In the latest chapter of the pizza wars, Papa Johns announced it is closing hundreds of North America locations during a fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. It will also cut about 7% of its workforce.
In that call, Papa Johns’ chief financial officer and president of North America Ravi Thanawal said the company plans to shutter a total of 300 underperforming restaurants in North America “that are not meeting brand expectations or lack a clear path to sustainable financial improvement, as well as locations where we can effectively transfer sales to a nearby restaurant.”
The closures will happen by the end of 2027, with the first two-thirds closed by year end. According to the company’s annual report, it had about 3,500 locations at the end of 2025, per CNN.
Papa Johns International (PZZA) was trading down over 8% at the end of Thursday’s trading day.
Fast Company has reached out to Papa Johns for a list of locations that will be closing.
The news comes just three weeks after Pizza Hut said it, too, was closing 250 “underperforming” locations in 2026 as fast-casual restaurant chains struggle, with consumer spending dropping amid higher inflation and a high cost of living. Pizza Hut plans to shut those 250 locations, which amount to about 3% of its U.S. locations, in the first six months of this year. The chain cited competition from rival Dominos Pizza and declining store sales.
Speaking of Domino’sunlike Pizza Hut and Papa Johns, its earnings beat expectations, and its success proves people are still eating tomato pies, even as the competition falters. What’s the secret sauce?
As Fast Company previously reported, Dominos chief financial officer Sandeep Reddy mentioned the company plans to capitalize on Pizza Hut’s recent store closings.
With overall pizza-eating up somewhere between 1 to 2%, the question remains: Who can capture these consumers, given their current nuanced purchasing behavior?
“The total number of pizzas sold [is] actually increasing 1%, as well as improvement in orders that included multiple pizzas . . . [but] single pie orders declined during the quarter, and total pizza sales declined low single digits as our order mix shifted towards smaller, non-specialty pizzas,” Papa Johns CEO Todd Penegor explained during Thursday’s earnings call.
Papa Johns reported fourth-quarter earnings results with revenue missing expectations, coming in at $498.2 million, below estimates of $517.9 million; and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) coming in at 34 cents, beating the expected 33 cents.
If the 1990 classic movie Ghost is any indication, the dead love a good tune. We all remember when the recently deceased Sam (Patrick Swayze) had his infamous pottery session with his very alive partner Molly (Demi Moore).
Now, Liquid Death and Spotify are aiming to use music in a similar way, by giving a few hundred of the recently deceased the opportunity to hear their favorite music for all of eternity. The two brands have collaborated on what they claim to be the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled speaker urn.
The tasteful white urn has a top outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker. Spotify is also introducing the Eternal Playlist Generator in the U.S., where you can answer a few questions and prompts to generate a personalized mix for your ashes to enjoy for all of eternity. Liquid Death is producing a few hundred of the urns, which will sell on its site for $495.
Liquid Deaths senior vice-president of marketing Dan Murphy says that the idea came out of informal conversations between the brands. Murphy had worked with Spotifys senior director of global brand and marketing, Lauren Solomon, and there were other connections between brand leaders.
It just started as, Our brands should work together sometime! says Murphy. Soon we were doing our Liquid Death thing, which is always the same: If you take another brand or celebrity into the Liquid Death universe, what is the one right answer? And so of course, it was the Eternal Urn powered by a Spotify custom playlist that’s going to fuel it.
The quirky collab strategy
Liquid Death has made a habit of creating quirky collabs with unlikely partners, but has stepped up its game over the past year. What started with a Martha Stewart candle has evolved into making a faux leather adult diaper for dive bars with Depends (The Pit Diaper), a coffin-shaped Death Trap snowboard with Burton, and Corpse Paint makeup with e.l.f. Cosmetics. Most sell out in minutes. The Corpse Paint ad, for example, hit 12 billion impressions in two weeks, and the limited-edition collab sold out in less than 45 minutes.
Murphy says the collabs have evolved significantly over the last two years, to include global brands like Amazon and Spotify. We’ve established our place in culture and creativity such that maybe two or three years ago, it might’ve been deemed a little too risky to work with us, or maybe we weren’t big enough or interesting enough, but now we’re kind of doing it in our sleep.
