Last week, two fonts became the unlikely stars of a political messaging firestorm, after the Trump administration replaced Calibri as its official diplomatic font in favor of Times New Roman, claiming that an initial shift to Calibri in 2023 was part of former President Bidens DEIA agenda. The implication was clear: Calibri was framed as a liberal, Democratic font; while Times New Roman took its place as the Trump administrations more conservative choice. Now, a new study is revealing the major flaw in this logic: font is certainly a political tool, but its not inherently partisan.
The study, titled Youre Just Not My Type: How Attitudes Towards Fonts Explain Affective Polarization, examines how affective polarizationor the tendency to associate positive feelings with ones political ingroup, and negative feelings with outgroupsimpacts peoples reception of different fonts. The study showed that, across multiple kinds of fonts, respondents were more likely to respond favorably to a font if they were told that it was associated with their own partisan and ideological beliefs.
As the studys conclusion explains, “People will ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the typeface in a political logo based on their political views of the candidate it represents. According to the researchers behind the study, Katherine Haenschen, Shannon Zenner, and Jessica R. Collier, this finding demonstrates that campaign designers shouldnt feel constrained to only using certain kinds of fonts in their workbecause, at the end of the day, constituents vote for candidates, not fonts.
Emotion leads to analytical inconsistency
This new study adds another layer of nuance to several years worth of research on how fonts are perceived in a political context.
In 2019, an initial study coauthored by Haenschen found that individuals do make some instinctive ideological distinctions between typefaces. Serifs, like Times New Roman or Garamond, were rated by study participants as more conservative; while sans serifs such as Helvetica or Arial were rated as more liberal. But that perception isn’t the same as reality. Based on 2020 data from the Center for American Politics and Design, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to use sans serif fonts, with 68% of Democratic candidates and 62% of Republican candidates using sans serifs that year, respectively.
Haenschen, Zenner, and Colliers research offers more context on why that might be the case. Across three survey experiments, the researchers tested the relationship between political identity and emotional reactions to typefaces. They found that, when it comes to fonts in politics, emotions matter more than stylistic preference.
In one condition, participants were shown a font along with a brief description framing it as ideologically associatedlike, for example, Time magazine rates Garamond as the most conservative font. In another, participants were shown a typeface with a partisan description (which refers to party affiliation), like, Time magazine rates Century Gothic as the most Democratic font. They were then asked to rate how much they liked the font.
In both the ideological and partisan cases, respondents’ favorability ratings were noticeably impacted by their own political views. And the more partisan a respondent was, the more these descriptors impacted their choices.
If you tell me, This font is liked by conservatives, and I’m a conservative, then that makes me like it even more, Zenner says. If you tell me that liberals like this typeface, and I’m not a liberal, then I tend to dislike that typefaceor it will affect how much I like it.
While some respondents resisted these impacts, she says, most peoples political affiliation dominated their responses more than their actual taste. We saw that the political grouping you have can really overrun any kind of taste.
But it’s good news for designers, actually
For campaign designers, these results may actually be good news. Zenner says designers shouldnt worry about constraining their font choices based on ideological associations, because, ultimately, voters will associate their positive (or negative) feelings about a candidate with the font itself.
Designers need to keep in mind that they still have the ability to make choices about typefaces, Zenner says. They shouldnt say, I can only pick a sans serif typeface if we have a liberal candidate, or I can only pick a serif if we have a conservative candidate, because, no matter what, the partisanship of the people who are voting swamps all these taste-level things.
For some candidates, she adds, this research also opens the door to convey a more nuanced platform through design. For example, a Republican candidate campaigning in a swing state might opt for a sans serif font more traditionally perceived liberal to communicate a more forward-thinking, modern, or progressive stance, without actually alienating their voters.
Affective polarization can also help explain how a font can so easily become a political flashpoint, as in the case of the Trump administrations nixing of Calibri in favor of Times New Roman. As soon as these typefaces became a topic of political discussion, Zenner says, the way people responded to them became inherently tied to their own political affiliations. Its no longer about how the font looks, or works, or whether anyone actually likes itits all about how its been politically labeled.
