Leadership used to be a role people aspired to. But today, employees are increasingly avoiding leadership positions or even stepping out of leadership roles. In fact, 40% of leaders have considered leaving their role to improve their work-life balance and well-being according to a survey of almost 11,000 leaders by DDI. A comprehensive survey by Rand across 34 countries involving 27,000 adults found that 39% didnt want career progression and 57% would reject a job if they thought it would have negative effects on their work-life balance. And according to a separate survey by DDI, Gen Z is 1.7 times more likely than other generations to consider leaving leadership roles because they want to protect their well-being.
However, there are still compelling reasons to seek leadership. And there are great reasons to stick with it if youre already in a leadership role.
1. Making a positive impact
Leadership is the most direct route for making a positive impact on an organization. Leaders have a broader range of influence, because of the number of people who report to them, the practices they adopt, and the decisions they make.
Leaders also have a big impact on others. Demonstrating respect and empathy, focusing on well-being, and inspiring performance and results can all have positive outcomes for people. And these leadership behaviors can have a ripple effect in terms of how people treat each other and hold each other accountable in the organization and the community.
As a leader, youre likely to work on issues that are more strategic than tactical, which can have a domino effect on the business. For example, decisions by the product leader can impact how the brand team markets the product and the sales team positions it with customers.
2. Pay and marketability
Another reason to lead is because of the rewards. Leadership is worth the effort because it pays you back in tangible ways. In most companies, leadership responsibility is still the fastest way to increase your pay and advance your career.
But in addition, youll also be likely to amplify your personal brand and increase your marketability. Leadership is one of the most sought-after skills among hiring managers and organizations. When youre able to demonstrate that you have experience with leadership and youre skilled in directing, coaching, decision-making, inspiring, and motivating others, youll set yourself up to shine in future roles. And youll be able to advance within your current organization or in a new company.
Its an excellent time to pursue leadership since fewer people are interested, meaning theres less competition and more opportunities.
3. Autonomy
No matter what your role, you have to answer to someone. Even senior leaders or founders of companies have to answer to boards of directors or customers. But in leadership roles, you typically make decisions about what gets done and how its prioritized. You may also benefit from greater variety in your work, and less redundancy. Youll have more control over what you do, which can be empowering.
Having choice and control can be especially fulfilling, and it can also reduce stress. In two separate studies by Indiana University in 2016 and 2020, people who were in jobs that were very stressful and who had little decision-making power tended to be less healthy and had reduced longevity. On the other hand, when people were in stressful jobs but had more autonomy and control over how they did their work, they didnt have the same negative health outcomes.
4. Growth
Another great reason to lead is the opportunity for growth. The process of learning new things is significantly correlated with happiness, according to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Leadership challenges your capabilities as you navigate all the needs of the team, the organization, and the competitive environment.
As a leader, you may be called on to do new projects, take on additional initiatives, or expand your responsibilities. All of these are great ways to build your skills for your current job and your next job to create a career thats satisfying and meaningful.
The U.S. House of Representatives Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Catherine Szpindor, informed congressional staffers this week that WhatsApp is now banned from government phones. The move came after the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity deemed the Meta-owned app to be high-risk to usersa claim that WhatsApp quickly rebutted.
But the CAO is correct. While WhatsApp is one of the more secure messaging apps out there, it does have some privacy and security risks. Users can mitigate some of these risks, but others are beyond their control. Heres why WhatsApp is now banned in the U.S. House of Representatives and how you can make the app more secure on your phone.
What the Office of Cybersecurity said, exactly
The news that the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity had announced a ban on WhatsApp this week came from Axios. On Tuesday, the publication published parts of an internal CAO memo it received, which was sent to congressional staffers on Monday, announcing that WhatsApp was now verboten on government phones.
The memo stipulated that “House staff are NOT allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser versions of its products. It went on to add: “If you have a WhatsApp application on your House-managed device, you will be contacted to remove it.
The reason? According to the memo, “The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.
The CAO didnt provide further details in the memo regarding the above risks. Still, it’s easy to interpret some of the things that may have made the CAO leery about the continued use of WhatsApp by Congressional staffers.