A month before Ozzy Osbourne died, he collaborated with Liquid Death on a collection of cans containing his DNA. For “Infinitely Recyclable Ozzy,” he drank 10 cans of the brand’s iced tea, leaving “trace DNA from his saliva” on the now-precious metal, which originally sold for $450 each. Weeks later, one sold on eBay for $4,655.
Murphy says that the brands collaboration strategy has been to create a brand halo for Liquid Death by using these unexpected collabs to reach new audiences.
We find a lot of brands are interested in our unique audience and our creativity, says Murphy. We film and produce and direct these things in-house, so they get that value, and then we’ll find brands that will allow me to extend my marketing budget, jump in on their audience, level up the PR with major household names, that bring what they do best to the table.
The companys last valuation was $1.4 billion in 2024, and in early 2026 it launched into the energy drink category. The company started with spring water, expanded to flavored sparkling water in 2021, juice-spiked iced teas in 2022, soda-flavored sparkling water this year, and nowmuch like Liquid I.V.sees opportunity in energy drinks.
We might not do as many collabs next year, so I think it’ll be even just a fewer, bigger, better strategy, says Murphy. As we move into a fourth category of healthy, better-for-you energy, it’s that next level of complexity of customer and occasion and strategy. So it’ll take a little bit more focus on the core product. We’ve never taken our eye off that ball, but I think as a consequence, we’ll just look to a few fewer and always bigger and better. That’s what we’re trying for.
The Pantheon
Bigger and better is getting tougher to reach after a few years of bigger and slightly unhinged collab ideas. Heres my Top 5 Pantheon of Liquid Death Collabs:
5. Deathtrap snowboard x Burton
No camber, no sidecut, absolutely should not be taken down a hill. Only 50 of these casket-shaped snowboards were made, and its a lock that all 50 are hanging on someones wall for wine and burrata night.
4. Death Watch x Nixon
Classy and timeless, and for the one-time low price of your eternal soul. The Death Watch started in 2021, and is still ticking, selling its fourth iteration in 2024.
3. Pit Diaper x Depends
Sometimes the Liquide Death creative team comes up with an idea and then approaches a brand to collaborate with on it. This faux leather dive bar diaper holder is one such example.
2. Corpse Paint x e.l.f. Cosmetics
One of the most unintuitive collabs ever made, but its numbers speak for itself. Absolute gangbusters for both brands.
Eternal Playlist Urn x Spotify
The weirdest, most useless, yet kind of amazing product we didnt know we needed. Steve Jobs once said, A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Damn you, Bluetooth speaker Urn, damn you.
The MAHA movement wants to name one of its own as Americas top doctor.
U.S. surgeon general nominee Casey Means fielded questions about vaccines, autism research, and her own qualifications before Congress this week, a critical moment in the Trump administrations quest to remake Americas health systems.
In her opening statements on Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Means expressed concerns about the proliferation of preventable disease that plagues Americans, including chronic illness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. During the hearing, Means touched on many policy priorities she shares with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other figures in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, better known as MAHAa spin on Trumps MAGA branding.
As surgeon general, I would call on every American and the Public Health Service to join in a great national healingone that halts preventable chronic disease, makes healthy living the easiest choice, honors the bodys connection to the environment, and puts America back on the road toward wholeness and health, Means said.
MAHA Controversy surrounds Means
A close ally and adviser of Kennedy, Means would be an anomalyas the first U.S. surgeon general who lacks an active medical license. Without an active medical license, doctors cannot see patients or write prescriptions. And Means says she has no plans to reactivate it, even if she is confirmed. Historically, practicing physicians with years of experience take on the role as Americas top public health communicator, but the qualification is tradition, not a requirement.
Means, a 38-year-old wellness influencer, graduated from Stanford Universitys medical school but left her surgical residency program at Oregon Health & Science University before completing it. Left my residency in my 5th year to focus on the real root causes of why Americans are so sick, Means, who was previously an otolaryngology resident, wrote on her LinkedIn page.
Public health leadership must address the evidence-based, modifiable drivers of chronic diseases, including ultra-processed diet, industrial chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, chronic stress and loneliness, and overmedicalization, Means said. I have been asked to help our nation get healthy and answer the call of millionsespecially motherswho are begging for transparency and support. That is what I am here to do.”
Means cashed in on health trends
Beyond her lack of experience as a practicing physician, Means is an untraditional surgeon general choice in other ways. She is a cofounder and former chief medical officer of the health tech startup Levels, which makes a popular app that helps people monitor their blood glucose levels continuously.