People will be like, I only want stuff that looks like Times New Roman because I associate with MAGA and Trump, and therefore I’m going to back that up, Zenner says. Or the opposite will be like, Im definitely going to use Calibri in everything and I am going to make a statement by doing that, and I don’t know if I even care for it or if I like it or notit’ll just be the politics of it. I think it’s an example of where, yes, these differences in taste exist, but they’re very much driven by culture.
Chipotle is officially in its Ozempic era.
Today, the brand is launching an all-new High Protein Menu in the U.S. and Canada, which it describes as a clean menu for the protein movement. The menu comes with six items, including proteinmaxxed burritos and bowls and a new salad option.
The real stand-out, though, is what Chipotle is billing as its “first-ever snack,” but is really just a tiny cup of chicken. The High Protein Cup is a topping-less, four-ounce serving of adobo-seasoned chicken that you could easily hold in the palm of your handand it’s a perfect, if somewhat depressing, symbol of the GLP-1 age.
For Chipotle, the new menu means embracing two emerging trends in the food and beverage space: bringing off-menu, TikTok-inspired hacks into its official product offerings, and offering more nutritionally optimized (and visually unappealing) options as GLP-1 weight loss drugs begin to transform American consumers eating habits.
[Photos: Chipotle]
Menu hacks go mainstream
Over the past few months, popular chains have increasingly been turning to platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels to see exactly how their fans are engaging with menusand bringing those popular online hacks into the real world. Starbucks ignited the trend in July by launching a secret menu in its app that built off of the digital-driven consumer behavior of drink customization. That same month, Taco Bell tried something similar by rolling out a feature called Fan Style, which let users build their own menu items and share them on socials.
In a press release, Chipotle explicitly cited a viral TikTok of a fan ordering a side of chicken for an extra protein boost as one of the inspirations behind its new High Protein Menu.
“On social media, guests have been ‘hacking’ their orders by getting a side of protein as a standalone snack,” says Chris Brandt, Chipotle’s chief brand officer. “Were formalizing that behavior.”
@maditev #chipotlehacks #chipotle its just so satisfying original sound – Madi Teeuws
Chipotle’s Ozempic era
Chipotle’s new menu appears to be targeting two different prospective customers: Those who are embracing the broader high protein trend, and those who are seeking low calorie, nutrient-dense options out of necessity driven by GLP-1s. The difference between these two categories is stark.
Protein in its own right is currently having a moment across the fitness and nutrition worlds, and that’s snowballed into the macronutrient finding its way into everything from Cheerios to Starbucks drinks and Propel electrolytes. New protein-focused items on Chipotle’s menu include a double high protein bowl and burrito, both filled with chicken, beans, and other toppings, and both clocking in at around 80g of protein for 800 calories.
But what really stands out about the Chipotle High Protein Menu are its options geared toward customers on GLP-1sa group that would otherwise be left behind by Chipotle’s traditional, high-calorie burritos. These include a High Protein-High Fiber Bowl and High Protein-Low Calorie salad, both explicitly labeled “GLP-1 friendly”; an Adobo Chicken Taco (which is a singular taco with 190 calories); and the aforementioned four-ounce chicken cup.
“We designed GLP-1-friendly builds to generally align with widely shared guidance: approximately 300 to 550 calories, 20 to 40 grams of protein, and 6 to 12 grams of fiber,” says Brandt. “Our goal is to make it simple to find options that fit those ranges.”
The logic behind the tiny chicken cup is clear: GLP-1 users need small, low-calorie, protein packed portions, because their brain’s hunger signals have been altered to feel fuller faster. But the unfortunate side effect of this effort is that, compared to Chipotle’s iconic chunky burritos and overstuffed bowls, its Ozempic-optimized chicken snack looks more like plain, sad fuel to be dutifully digested than a meal to look forward to.
Chipotle is hardly the first brand to rethink its menus for the GLP-1 era, and it wont be the last. The brands embrace of new menu items geared toward smaller appetites signals that, as weight loss medications continue to fly off pharmacy shelves, GLP-1-centric menus may become the norm for other fast casual spots. We just hope they’ll add a few toppings to their offerings.