WhatsApp’s transparency issue
WhatsApp, like competing secure messaging apps including Apples iMessages and Signal, is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that no parties other than the ones in the chat, even including Meta, can read the chat messages. But WhatsApp collects a lot more metadata from each chat than other secure messaging apps do, and it sends this info to Meta
A chats metadata includes information such as the identities of the chat participants, IP addresses, phone numbers, and the timestamps of messages. No one knows exactly what Meta does with this metadata. Still, it is shared with Metas other platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. It is likely used to help the company build social graphs of users, leveraged for advertising purposes, and analyzed by the company to understand who is using their apps, and when and where. This opaqueness is likely some of the lack of transparency risk that the CAO was referring to.
As for the absence of stored data encryption, the CAO may have been referring to the default method by which WhatsApp backs up a users chats. While WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, if a user backs up those chats to the cloud, the backup itself is not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means that if a bad actor gains access to a WhatsApp users cloud backup, they could read all of that users messages. Its no wonder the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity finds this worrying.
WhatsApp also doesnt have other privacy and security features on by default, including the ability to lock the app behind biometrics and requiring two-step verification when a WhatsApp account is installed on another phone.
If you dont work in the House of Representatives, you can still keep WhatsApp on your phone. But you might want to mitigate its privacy and security risks. Heres how.
How to make WhatsApp more secure on your phone
Unfortunately, theres nothing you can do about WhatsApps metadata problem. Meta designs WhatsApp so that the metadata of your chats is sent directly to the company. Theres no way you can turn this data collection off. But you can make the app more secure on your phone by following some simple steps, including:
End-to-end encrypt your WhatsApp backups: In WhatsApp, go to Settings>Chats>Chat Backup>End-to-End Encrypted Backup and turn this option on. Now your chat backups saved in the cloud will be end-to-end encrypted.
Lock WhatsApp: You can set WhatsApp to refuse to open without further authentication by locking the app. This means that even if someone has access to your unlocked phone, they wont be able to open WhatsApp unless they know your phones PIN, or have your face or fingerprint. To lock WhatsApp, go to WhatsApps Settings>Privacy>App Lock and toggle the feature on.
Enable two-step verification: If someone logs into your WhatsApp account on their phone, theyll be able to see your messages. Thats why you should set up two-step verification for your account. This will require a PIN that you set to be entered whenever an attempt is made to log into your WhatsApp account on a new device. If the PIN isnt entered correctly, the new device wont have access to your account. To enable two-step verification, go to WhatsApps Settings>Account>Two-Step Verification and toggle the feature on.
Apps the CAO suggests using instead
When reached for comment on the CAOs decision to ban WhatsApp, the organization’s chief administrative officer, Catherine Szpindor, told Fast Company, “Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff. We routinely review the list of House-authorized apps and will amend the list as deemed appropriate.”
In the past, the CAO has banned or imposed partial bans on various foreign apps, including those from ByteDance, such as TikTok. But the CAO has also previously announced bans or restrictions on apps made by American companies, including Microsoft Copilot and the free versions of ChatGPT.
As for Meta, a company spokesperson told Fast Company that it disagrees with the CAOs characterization of WhatsApp in the strongest possible terms. The spokesperson also asserted that, when it comes to end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp offers “a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAOs approved list that do not offer that protection.”
In the Office of Cybersecurity’s memo, the agency provided guidance on alternative secure messaging apps that House staffers could use now that WhatsApp had been banned. According to Axios, those apps include Apples iMessage and FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Wickr, and Signal.
House workers have no choice in the matter, but you still do. If you decide to continue using WhatsApp, consider enhancing the privacy and security it already offers by enabling the optional protections described above.
For the first time ever, you can eat a real fish that was never alive.
In early June, Wildtype, a San Francisco-based lab-grown meat company, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its cultivated sushi-grade salmon saku after a yearslong waiting game. The company is only the fourth to receive FDA approval for cultivated meat in the U.S., joining Upside Foods and Good Meat, which both sell laboratory-grown chicken, and Mission Barns, which focuses on pork fat. Wildtype, meanwhile, is the only company of its ilk focusing on replicating seafood.