Levels has raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz and other prominent Silicon Valley investors. In excerpts from her book, Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, Means has extolled the virtues of monitoring blood sugar to shift eating habits and reduce global metabolic suffering.
Blood glucose monitoring isnt the only health business Means has cashed in on. The surgeon general nominee has also made hundreds of thousands of dollars by promoting supplements, vitamins, and wellness products through her newsletter and social media channelsoften without disclosing her paid partnerships. Those lucrative relationships pose sticky and unprecedented ethical questions for someone seeking to shape the national health conversation as Americas next surgeon general.
A MAHA-friendly vaccine message
Like other members of the MAHA movement, Means emphasizes personal habits and mindful eating, criticizing common pharmaceutical and medical interventions as a corporate cash grab. A prolific blogger, Means mixes sound sciencelike recent research on the risks of alcoholwith dubious claims sowing concerns about the dangers of vaccines.
There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children, Means wrote in a newsletter published last year, echoing a core concern of the anti-vaccine movement.
On Wednesday, Means faced direct questions over her beliefs about autism and vaccines from Republicans and Democrats alike. During the hearing, Means claimed that anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of my message while suggesting that the link between the autism crisis and vaccines remains unexplored.
Hinting at a possible link between autism and vaccines without scientific evidence denies established research on the topic and can dissuade adults and parents from seeking potentially lifesaving vaccinations. The American Medical Association wrote last year that an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism and urged people to seek vaccines, which have been proven to be safe and effective.
This week, 15 states announced that they would sue the Trump administration over its decision to pare down federal recommendations for childhood vaccines. While vaccinations for measles, polio, and whooping cough are still recommended for all children, federal health policies no longer recommend jabs for COVID-19, rotavirus, meningitis, hepatitis A, or hepatitis B across the board.
During her hearing, Means was pressed repeatedly to articulate her position on childhood vaccinesprobably the most contentious issue to emerge out of Kennedys MAHA movement. Means, who previously called the practice of giving newborns the hepatitis B vaccine absolute insanity, emphasized parent and patient choice over universal public health policies designed to protect Americans at large.
“I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they’re putting in their body or their children’s body, Means said.
If youve been caught up in the cottage cheese craze, take heed: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that you toss tubs of cottage cheese purchased from Walmart stores in 24 states because of concerns the ingredients werent fully pasteurized.
The FDA issued an alert Thursday of a voluntary recall of Great Value brand cottage cheese made by Saputo Cheese USA, though no illnesses or hospitalizations associated with the recalled dairy products have been reported. The recall affects Great Value cottage cheese products with milkfat content of 0%, 2%, and 4%, various curd sizes, and containers ranging from 16 ounces to 3 pounds that were distributed to Walmart stores earlier this month.
The issue was discovered by Saputo Cheese, the manufacturer, during pasteurizer troubleshooting exercises and the impacted pasteurizer was subsequently fixed and returned to normal function, according to the recall details. The FDA is recommending that people not eat the affected Great Value cottage cheese and either throw away the tub or return it to the Walmart store where you purchased it.
Consuming products that are not fully pasteurized can pose a significant health risk, especially to the young and elderly or immunocompromised individuals, the FDA advisory cautions.
The affected products have best if used by dates in early April and were sold at Walmart stores in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
A lack of full pasteurization is a very atypical reason for an FDA recall. In fact, Thursdays cottage cheese recall is the first instance among 850-plus recalls since March 2023 in which the reason cited was not fully pasteurized.
COTTAGE CHEESE CRAZE
Cottage cheese has become a favorite among social media foodie types in recent years thanks to its high protein content. Americans consumed roughly 2.4 pounds of cottage cheese in 2024, the most in 15 years, according to the latest figures on per-capita dairy consumption released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While cottage cheese is having a renaissance of sorts, it hasnt yet returned to its 1970s glory days when Americans were eating 4.6 pounds, on average.
In January, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new dietary guidelines that redesigned the food pyramid and encouraged Americans to consume more dairy, and particularly full-fat dairy, than in the recent past.