There’s no shortage of apocalyptic headlines about the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence. For workers, the technology has inflicted anxiety and uncertainty, provoking questions of when, how many, and which kinds of workers will be replaced. Companies have been propelled into a FOMO fury to integrate AI expediently or miss out on efficiency, cost savings, and competitive advantage. The disruption is inevitable, but from where I sit at the nexus of employee mental health and technology, we’re asking the wrong questions.
Enhancing, not replacing, humans
As CEO of Calm, I have spent the past year visiting with executives and their teams across the country to understand how they are faring amid the uncertainty. No matter their sector or location, employers and employees alike have shared their resounding commitment to a future where human talent will still lead, where work will still be human-powered.
There’s no doubt that the future will be different and that workforces will be impacted. The how, who and when of it all is likely to remain uncertain for some time. AI is already transforming how we workbut it isn’t replacing the human element of work. It’s enhancing it. The future of work won’t be man versus machine; it will be man and machine. I see this every day in our work and in conversations with others navigating this transition.
An experiment
One recent experiment reinforced this truth. Partnering with a major chip company, our team explored whether AI visual-language models could help people recognize and reflect on their own emotions like happiness, sadness, or fearso that they might use them to overcome a barrier many face in seeking mental health support: putting their feelings into words. The aim wasn’t to use machines to tell someone how they feel, but to use technology to help support emotional self-awareness that could lead to better descriptions of their emotional experience and other important outcomes, ultimately enhancing their journey with mental health support.
While the AI model achieved 80% accuracy in mapping facial expressions to core emotions, which is closing the gap on the level of accuracy needed to deploy the tool for use, it was clear that achieving the level of accuracy needed could only be achieved with human input to label the data. In short, AI gave us scale to gather and get close to helpful analysis, but human input gave that data the accuracy and meaning we needed to get to a use case. This isn’t just true for mental health technology. It’s the blueprint for the future of work across every industry. Technology supports it, but humans lead it.
The organizations that will succeed won’t be the ones deploying technology in isolation. They’ll be the ones that invest as deeply in human capacity as they do in data and algorithmsprioritizing mental-health support infrastructure, designing resilient cultures, and creating workplaces where people and machines complement one another. And that requires a specific kind of leadership: leaders who ask how employees see themselves integrating AI to supercharge their work, not replace itand who actively encourage their teams to engage with these tools in ways that feel empowering and additive. Leaders who listen to what their teams need now to be ready for the AI future. Leaders who model the human capabilities no algorithm can replicate: creativity, judgment, empathy, and emotional intelligence.
Overwhelmed
But here’s the problem: the very people we need to guide us through this transition are struggling to stay afloat themselves. Calm Health’s latest survey of more than 250 U.S.-based C-suite executives revealed a striking paradox. While nearly nine in ten rate their mental and emotional health as “good,” nearly half say they feel overwhelmed; one in four report anxiety or depression tied to their role. Sleep disruption (41%), exhaustion (34%), and an inability to be mentally present (40%) are rampant. Many leaders say they’ve considered stepping down or changing careers.
This isn’t just about the general difficulty of leadership. This crisis is happening as leaders navigate one of the most disruptive technological transformations in history. They’re making critical decisions about AI integration, workforce transformation, and organizational changewhile burned out, anxious, and unable to be mentally present. They’re being asked to model emotional intelligence and human-centered thinking while running on empty. Leaders who are sleep-deprived and overwhelmed cannot do the thoughtful, human-centered work that AI integration demands. They can’t ask the right questions about preserving creativity and empathy in their organizations. They can’t build psychologically safe environments where employees feel secure enough to experiment with new tools. They can’t listen deeply to their teams’ needs or properly mentor the next generation of leaders. And they certainly can’t inspire and sustain organizations through profound uncertainty.