Wildtypes salmon is not a plant-based meat alternative; its actual salmon, derived from Pacific salmon cells that have been fed with nutrients like protein, fat, and salt. The end product is a cut of meat that the company says looks like salmon, tastes like salmon and, nutritionally, is like a fraternal twin to the real thing. This new form of lab-grown meat is debuting just as the budding cultivated meat industry has become a political flashpoint among some conservative dissenters.
[Photo: Wildtype]
How a former brewery became a lab for growing fish
Wildtype was founded in 2017 by Justin Kolbeck, a former diplomat, and Aryé Elfenbein, a cardiologist. Kolbeck says the two shared an interest in entrepreneurship, as well as a desire to pursue new solutions to global food insecurity. At the time, Elfenbein was working on a project that involved the regeneration of damaged human heart tissuea process that led him to wonder how a similar process might be used to create meat products without actually harming any animals. From there, the idea for Wildtype was born.
For nearly a decade, Kolbeck and Elfenbein have been working on perfecting their cultivated seafood concept, building out a staff of around 80 employees along the way. Wildtypes cultivation facilitywhich Kolbeck believes to be the only cultivated seafood manufacturing facility anywhere in the worldis located in a former San Francisco brewery. Its an ideal location, Kolbeck says, because, as it turns out, growing fish in a lab is fairly similar to brewing beer.
To date, the company has raised $139 million, according to PitchBook, with investments from Maven Ventures, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bezos, and food giant Cargill.
Wildtype cofounders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein [Photo: Wildtype]
All of the fish that Wildtype is currently making starts with the copies of one set of Pacific salmon cells harvested back in 2018Kolbeck says you can imagine this almost like a sourdough starter, which can be used over and over again for new loaves of bread. The first step of the cultivation process involves growing those cells in increasingly large vessels, starting at the 75-liter size and going up to several thousand liters. To stimulate growth, the salmon cells are fed with a nutrient mix that Kolbeck says is not much more complicated than Gatoradea combination of amino acids, vitamins, proteins, and fats.
[Photo: Wildtype]
The reason it’s a lot like brewing is because in brewing, you need to keep a nice, contained environment that, in the case of beer, keeps the yeast and other things actively growing and converting the feedstock into beer, Kolbeck says. In our case, we need to keep our salmon cells at a consistent temperaturefish are cold-blooded, so we need to keep them cool. We need to control the oxygen level, because cells need, just like in our body, they need oxygen to keep growing healthy. We need to control the pH, keep it in balance, similar to what you’d find inside the fish.
Once the cell-growing process is complete, the cells are rinsed and combined with a mixture of plant-based ingredients to lend them both structure and some additional flavor. Kolbeck says the actual tasting process required countless rounds, which includes himself, Elfenbein, Wildtypes wider staff and, in later stages, outside chefs.
When you’re starting to make a food literally from the ground up, there’s just a lot of work to be done, Kolbeck says. Like, where do you even start? How do you build that into a product that looks and tastes like people would expect for a seafood product? That took a long time and, honestly, it was trial and error. I have eaten so many things over the last three years, some of them really delicious . . . a lot of them not. But that’s like any kind of food development space. I imagine the process for developing new Doritos is probably pretty similar.
[Photo: Wildtype]
Designing an entirely new kind of food
Making a new Dorito flavor, though, likely doesnt present quite as many regulatory obstacles as designing an entirely new category of food. Kolbeck says the FDAs approval process was rigorous, often requiring the team to compile data that would take months to collect.
From our perspective, it is totally appropriate for a process like this to take a long time. Because we should have our food regulators feeling comfortable, like they can ask us any question they want, and we’ll answer it with data, Kolbeck says. All of the analytical testing that we did was done by third parties, so that takes time. From a startups perspective, that was a really painful process, but a really important one.