Thursdays recall announcement and the FDAs warning about consuming food that isnt fully pasteurized might seem at odds with some additional rhetoric from the Trump administration. Before he was appointed Health Secretary Kennedy posted on X in October 2024 that he intended to end what he termed the FDAs war on public health and called out the administrations aggressive suppression of a variety of products including raw milk, which is unpasteurized.
The FDA falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and is led by Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner. Any progress on creating standards for raw milk, as advocates were banking on, hasnt happened yet and isnt among the dozens of accomplishments that Makary touts on his X account for his first year as commissioner.
Neither Makary nor Kennedy have publicly commented about the cottage cheese recall.
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Since the 2008 housing bust and subsequent Great Financial Crisis (GFC), mortgage lending has steadily shifted away from big banks. In the years that followedamid tighter regulations, higher capital requirements, and elevated litigation riskmany large banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, reduced their mortgage footprint. In that void, nonbank lenders, also known as independent mortgage banks (IMBs), such as Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), and LoanDepot, gained market share.
Now, a top Federal Reserve official is openly questioning whether policy and regulation went too farand is signaling that a policy shift may be coming.
In a February 16 speech at the American Bankers Associations Community Bankers Conference, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman, pointed to what she described as a significant migration of mortgage origination and servicing out of the banking sector over the past 15 years.
According to Bowman:
In 2008, banks originated around 60% of mortgages and held the servicing rights on about 95% of mortgage balances.
In 2023, banks originated around 35% of mortgages and held the servicing rights on about 45% of mortgage balances.
Thats pretty in line with the data ResiClub pulled from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
During her speech, Bowman suggested that post-2013 capital rulesparticularly the treatment of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs)* under Basel standards**may have contributed to the mortgage retreat by banks. MSRs, which represent the expected value of servicing income when loans are sold into securitizations, were assigned higher risk weights and subject to deduction thresholds after the crisis. While regulators tightened those rules over concerns about valuation volatility and model risk, the capital treatment also made servicing and, by extension, mortgage origination less economically attractive for banks.
The result, Bowman implied, is a mortgage market increasingly concentrated in nonbank firms that lack deposit funding and operate under different supervisory and resolution frameworks. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Bowman said, borrowers with bank servicers were more likely to receive forbearance than those serviced by nonbankshighlighting structural differences that can matter during stress periods, she says.
Bowman previewed potential changes now under consideration, including removing the deduction requirement for MSRs and making mortgage capital rules more sensitive to loan-to-value (LTV) ratios rather than applying a uniform risk weight. Such changes would not unwind post-crisis reforms but could modestly improve the economics of bank mortgage activity, Bowman says.
Here’s what Bowman said in her February 16 speech:
Two regulatory proposals will soon be introduced that, among other broader changes to the regulatory capital framework, would increase bank incentives to engage in mortgage origination and servicing. First, the proposals would remove the requirement to deduct mortgage servicing assets from regulatory capital while maintaining the 250% risk weight assigned to these assets. We will seek comment on the appropriate risk weight for these assets. This change in the treatment of mortgage servicing assets would encourage bank participation in the mortgage servicing business while recognizing uncertainty regarding the value of these assets over the economic cycle.
“Second, the proposals would also consider increasing the risk sensitivity of capital requirements for mortgage loans on bank books. One approach would be to use loan-to-value ratios to determine the applicable risk weight for residential real estate exposures, rather than applying a uniform risk weight regardless of LTV. This change could better align capital requirements with actual risk, support on-balance-sheet lending by banks, and potentially reverse the trend of migration of mortgage activity to nonbanks over the past 15 years.
James Kleimann, founder of The Mortgage Scoop, writes in a recent newsletter:
This stuff is quite complicated, but basically, the Fed is weighing a plan to remove the rule that banks must deduct MSR assets from regulatory capital while maintaining a 250% risk weight for those assets. In plain English, that means regulators treat $1 of MSRs like $2.50 of risky assets. What the appropriate risk weight level should be remains the central question, but this potential change is something the MBA [Mortgage Bankers Association] has been arguing in favor of for years.
Big picture: If adopted, the proposals could mark the beginning of a gradual rebalancing in housing financeone that brings more mortgage origination and servicing back inside the traditional banking system after more than a decade of migration outward.
For the first time in history, podcasts have overtaken talk radio as the most-listened-to medium for spoken-word audio in the United States.