The wrong questions
This leads me to believe that were asking the wrong questions when debating AI and the future of work. We should not be asking which sectors will be transformed and how fast. We know that it will be all sectors, and transformation is already happening. We should be asking questions about how we are supporting our leaders and employees through this transition. How are we fostering a shared vision and sense of connection? How are we minimizing exhaustion, burnout and anxiety? Eighty-four percent of executives believe that mental health directly impacts their company’s bottom line.Research shows that when workplaces invest in well-being, employees are three times more likely to be engaged, far less likely to burn out, and significantly more loyal to their employer. Burnout alone drives $200300 billion in lost productivity and turnover each year, while companies that invest in mental-health care see returns of up to 4:1 through lower absenteeism, better performance, and improved retention.
At Calm Health, we see this firsthand. When employees engage with our offerings, 77% complete a mental-health screening, 39% enroll in a clinical program, and 37% report improved well-being after a single session. The benefits dont just improve individual livesthey lift culture, performance, and the organization as a whole. And that begins atthe top. None of that is possible when leaders themselves are depleted.
Contrary to dystopian headlines, most leaders already understand the human + AI future. Just 13% fear AI will replace human workers. Nearly 60% see AI and human talent as complementary. Thirty-one percent believe AI will free people to focus on higher-value work; another 25% believe it enhances human capabilities rather than replaces them. And almost 80% describe the human brain as the “original data center.”
These aren’t comfort statements. They’re strategic imperatives. The leaders who hold this vision are right. But vision without capacity is just aspiration. To actually build organizations where humans and AI complement one another, leaders need to be mentally and emotionally equipped to do that work. Well-being in the workplace isn’t just nice to haveit is the infrastructure that enables performance, especially in the era of AI. Technology may speed and scale work, but it doesn’t relieve the need for emotional presence or psychological safety.
AI will reshape nearly every job, industry, and business model. The question isn’t whether humans will still be needed. They will. The question is whether we’ll prioritize investment in the mental health of that original data center and AI at the same pace. Human capacityespecially leadership capacityis required to navigate our future wisely. We need to support the leaders and the next generation of management to guide us there. That work begins with ensuring todays leaders not only have access to transformational AI tools, but also mental health resources that support their higher-value work, so they can actually show upmentally present, emotionally resilient, and genuinely human.
You’ve probably seen them: clutch purses designed to look like croissants, anime-inspired hot sauce gear, purposefully ketchup-stained shirts, and even fried chicken perfumes. It seems like many of our favorite food brands are betting on merch, with surprisingly effective results.
While some might see these as stunts or a new revenue play, its more meaningfully a reflection of cultural and consumer shifts. Consumers today arent just eating at these restaurants, theyre fans of the brands themselves. Chain restaurants like Waffle House, Applebee’s, or Cracker Barrel occupy a unique emotional space. Just as people support sports teams, they express fandom for these cultural icons.
And their proud embrace of brand merch isnt ironic or an inside joke. Whether its through TikTok-famous denim McMerch or retro restaurant lampshades, brands are making genuine connections.
[Photo: Xavi Lopez/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images]
Theres a strong element of nostalgia driving this. Research of Gen Z, millennials and Gen-X reveal high levels of historical nostalgia compared with baby boomers and the silent generation. For fast casuals, this leads to people celebrating the brands they grew up with; ones that feel like part of their personal and cultural history. But social media plays a role here as wellturning consumers into more than customers, but advocates and extensions of the brand. Branded apparel like shirts, hats, or hoodies become a vehicle for that expression. Aligning with a beloved restaurant can feel like joining a community, and social media amplifies that connection.
In our current times of economic uncertainty, brand advocacy becomes even more valuable. Thats why fast casual apparel and other collaborations can help maintain visibility, attract new audiences, and reinforce loyalty; smart plays if done thoughtfully.
[Photo: Panera]
Brands worth wearing
Todays fast casual chains face mixed economic realities. Some brands are thriving; others are struggling under macroeconomic pressure. Young and lower-income consumers, for example, are spending less at chain restaurants, likely due to tighter budgets. When forced to choose between dining out and cooking at home, many opt for the latter.
But these iconic restaurant brands are also having a cultural moment. We now live in a post-ironic world. In the 1990s, wearing fast-food or diner merch mightve been tongue-in-cheek. Today, its a genuine cultural statement. People are earnestly celebrating brands that once might have been considered lowbrow. This reflects a larger postmodern blending of high and low culture, where Michelin-star restaurants serve burgers, and cultural hierarchies have softened. Consumers see authenticity and nostalgia as valuable, not kitsch.