[Photo: Wildtype]
The result of Wildtypes yearslong efforts is a meat product that has the same amount of omega-3s and omega-6s as regular salmon, without any risk of mercury, microplastics, or parasites. (Kolbeck admits, though, that his team is still working on boosting the protein content.) Instead of trying to make the product available commercially, Wildtypelike other cultivated meat companieshas decided to debut it at high-end restaurants.
Currently, it is available for around $32 at Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon, and is coming soon to Otoko, an omakase (chef’s choice) spot in Austin. And, Kolbeck adds, Wildtype is already in the process of perfecting its existing recipe and bringing new and improved products to the market.
[Photo: Wildtype]
How lab-grown meat became a conservative target
Wildtype is making its debut as lab-grown meat has become a point of contention for some conservative lawmakers over the past several months.
Last March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a bill to ban and criminalize the production and sale of cultivated meat in the state. That May, DeSantis said of the bill: Florida is fighting back against the global elites plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, whose state has passed a similar prohibition, described the effort as a way to battle fringe ideas and groups to defend our way of life.
Along with Florida and Nebraska, the states of Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming have all either attempted or succeeded in passing legislation banning lab-grown meat. Conservative arguments against lab-grown meat tend to frame the idea as both a woke proposition and a threat to existing meat industries.
But even some ranchers are pushing back against the dissent. This February, a group of ranchers and meat industry groups in Nebraska formed a coalition to oppose Pillens ban, arguing that consumers should be the ones to choose whether the product is available.
[Photo: Wildtype]
Kolbeck tends to agree. I feel like most Americans would not be happy that state governments are trying to tell them what they can and can’t eat because of special interests. It’s just not who we are as a country, he says. The market needs to decide these thingsnot lobbyists in smoky back rooms.
Furthermore, while critics might argue against lab-grown meat to protect the poultry and beef industries, about 80% to 90% of seafood is actually imported to the U.S, he adds. In fact, this April, the White House issued an executive order to find new ways to make more seafood domestically.
It’s, like, hey, we get it if you want to protect domestic industries. But this is not a domestic industry, Kolbeck says. We import almost all of the seafood in this country. And we are doing exactly what you’re trying to do, which is getting small businesses in this country to create more food domesticallyand it has all these other add-on benefits. Can you imagine the carbon fooprint of overnighting bluefin tuna from Tokyo to San Francisco? . . . Not low.
Bill McGowan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group. He is a two-time Emmy Award-winning correspondent who now coaches everyone from CEOs to celebrities on how to captivate audiences. Juliana Silva is a journalist with vast experience in global media brand strategy who acts as a communications specialist at Clarity Media Group. As a media coach, she has transformed experts from a variety of professions into on-air network contributors.
Whats the big idea?
One of lifes great gifts is to have what we say remembered because, when our words stick with people, we have a golden opportunity to persuade, influence, motivate, or inspire. But every day, in offices all over the world, businesspeople squander those opportunities by speaking in bland, boring, and forgettable ways. Speak, Memorably outlines a host of techniques designed to help you captivate an audience by making your message so distinctive that it rises above the incessant noise swirling all around us these days.
Below, coauthors Bill McGowan and Juliana Silva share five key insights from their new book, Speak, Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience. Listen to the audio versionread by Bill and Julianain the Next Big Idea App.
1. Location, location, location
Where you place your big ideas matters in public speaking. This concept is called the primacy/recency effect, and it says that what you communicate at the beginning and end of a learning episode tends to be retained better than information presented in the middle. This theory has been validated in memory experiments.
The great filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola uses this concept for making movies. He starts by identifying his three top storytelling points, takes the best one, and puts it at the end. He places the second-best point at the beginning and then finds a place in the middle to insert his third-best point. He may be talking about storytelling, but the same idea can be applied to your presentations at work.
Throughout our years of coaching, we frequently see people missing the opportunity to capture the audiences attention. Unfortunately, presenters often resort to the dreaded agenda slide deck. It is the most overused and underwhelming tool in any public speakers arsenal. The scourge of telling people what youre going to tell them is rampant. We call this signposting, meaning warning your audience of what youre about to tell them.
This doesnt just happen at the beginning of a presentation. It often happens at the beginning of each and every slide. The strategy you should embrace in public speaking is inform, dont warn.