Podcasts, including video podcasts, eclipsed AM/FM talk radio (which notably doesnt include listening to music on the radio), with 40% of listening time, as opposed to 39% for radio, according to Edison Researchs Share of Ear survey.
Researchers have tracked these statistics over the last decade. In 2015, AM/FM radio accounted for 75% of the time Americans spent listening to spoken-word audio. At the time, podcasts accounted for just 10%.
Year over year, that gap has slowly closed, as podcasts boomed in popularity, increasingly keeping us company on daily commutes and during menial tasks. Over half of Americans, 55%an estimated 158 million peoplelisten to a podcast monthly, and 40%, or 115 million, listen every week.
This year, the scales finally tipped.
Although the difference is only 1 percentage point, this is the first time podcast listenership has surpassed radio. Whether the gap continues to widen remains to be seen.
Watching podcasts has become a growing trend over the past year, perhaps shifting the balance in podcasts favor. YouTube said viewers watched 700 million hours of podcasts each month in 2025 on living room devices like TVs, up from 400 million the previous year.
Streaming platforms like Netflix have inked deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports to bring podcasts to their services. Daytime talk shows have also suffered blows, including the recent cancellations of both Kelly Clarksons and Sherri Shepherds TV talk shows.
Apples audio-only app has taken a hit as well, falling from 15.7% of monthly podcast listeners preferred platform in 2022 to 11.3% in 2025.
But audio-only isnt going anywhere, at least for now. According to Triton Digitals annual podcasting report, only 7% of audiences exclusively watch their favorite podcasts, while 13% exclusively listen. The remaining 80% alternate between the two.
The meaning of the word podcast has vastly expanded and grown increasingly diffuse as our media habits shift, Joe Berkowitz recently wrote for Fast Company.
As for the future of podcastingnot talk radio, not TV chat show, but instead a secret third thing.
eBay is laying off about 800 employees, or 6% of its full-time workforce, saying the move is a push to align with its strategic priorities. It comes a week after the company announced it was acquiring second-hand clothing app Depop from rival Etsy for $1.2 billion.
Depop is popular with millennials and Gen Z, and is part of eBay’s bid for younger consumers, who are gravitating to second-hand shopping online for sustainability and financial reasons.
eBay Inc. (EBAY) was trading up 3.3% in midday trading at the time of this writing.
This is eBay’s third round of layoffs since 2023. The online second-hand retailer cut 1,000 jobs in 2024 (9% of its workforce), after it cut 500 jobs in 2023 (or 4% of its workforce), per TechCrunch.
We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce,” a spokesperson for eBay tells Fast Company. “We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect.
The Silicon Valley-based online retailer has also been heavily investing in artificial intelligence. The eBay spokesperson said the cuts are not AI-related.
eBay financials
This latest round of layoffs comes just two weeks after eBay reported strong fourth-quarter earnings for 2025, with revenue coming in at $2.97 billion, beating estimates of $2.88 billion; and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.41, beating estimates of $1.35.
“2025 was a milestone year for eBay, and our results reflect the strength of our strategy and the disciplined execution behind it,” eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said in that earnings release. “As we continue to harness AI to elevate thecustomer experience worldwide, eBay is in the strongest position it has been in years.”
eBay has a current market capitalization of $40.2 billion.
AI has not changed the importance of judgment in product leadership. What it has changed is the cost of getting it wrong.
Early in my career, I learned a principle that still guides how I think about building products: The strongest decisions rarely start with perfect data. They start with conviction, a hypothesis shaped by experience, customer insight, and pattern recognition. What ultimately separates high-performing product organizations from average ones is how quickly and confidently instinct is validated. That validation is the true role of product analytics, and increasingly, it is where AI amplifies its value.
Analytics tests whether what you believed would happen actually did, and to inform what you do next. When treating analytics as a decision engine rather than a reporting layer, it fundamentally changes how teams operate.
ANALYTICS SPRAWL REDUCES CLARITY
Across nearly every organization I have worked in, regardless of size or industry, one pattern shows up with remarkable consistency: analytics sprawl.
Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics, and Pendo are all excellent tools, adopted with good intent to solve real problems. However, when allor even severalcoexist within a single organization, they often create fragmentation that undermines decision-making. The issue is not the tools themselves, but the absence of a clear leadership decision to standardize.