Adding to that, these brands now have the ability to reach audiences in new ways: digitally and socially, creating activation opportunities far beyond traditional marketing. Together, this creates a climate where, suddenly, people are not only open to wearing their favorite food brands, they crave it. And while the initial impact for brands can be more revenue, its real value lies in brand building, deepening affinity, and strengthening the relationship between brands and their audiences.
[Photo: Arby’s]
What food fandom craves
While demand is up, adding a logo to a hat or shirt isnt enough. Instead, creating the right opportunity means translating the brand experience into something people genuinely want to live with; something that both celebrates what makes the brand itself and taps into whats happening in culture. The goal is to take the rituals, emotions, humor, or nostalgia tied to the brand and express them through products that feel culturally current, functional, or stylish enough to belong in peoples real lives.
[Photo: Pizza Hut/Chain]
Take Arbys 13 Hour Drip Fit, a recent project where we collaborated to transform a familiar part of the Arbys experiencethe messy joy of eating barbecueinto a wearable cultural moment. The napkin-made clothing line was playful, self-aware, and unmistakably Arbys, while also speaking to fashions fascination with absurdity and craft. Other ideas, like the Pizza Hutinspired Hut Hat, work because they tap into a universally recognizable brand experiencethe lights over the tableswhile aligning with cultures embrace of bold, nostalgic statement pieces that feel both fun and genuinely wearable.
As importantly, when executed well, these types of collaborations generate buzz, encourage social sharing, and attract influencers organically. Our “13 Hour Drip Fit” spread everywhere from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to the media to TikTok, earning valuable organic reach in the process. In these instances, success isnt just measured by sellouts but by cultural resonance and conversation.
[Photo: Heinz/ThredUp]
Of course, when stepping outside the norms of fast casual marketing, theres always a danger in overdoing things. Brands that chase trends or follow others risk appearing derivative. But playing it too safe leads to stagnation, and fast casuals cant afford to rely solely on traditional pricing tactics to serve their hungry fandom. Its those brands ready to create products that surprise and delight audiences that will spark the type of cultural conversation that will expand their reach.
BJ’s Wholesale Club is planning to open nine new U.S. stores in 2026, and already debuted a new location on December 17 in Casselberry, Floridaits third in December alone, following openings in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Sumter, South Carolina.
BJs currently has more than 250 clubs in 20-plus states. In 2025, the membership-based warehouse chain added 12 new locations in a number of states, including Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Our momentum remains strong as we continue to bring unbeatable value and convenience to new communities, Bill Werner, BJ’s Wholesale Club’s EVP of strategy and development, told Fast Company in a statement. Were on track to open our first clubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2026 and look forward to bringing BJs Wholesale Club to even more families in 2026 and beyond.
BJs confirmed to Fast Company that it will open clubs in the following locations in 2026:
Selma, North Carolina
Delray Beach, Florida
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Forney, Texas
Waxahachie, Texas
Grand Prairie, Texas
SW Fort Worth, Texas
Foley, Alabama
Mesquite, Texas
How does BJ’s work?
Like Costco and Sam’s Club, BJ’s is a membership-based warehouse chain that sells both bulk and regular-size products at a discount. Everything from groceries to tech, home goods, apparel, and gasoline is known to be competitively priced.
Members pay an annual fee, and can shop online or in-store.
BJ’s Wholesale Club financials
The Massachusetts-based chain reported strong third-quarter earnings, including a 9.8% increase to $126.3 million in revenue from membership fees, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.16, which beat analysts expectations. Total revenue came out to $5.35 billion, a 4.9% year-over-year increase.
BJs Wholesale Club Holdings (NYSE: BJ) was up more than 1% in midday trading on Wednesday, December 17.
Balancing on a railroad-tie-size beam of a platform floating in Spains Vigo Bay, Ricardo Tur crouches and points below. Dangling several feet underwater is a pen the size of a garden shed, home to 80 octopuses.