2. Learning is a laughing matter
Humor plays an important role in delivering memorable remarks. There has been extensive research on the power of levity in public speaking. Research from both the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University has shown that humor is a key contributor to both virality and retention. When 18- to 34-year-olds were shown both humorous and non-humorous news stories about politics and government policy, the viewers remembered and shared the funny stories more often.
There is a wrong way to go about inserting humor into your presentations. If youve ever been told to start with a joke, unfortunately, thats probably the worst piece of advice. Leave the joke telling to professional comedians and instead think of your job as finding a humorous lens through which you want the audience to view your content.
If youve ever been told to start with a joke, unfortunately, thats probably the worst piece of advice.
Levity is the ultimate high-wire act of public speaking. Its high risk, but its also high reward. There are physiological benefits to using humor in public speaking. Not only does it make the speaker calmer and more confident, but it also boosts the audiences dopamine levels.
Dopamine is the hormone in our bodies thats been called the pathway to pleasure. When dopamine hits our brains, it generates pleasure and makes us feel good. Laughter can also minimize stress. Studies at the Mayo Clinic have found that laughter can relieve stress by increasing the release of endorphins. They concluded that laughter stimulates circulation and muscle relaxation, both of which can help reduce stress.
Reluctance to be clever or funny in a business setting is completely understandable. Everybody feels anxiety due to the nature of the risk, but research clearly shows that the payoff in terms of being memorable can be enormous.
3. The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is a series of linguistic devices that you can use to convert your ideas into punchy and memorable messages.
1. Analogy and Metaphor: These make it possible for your audience to understand a complex concept quickly and easily by comparing it to something common to all of us. For example, Sitting is the new smoking. Or, describing the supply chain crisis as a six-lane freeway trying to merge into a one-lane country road.
2. Creative Label: A pithy expression that you coin. The Great Resignation is a creative label. Quiet quitting is also a creative label. Or The Goldilocks Economy. You can see the viral nature of all these.
3. Twisted Cliché: When you take a very common expression and alter it slightly to turn it into something brand new. For instance, in 2023, when there was an oversaturation of startup investors in Silicon Valley, we called it a seating frenzy.
4. Wordplay: Perhaps the most famous example is from Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech when he said, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
5. Data with Context: Overloading an audience with numbers and statistics is not memorable unless you bring some context and meaning to it. If you tell me that a windmill farm generates over 1,800 megawatts of power, I might not be impressed or interested. But if you tell me that it creates enough energy to power over a million homes, now I sit up and take notice.
6. Original Definitions: A fresh and different way to define certain terms. It is not the definition you find in the dictionary, but rather a complimentary meaning that helps you emphasize one of your points. For instance, you can redefine leadership as where empathy and vision meet.
7. Mathematical Equation: This actually requires no actual math. You could describe ratios in terms like the more you have this, the more you get that, such as the more conversational your tone becomes, the more confidence you exude. Or it could be an actual equation, like Authenticity = Passion + Warmth.
4. Zoomnesia and technostress
Nearly all of us have to cope with virtual communication on a daily basis. Zoom fatigue is real. It was validated in a European study titled Technostress in Organizations, which examined the effects of video conferencing on a group of college students attending lectures remotely comparedto those attending in-person classes. Fatigue levels and mood were measured with medical equipment, and researchers found notable differences between the in-person and online students. Fatigue levels grew for the video conference. In contrast, the in-person groups reported feeling more lively, happy, and active.
Another strange effect we discovered from our own daily online meetings was something we called Zoomnesia, which is a decreased ability to remember and differentiate between one Zoom call and another. In our own work, virtual meetings were starting to merge in our minds, and we asked ourselves what could be causing this. We realized that the setting for all these meetings was identical. Every day you sit in the same chair at the same desk, staring at the same computer screen, and you have a lack of audio and visual cues to help trigger your memories and distinguish them from one another.
In our own work, virtual meetings were starting to merge in our minds.
