Horton, Americas largest homebuilder, is doubling down on mortgage rate buydowns to keep its sales volumes up amid an affordability-strained housing market.
On its October 28 earnings call, the builder said 73% of its homebuyers in fiscal Q4 2025 received a mortgage rate buydownup slightly from 72% in the previous quarter.
As we anticipated on our last call, we did expect to lean in more heavily to the offering of 3.99% [mortgage rate buydown], said Jessica Hansen, D.R. Hortons senior vice president of investor relations. That is something that we’ve been doing, and we saw the mortgage rate in our backlog come down. It’s actually below 5% today coming into this quarter.
For D.R. Hortons buyersmany of whom are first-time homeownersthe monthly payment remains the decisive factor.
The most attractive monthly payment we can put them in is with a lower rate, said CEO Paul Romanowski. Its a benefit to the homeowner over time in terms of paying down more of their principal.
The strategy has come at a cost: incentive spendingincluding mortgage rate buydowns. The companys gross margin on home sales fell to 20% in Q4 2025, down from 23.6% in Q4 2024 and well below the 26.9% in Q4 2021.
Indeed, increased incentive spending accounted for 61% of D.R. Hortons recent margin compression in Q4, while higher litigation costs made up another 33%.
The incentives appear to be working. Net new orders rose 5% year-over-year in Q4 to 20,078up from 19,035 a year earlierdemonstrating D.R. Hortons ability to maintain sales momentum despite affordability headwinds.
However, its backlog continues to shrink as the builder intentionally slows housing starts to better align inventory levels and capitalize on easing construction costs.
Regionally, D.R. Horton pointed to softness in parts of Florida, including Jacksonville and Southwest Florida, where excess inventory has weighed on absorption rates. The company also described Texas as choppy and California as a bit of a struggle, while noting signs of stability across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
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Even with new tariffs and immigration policy headlines, the company said material and labor costs remain under controldown 1% quarter-over-quarter and 1.5% year-over-year. Many giant homebuilders are crediting softer housing starts for helping offset policy-related cost pressures.
ResiClub PRO members can read our full D.R. Horton analysis here.
Public servants manage a geographically distributed group of people across dozens of public and private organizations daily.
Cybersecurity officials work with state and federal counterparts, and homelessness coordinators work with public health departments and nonprofits. State veterans affairs departments sit at the intersection of educational and health benefits along with housing and job assistance.
From my conversations with public servants across the country, its clear that most critical government functions cannot happen without collaboration. This makes it paramount to have a deep understanding of who does what across dozens of organizations for government to function effectively.
ENTER THE CRM
The dominant modern tool for tracking relationships and managing contacts is customer relationship management software, simply referred to as a CRM. While CRMs arose to help sales teams manage their networks, theyre widely used today as contact managers.
And yet the focus on closing sales dominates CRM product design. One CRM company aims to help its users attract more prospects, close more deals, and strengthen customer relationships. Another says the goal of its CRM is simple: Improve relationships to grow your business. A third CRM aims to be “the sales assistant your team never had.”
But government employees dont sell. They need a network map of people to identify the individuals, organizations, and skill sets to achieve different purposes. These purposes depend on the initiative, like what policy theyre implementing, what guidance theyre finalizing, or what community initiative theyre managing.So public servants have two ill-fitting options for managing relationships. One approach is tracking contacts manually, constantly referring back to their inbox and past emails, or copy-pasting from lists in spreadsheets that quickly go out of date. The other option is to force CRMswhich are designed for salesto serve as coordination tools, a mismatch between purpose and function.
GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ARENT TRACKING SALES FUNNELS
The mismatch causes problems when CRMs are deployed for government initiatives.
CRMs are built to support a linear sales processa deal is won, lost, or in progress. So CRMs categorize prospects by their progression through the sales funnel, quantify sales rep performance, and generate insights about pipeline size and time to close deals.
But government agencies dont have a sales funnel. Their work hinges on knowing whos who across public, private, and nonprofit organizations because their work is embedded in overlapping networks.
Imagine a state employee named Jess. Jess spearheads an initiative to reduce homelessness, leads coordination efforts with the states public health agency, and is the point of contact for homeless shelters. By virtue of this work, Jess also participates in a working group of state, county, and local agencies addressing homelessness. She also serves on the board of an organization that convenes state agencies addressing homelessness in the same region.
A typical CRM would try to locate Jess in a nonexistent sales funnel. A CRM built for government would capture Jesss different roles across many groups and operations. And it would let its users leverage this information at the right time for the right action or communication.
PUBLIC SERVANTS NEED ONGOING RELATIONSHIP CONTEXT
The reality of overlapping networks in government operations leads to the second misalignment: data enrichment over time. In a CRM, data enrichment refers to the attributes that can be identified and recorded about a person or entity.
For private companies, data enrichment isnt thatvitalthey want to move prospects through the sales funnel toward a deal. Their customer segments are generally well-defined, so they need to know basic information about prospects, like name, title, and organization. Depth of knowledge is secondary. And while some information may change, that hardly matters once the deal is closed, meaning data enrichment has diminishing returns over time in traditional CRMs.
But for government agencies, ongoing data enrichment is a critical CRM capability. Public servants must activate geographically and organizationally distributed groups of people for countless initiatives occurring in parallel. The richer the context, the better.
This is the difference between simply knowing that Jess participates in a working group and capturing every role she plays in all her different capacitiesand having that information autonomously updated.
The people and organizations public servants need to coordinate with are always changing, too. Government agencies network maps, organized in a CRM, are multi-layered, always in flux, and a mission critical resource.
PUBLIC SERVANTS DESERVE PURPOSE-BUILT TECHNOLOGY
The only way to effectively manage ever-changing groups of people and organizations and align them with government operations is to have a CRM that prioritizes data enrichment over time.
Government, unlike sales, doesnt have a defined end. A new class of government-centric CRMs should treat contacts as members of overlapping networks. They should capture attributes relevant to government work and update continuously, managing contact attributes as they change in real time, so public servants can spend their time collaborating with those contacts to do their job. This should be table stakes for a government CRM. Public servants also work as teams and need easier ways to operationalize their network, like with more reliable mass email sending.
We are at an inflection point where governments across the country are being asked to do more with less. Technology should enable, not be an obstacle. CRMs, despite their centrality to government operations, remain an obstacle because they are not built for government work.
So what are public servants to do?
Their best, which means trying to make a tool work and fighting against it, because it wasnt designed to address their needs and maximize their capabilities.
In my conversations with public servants, a recurring theme is the need to track the people and organizations that matter to the mission. Our driving conviction at Civic Roundtable is that government employees deserve better. They deserve software designed, built, and deployed specifically for government operations.
The CRM deserves a rethink in service of public servants.
Madeleine Smith is cofounder and CEO of Civic Roundtable.