When analytics lives across multiple platforms, each with its own methodology and definitions, even basic questions become difficult to answer. AI magnifies that problem. Ask a simple question like, How many monthly unique visitors do we get? With data spread across multiple analytics platforms, there is no clean answer. You cannot aggregate the numbers. There is no deduplication. Slight differences in definitions erode trust. Teams stop discussing insights and start debating whose data is correct.
That is not a tooling failure. It is a decision-making failure.
INCONSISTENT DATA SCALES CONFUSION
This challenge matters even more in an AI-driven world because AI depends on coherence. Models train on ambiguous metrics. If foundations are inconsistent, AI will scale confusion faster than any human ever could.
Especially in organizations with multiple business units and products, analytics must start before dashboards, instrumentation plans, or AI ambitions. It starts with clarity. This comes from understanding what decisions must be made with confidence and what questions must be answered consistently across teams.
Once that is established, everything else follows. Selecting the right product analytics platform is based on business requirements, not convenience. That platform may differ by context. In fact, I have yet to implement the same analytics tool twice. What stays the same is the discipline required to make analytics and AI effective at scale. Instinct may start the journey, but data must validate it. Tool sprawl is a leadership choice rather than a technical inevitability, and shared definitions matter far more than dashboards or models.
Analytics and AI only matter when they improve decisions. When that foundation exists, AI becomes a true force multiplier, and organizations gain speed, trust, and the ability to scale. Insights surface faster, patterns emerge sooner, and teams spend far less time reconciling data and far more time acting on it. Leaders move from reacting to signals to shaping outcomes. Without that foundation, AI simply makes bad analytics louder.
A SIMPLE CHALLENGE FOR LEADERS
If you lead product, technology, or digital teams, here are three simple questions to consider:
How many analytics tools does your organization use across your products?
Do your teams share the same definitions for basic metrics?
Can you answer a question once and trust the answer everywhere?
If those answers vary, the issue is not analytics or AI. It is decision-making. If your AI strategy is ahead of your analytics foundations, you are scaling uncertainty, not intelligence.
Darren Person is EVP and chief digital officer of Cengage Group.
The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate slipped this week below 6% for the first time since late 2022, good news for home shoppers as the spring homebuying season gets rolling.
The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate fell to 5.98% from 6.01% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the rate averaged 6.76%.
The average rate has been hovering close to 6% this year. This latest dip, its third decline in a row, brings it closer to its lowest level since Sept. 8, 2022, when it was 5.89%.
Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserves interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.
The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.02% at midday Thursday, down from around 4.07% a week ago.
Mortgage rates have been trending lower for months, helping drive a pickup in home sales the last four months of 2025, but not enough to lift the housing market out of its slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes remained stuck last year at 30-year lows. And more buyer-friendly mortgage rates this year werent enough to lift home sales last month. They posted the biggest monthly drop in nearly four years and the slowest annualized sales pace in more than two years.
Still, with the average rate on a 30-year mortgage now below 6% as the annual spring homebuying season begins, it could encourage prospective home shoppers who can afford to buy at current rates to shop for a home this spring.
Assuming rates stay below 6%, buyers and sellers are going to start getting back into the market, said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. March is when the spring homebuying season typically begins to ramp up and with rates at a three-and-a-half year low, it could be a barn burner of a spring homebuying season.
Alex Veiga, AP business writer
When Dr. Wendy Ross logged on for a Zoom meeting in early 2024, she wasnt sure who to expect on the other side of the call.
It was a digital writers’ room, Ross tells Fast Company, “and in the upper left-hand cornerI’ll never forget itwas Noah Wyle.
Ross, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and the director of Jefferson Center for Autism & Neurodiversity in Philadelphia, had received a request to lend her expertise to the writers of a new medical seriesbut they told her only that it was set in an emergency room and would potentially feature an autistic doctor. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I thought it sounded kind of cool, she says.
That show went on to become HBO’s hit drama The Pitt, which won three Emmy Awards and averaged 10 million viewers an episode in its first season. Wyle is an executive producer and a star of the show, making his return to medical dramas 30 years after his breakout role on ER. (Ross recalls that show airing at the same time she was first studying medicine: In my fangirl world, we went to medical school together, she saysthough when meeting him over Zoom, she kept her cool.)
From the get-go, Ross says, The Pitts writers were very serious about not portraying a stereotypical situation regarding autism. “That was in the original request that was posed to me,” she says.