We had to validate our theory. Interestingly, we found a COVID-19-era study in which healthcare workers discovered this same phenomenon. The goal was to compare how well patients remembered medical instructions given during in-person consultations versus once given through telehealth. Participants were asked to recall the instructions immediately after the session, and then a week later. Overall, the number of details both younger and older patients were able to recall was significantly lower when they were provided through telehealth. This was true both immediately after the session and after one week.
5. Theft-tosterone
This is such a common problem that it deserves its own creative label. We call it theft-tosterone, which is what happens when a woman shares an idea with her colleagues and then later a man says almost the exact same thing and takes credit for it. It happens in all kinds of workplaces, even at the United States Supreme Court. Recently, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she frequently sees examples of theft-tosterone when court is in session.
Despite all the professional gains women have made over the past 20 years, episodes of theft-tosterone have increased 20% over the past several years. The roots of this phenomenon take hold early in life. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, Deborah Tannen, notes that research shows how young boys use language to maintain and negotiate status within a group. Boys gain status by taking center stage and holding it. They do this through speech, giving information, telling stories, and maybe even boasting. But according to Tannen, its frowned upon for a girl to seek center stage by acting the exact same way.
Equally interesting as theft-tosterones origins are effective ways women can cope with or prevent these episodes. After all, its impossible to be memorable if someone else is taking credit for your ideas. We detail strategies to combat theft-tosterone in the book.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Tales of turning water into wine or weaving straw into gold are one thing, but a new study shows that scientists can transform trash into . . . Tylenol?
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh were able to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, aka acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the pain reliever Tylenol. Stranger yet, they pulled off the alchemical feat using the bacteria E. coli.
Were able to transform a prolific environmental and societal waste into such a globally important medication in a way thats completely impossible, using chemistry alone or using biology alone, says study coauthor Stephen Wallace, a chemical biotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The research team began with polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic found in food packaging and polyester clothing. Using established chemical methods, they broke down the PET plastic into a precursor molecule and then added it into a cell culture of E. coli that was genetically modified.
Enzymes in the modified E. coli bacteria were able to convert the plastic precursor into paracetamol 92% of the time. The transformation relies on a chemical process known as a Lossen rearrangement, which can convert one kind of molecule into a different kind of molecule. Scientists have known about the Lossen rearrangement for more than 100 years, but generally observe the phenomenon in a flask or a test tube.
The research group is now working with pharmaceutical makers including AstraZeneca, one of the studys sponsors, to replicate the same chemical transformations on a larger scale.
The new research isnt the first to observe the way that bacteria can be deployed to usefully break down plastic. Researchers have previously studied how wastewater bacteria found in urban waterways use a special enzyme to chew up plastic trash and convert it into carbon-based food.
As we grapple with the cascading environmental and health effects that decades of proliferating plastics have wrought on the planet, bacteria capable of converting plastic into harmless or even useful molecules is a promising area of research.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing the conservative news network of defamation.
The suit, which seeks $787 million in damages, argues that coverage on Fox News misrepresented a phone call between Newsom and President Trump in a way designed to damage Newsoms reputation.
The phone call in question took place after 1 a.m. on June 7, prior to Trumps activation of the National Guard in California. On June 10, when a reporter asked if he and Newsom had spoken, the president claimed that he had called Newsom a day ago to tell him to do a better job handling protests in Los Angeles. National Guard troops arrived in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 8.
Newsom disputed Trumps claim that they had spoken the previous day on social media. There was no call, Newsom said. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a president deploying Marines onto our streets doesnt even know who hes talking to.
In a prime-time segment, Fox News host Jesse Watters stated that Newsom lied about receiving a phone call from President Trump. The show included a graphic that read Gavin lied about Trumps call and featured an image of Trumps call history with Newsom, showing the June 7 call. Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Watters asked during the segment.
The lawsuit claims that the mischaracterization of the situation, namely the claim that Newsom lied about having a phone call with Trump, could damage Newsoms political career, which is widely expected to include a run for president.
The $787 million that Newsom seeks in damages is no coincidence. Fox News paid that amount to settle a prior defamation lawsuit from voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems after the network spread debunked conspiracy theories about the companys equipment.