I squat too, hoping to glimpse even a single armthere are 640 of them down there! In my excitement, I lean too far and almost fall in.
Tur is a marine biologist who for the past decade has been feeding the octopuses on this batea, the Spanish term for the 65-foot-by-82-foot raft Im on. The rafts owner, Carlos Veiga, a short, fit 75-year-old who has fished the planets oceans since the Franco era, stands nearby. Around us in this inlet, which contains Europes busiest fishing port, are nearly 500 more bateas, primarily devoted to mussel farming. But Veigas raft tends to a far more complicated creature. It is the worlds oldest continuously operated aquaculture farm for Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus. No reporter has ever been aboard before.
The Spanish government granted Veigas fishing co-op, the Samertolameu Pot Fishers Association, an experimental license in 1998 to fatten up around 2,000 wild-caught octopuses per year. Veiga and his fellow fishermen retain permission to capture young adults, house them in shelters made of PVC pipe, and feed them fishing discards and special octopus food through a yellow tube that snakes down from the surface. Veiga tells me that the animals 5 feet below us are a month old. Once theyve reached 6 pounds, in another two months or so, Samertolameu can sell themfor about $45 each on a good dayat Vigos daily fish auction.
It would be nice to see them. But three decades of trial and error have taught Veiga and Tur that if cages are hung higher, there is too much light, and rainfall dilutes the salinity. Also, thieves can get ideas. Wholesale prices for large octopus in Europe have climbed to almost $8 per pound, double what they were in early 2021, FAO Globefish data show. (Shrimp and salmon prices are relatively unchanged.)
Demand for octopus is soaring. Global catches climbed from fewer than 35,000 tons back in 1950 to 375,000 tons in recent years, pushing the first-sale fish market to between $6 billion and $8 billion annually. Once a delicacy for adventurous eaters, octopus now appears on menus across the globe: mesquite-grilled for Texas barbecue, sliced for Japanese sushi, folded into Mexico City tacos, and sun-dried on the Mediterranean coast.
The surge has put intense pressure on wild stocks. Following a 400,000-ton catch in 2017, the decades largest, governments began to enact fishing bans. This summer, the octopus fishery in Galicia, where Veigas batea is also based, shut for three months so that populations could recover. Portugal instituted its own restrictions in August. In September, Morocco, the leading producer after China, halted catches until years end.
As a solution, many in the industry are starting to embrace the once unfathomable-sounding scheme of farming octopus commercially. If octopus can be scaled at the rate of previous fish species, its estimated that an additional 20,000 tons per year could be produced from farming by late next decade. That may not sound like a lot, but it equals the annual Octopus vulgaris catch for all of Europe in recent years, and its likely to grow. Whoever gets there first will be primed to take the spoils from a brand-new value chain, potentially worth $1 billion per year from farm to plate.
If it can be done, octopus would be the first new farmed animal protein to hit the market in half a centurysince salmon was first commercially raised in the 1970scapping off a marathon quest unlike any in modern aquaculture. For decades, farming octopus was believed to be impossible. It requires feeding a predator in captivity, putting animals that traditionally live alone in communal cages, and drastically improving a wild survival rate that ranks among natures worst: At best, one in every 1 million Octopus vulgaris eggs reaches maturity.
Six years ago, Turthen technical director at the Pescanova Biomarine Center, run by Spanish seafood conglomerate Nueva Pescanovaand a colleague from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, Pedro Domingues, pulled it off. They captively bred a lab-born male Octopus vulgaris, Goliath, with a lab-born female named Lourditas (after the French holy site Lourdes, where water supposedly performs miracles). Five generations of offspring kept reproducing. Veigas batea supplied breeding stock to the Pescanova Biomarine Center so that it could start additional generations; the young octopuses consumed a special feed in the lab, then some of them matured back on Veigas batea.
After decades of research at different centers and companies around the world, Nueva Pescanova announced in July 2019, its team had successfully closed the octopus reproduction cycle in aquaculture. Its next step would be building the worlds first industrial-scale octopus farm, in the Canary Islands, to raise octopuses for consumption. Then-CEO Ignacio Gutierrez promised that consumers would see farmed octopus starting in 2023.