Her advice eventually helped shape fan-favorite character Dr. Mel King (played by Taylor Dearden), a bright-eyed resident new to the ER in the show’s first season.
[Photo: HBO]
Mel exhibits many autistic-coded traits, like self-soothing, the occasional dropped social cue, and a knack for repetitive, focused tasks. But notably, shes never confirmed on the show to be diagnosed as neurodivergent. Instead, viewers get to see many sides of Mel as the season unfolds: her compassion as she comforts a child losing her sister, her earnestness as she befriends her fellow doctors, her eccentricity as she calms herself by repeating Megan Thee Stallion lyrics like a mantra.
The decision not to confirm a diagnosis onscreen was a recommendation from Ross.
I suggested that it not be clear whether or not this character knew she was on the spectrum, but that some of these characteristics unfold subtly and naturally, as they do in real life, she says. Autistic women are often diagnosed later in life than autistic men; Ross even points out that many women dont receive diagnoses themselves until their children are diagnosed, prompting them to recognize shared traits. Mel stands in for these women, whose autistic traits could pass for neurotypical if unexamined.
You see her sometimes do these quirky, unexpected, very enthusiastic things that are kind of subtle, Ross says, but for people who know, you know.
A difficult reality
The year prior to being tapped by The Pitts writers room, Ross co-authored an article on the experiences of autistic doctors in the workplace in collaboration with Autistic Doctors International.
The data in that article was very disconcerting and, frankly, a little bit sad, she says. Ross and her fellow researchers found that of the 225 autistic doctors surveyed, 77 percent had considered suicide, while 24% had attempted it. 80% of respondents said theyd worked with another doctor they suspected was autistic, but only 22% had worked with a doctor they knew was autistic.
There’s a lot of anxiety and depression related to being an autistic doctor, Ross says. Part of it is, its a don’t ask, dont tell kind of situation, because people are afraid of the stigma, and by the time they do disclose, they’ve had so many challenges that things quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Banishing stereotypical mythology
Ross work with autistic doctors caught the attention of The Pitt‘s development team, who contacted her through the University of Southern Californias Hollywood, Health & Society program, a service that connects the entertainment industry with experts in medicine and safety.
“I think that this is an extremely sincere group of people that is motivated by more than the popularity of a show, and I think that’s really special, says Ross.
Ross advised The Pitt to avoid overused tropes of autistic characters on televisionparticularly, what she calls the stereotypical mythology of autistic people being savants.
While there are some autistic savants, many autistic individuals have varying levels of cognitive abilities like the rest of us, she says, noting that their actual super strength is in dealing with other neurodivergent individuals in stressful situations (like being in an emergency room).
Its really important that we understand all kinds of minds, that we understand that everyone has strengths that they bring to the table,” Ross says. “They don’t have to be savants to provide added value.”
Ross also recommended that The Pitt cast a neurodivergent actress in the role, which she says lends a level of authenticity to any portrayal of autism.
[Photo: HBO]
The Pitt did so in casting Dearden, who shared that she has ADHD after the first season aired.
Dearden, for her part, has shared the importance of bringing authenticity to her performance as Mel: Im really sick of what people usually do on TV, she said in an interview with Variety. I feel like every time its ever been portrayed, its usually complete robots or completely dysfunctional and cant survive at all. Its ridiculous.
The value of authentic representation
Now airing its second season, The Pitt has garnered massive critical acclaim not only for its portrayal of Mel, but for tackling themes like gun violence, substance abuse, and burnout in the healthcare industry. Beyond its stellar cast and writing, Ross attributes the shows success to its focus on empathy.
“That’s a pervasive theme that expands well beyond the autistic characters, she says. This idea of having authentic representations of people, of accepting all kinds of people, and understanding that we all have strengths and challenges that we engage with is really critically important.
Ross hopes that on-screen portrayals like The Pitts can inspire the real-world healthcare industry to do better by neurodivergent folksnot only patients, but doctors and other healthcare professionals. She compares it to the implementation of ramps for wheelchair users: Though designed for the needs of a specific demographic, they improve the lives of all people with mobility issues.
The strategies that we deploy for this population are things that all of our patients and colleagues benefit from, Ross says. This kind of care is the kind that some people really have to have, but that all of us ultimately deserve.