Unfortunately, the past two years have shown that the Dominion settlement did not serve as the deterrent many had predicted, as Fox has continued to launder the stream of false information flowing out of the White House, the lawsuit states.
A study published this week delves into the mystery of how the plastic objects we interact with daily shed tiny particles that creep into our bodies, brains, and guts.
While the scientific focus has long been on how microplastics pollute our environment and impact wildlife, researchers are increasingly raising alarms about how the same contaminants can wreak havoc in the human body.
The new research, published in the journal NPJ Science of Food, wove together data from 100 previous papers that studied microplastics, nanoplastics, and plastic particles. The results were compiled into an open database published by the Food Packaging Forum, a Swiss nonprofit that examines chemicals in food packaging.
Microplastics and nanoplastics are plastic particles in the millimeter-to-nanometer range, with the latter causing even more concern among scientists because their microscopic size makes them able to slip into human cells.
“This is the first systematic evidence map to investigate the role of the normal and intended use of food contact articles in the contamination of foodstuffs with MNPs [microplastics and nanoplastics],” said lead study author Lisa Zimmermann, scientific communication officer at the Food Packaging Forum. “Food contact articles are a relevant source of MNPs in foodstuffs; however, their contribution to human MNP exposure is underappreciated.”
How we interact with plastic matters
The new study looked at a broad range of food contact articles that included water bottles, cutting boards, food processing equipment, and packaging ranging from food wrappers to tea bags. Most food packaging contains plasticeven many items that seem like they dont, such as the paper that wraps around cold cuts and cheese, cardboard takeout containers, and glass bottles and jars, which often have a plastic-coated closure.
The authors focused on how everyday objects used as intended can shed microplastics and how that shedding can worsen over the course of repeated interactions. Across 14 different studies, microplastic shedding was found to increase with repeated uses, including screwing a reusable water bottle lid on and off, washing a melamine dish, or putting plastic tableware into contact with hot foods.
These findings are relevant for reused plastic [food contact articles] and should be considered when assessing the safety of FCAs across use cycles, the authors wrote. Based on their research, and its blind spots, they stressed the need for future studies to delve more deeply into how repeated interactions, heating, and washing affect the amount of microplastics being shed by kitchenware and food packaging that most of the worlds population might come into contact with countless times each day.
The authors also found that the bulk of the research on microplastics focused on only a few kinds of objects that come into contact with food and drinks, like water bottles and tea bags. Similarly, more studies focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene over other common plastics, leaving a lot of unknowns about how much plastic is being shed by food packaging made out of other materials.
Food and beverage containers can expose the human body to microplastics every time we interact with them but relatively little is still known about how that process works. That mystery is an ominous one, considering how ubiquitous plastics are globally in food packaging and preparation and how their presence is increasingly linked to reproductive, digestive, and respiratory problems, and potentially even colon and lung cancer.
Plastics appear to have no trouble finding their way into the human body. Another recent study found that the adult brain can contain a plastic spoons worth of microplastics and nanoplastics, an amount thats seven to 30 times higher than what might be found in the liver or kidneys. Those kind of findings show that its imperative for future research to track down how all of that plastic is finding its way into the human body and what exactly it does once it gets there.
This week on The Most Innovative Podcast, Josh and Yaz sit down with Fast Company senior editor Jon Gluck to discuss his powerful memoir that explores the unexpected twists and emotional terrain of his battle with cancer.
The Supreme Court ended its term on Friday with a major decision in the closely watched birthright citizenship case, that is likely to have a profound impact on whether the lower courts can pause or halt President Donald Trump’s executive orderswhich many legal experts say constitute an overreach of presidential power.
What happened?
Ruling along ideological lines 63, the court’s conservative majority decided to curb injunctions from the lower courts that temporarily paused President Donald Trump’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship via Executive Order 14160, which aims to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally, on temporary visas, or not “lawful permanent residents” at the time of the child’s birth.
However, that right is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
To be clear, the Supreme Court justices did not rule on the merits, or constitutionality, of ending birthright citizenship. The Trump administration didn’t ask the court to rule on the issue itself, and instead asked the high court to rule on whether federal judges have the power to issue injunctions that would block Trump’s order nationwide, while litigation continues. The Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions imposed by federal judges, effectively sending back the rulings to lower courts.
For the 28 states that have not challenged the birthright executive order in court, automatic citizenship could end for children born in the U.S. whose parents are undocumented immigrants, and some temporary residents and visitors, according to the New York Times. The court also stopped his executive order from taking effect for 30 days.
Friday’s ruling is a significant victory for Trump, and a major blow to his opponents who have been trying to limit his executive orders.
Trump calls ruling ‘monumental victory’
On Friday, speaking at the White House, Trump called the decision a “monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.”
That’s the opposite of what Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, which argued “the Courts decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution.”
And added, “The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”
In a separate dissent, Jackson called the majority decision an existential threat to the rule of law.
In response, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the majority decision pushed back, and said No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligationin fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.”
Trump first pledged to end birthright as early as 2015, and again in 2018, before issuing an executive order on the issue in January.
Trump has instituted a crackdown on immigration since taking office that has lead to some immigrants, green card holders, foreigners, and even American citizens being detained by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Justice for Tiny Chef.
A now-viral clip of the stop-motion animated star of The Tiny Chef Show getting laid off directly by the execs at “Mickelflodeon” has tugged at the heartstrings of the internet.
In a YouTube short posted earlier this week, now with 365,000 views, the tiny green chef (Cheffy, as hes known to friends) is minding his business, dusting his room, when he gets a call delivering the terrible news: His show’s been canceled. But we won an Emmy, he lisps into the phone. “What about Rob? And Jen? Kate, Patty, MK, Leahall my friends.
Wiping away tears, he says: I understand. I love you too, bye. He tries to go back to cleaning before breaking down on the bed. Gut-wrenching.
That little attempt to straighten himself out and then get back to what he was doing only to immediately break down . . . thats REAL grief right there, reads one of the YouTube comments. I have no idea who this is but after watching this he means the world to me and something needs to be done about this great injustice, another commenter wrote.
According to the creators of the stop-motion series, which began on Instagram before being picked up by Nickelodeon in 2022 for three successful seasons, the cancellation was “very unexpected.”
Tiny Chefs creators Rachel Larsen and Ozlem Ozi Akturk told The Wrap, We always try to play Chefs life really authentically and this was a big momentthis was his dream show. They added, I think to not show how that would affect him isnt right.
To rub salt in the wound: Bro look at how happy Tiny Chef was back when the show initially got picked up….. one X user posted. In each episode, the tiny herbivore chef created equally tiny dishes, from apple pie to guacamole. Each episode featured a celebrity announcer, with cameos from RuPaul, Alan Cumming, Kristen Bell, and Rebel Wilson.
Bro look at how happy Tiny Chef was back when the show initially got picked up….. https://t.co/vK0TZsHe7a pic.twitter.com/799JWgySKe— Shreeder4092 (@shreeder4092) June 25, 2025
Now Cheffy needs your help. Many of you have said that you would die for Tiny Chef, we dont need all that (!!!) but we do need crowdfunding to keep going, reads a call for donations on the shows website. As soon as the internet found out about Cheffys plight, they sprang into action.
Oh. Nickelodeon BROKE this man. one X user posted, now with over 111.8 million views. How did they make me care about this character despite never seeing a single episode, asked another. (Indeed, it seems many of Tiny Chefs most fervent supporters only learned of his existence this week.)
Oh. Nickelodeon BROKE this man…. pic.twitter.com/OGh0Cz6OCv— Minty (@limooosin) June 24, 2025
Normalize having characters reacting to their shows/films getting cancelled to make people hate CEOs even more, one X user wrote. Another added, This is why animation is so important too. AI slop wont make you feel emotions like this.
This is why animation is so important too. AI slop won't make you feel emotions like this https://t.co/APJ76sRKDV— (@Astr0Papa) June 25, 2025
As for Cheffy, hes over on TikTok feeling his feels.