The announcement outraged animal rights activists, all the way up to Jane Goodall, who found the idea abhorrent. But the shock rippled beyond typical activist circles as well. Octopuses are, after all, among the most mysterious and otherworldly creatures on the planet, popularly associated with exceptional cunning and skill. Nueva Pescanovas plans raised red flags even for meat eaters, igniting a debate about whether these cephalopods should be farmed at all (more on this later).
At the same time, Nueva Pescanovas own business entered a rocky stretch: three straight years of profit declines that culminated in 2024 with a $145 million decrease in revenue year over year. Turs octopus team was gutted. The Canary Islands government called for deeper environmental-impact studies before the farm could be built.
When Nueva Pescanovas plan appeared to run aground, many assumed the effort to cultivate octopuses had too. But as Fast Company discovered in Vigo, the work continues. The original team of Tur, Domingues, and Veiga has regrouped under a new banner; they are now looking for corporate backing. New companies have entered the race, including at least two other Spanish seafood purveyors and Japanese fast-food chain Tsukiji Gindaco (which sells takoyakifried octopus ballsat Los Angeless Dodger Stadium).
There is a remarkable sense of urgency among them. With global octopus catch levels plateauing and demand swelling, some company is likely to figure out hw to farm them. (Multiple scientists I spoke with assume that China could even be doing it already.) And the prize will be about more than just money.
Out of the Shallow Now: Farming eclipsed catching in 2020, and the gap has only widened sincefor every type of seafood. Sources: OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-2034; FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024; FAO
Whats happening in Vigo today could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it rightto establish rules from the outset that prioritize welfare, ecological responsibility, and food security for a growing world population. As the world has seen with industrial pork, chicken, and cattle farms, when cruel practices become entrenched, theyre hard to reform. And they rarely stop people from eating meat.
No food choice is without consequences.
Vigo, perched on Spains northwestern coast, has a credible claim as World Octopus Capital. A statue of Jules Verne with octopus legs dominates the harbor, eight-legged murals overtake building walls, and graffiti on the main plaza reads DONT EAT ME below an octopus flipping the bird. An hours drive inland, a decades-old festival serves the planets largest platter of octopus every year. Centuries ago, coastal fishermen paid tithes to monasteries in octopus. Today, Vigo is home to several of Spains biggest seafood conglomerates, including Nueva Pescanova.
In Vigos Old Town, Tur and I sit at a table inside Tapería O Canario, a block from his apartment. Before us lies an array of prawns, squid, gooseneck barnacles, and pulpo a la gallega, the Galician staple of boiled octopus, cut with scissors, drizzled with oil, dusted with paprika, and eaten with wood picks.
In 2021, O Canario became the first restaurant to serve captive-born octopus, a descendant of Lourditas, to Tur and a few other Nueva Pescanova executives. It had been hatched at the Biomarine Center, fattened in a Nueva Pescanova pen, then prepared six different ways.
Before he ran Nueva Pescanovas aquaculture R&D, Tur, 41, spent a decade studying marine life around the world: invasive starfish feeding on sea urchins in the Mediterranean, tuna in the Indian Ocean aboard a vessel once hijacked by pirates (before Tur joined), and toothfish in Antarctica. These experiences offered a firsthand lesson in the food systems fragility: Toothfish, an enormous snaggletoothed predator rebranded in the 1970s as Chilean sea bass, now fetches as much as $70 a pound, fueling overfishing and poaching.
Seafood is Earths most consumed animal protein. Humans caught or farmed 200 million tons of it in 2025, compared with 150 million tons of poultry, according to an estimate by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a global policy forum founded in 1961. Overexploitation and marine mismanagement have pushed fisheries to their biological limits, leaving very little room to catch more seafood sustainably. But because global human population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, the planet will, in fact, need more seafood: Demand is expected to double by then.
Without aquaculture, it will be impossible to feed the worlds growing population, explains Ángel Matamoro, an industry veteran who spent six years as Nueva Pescanovas chief corporate sustainability officer. In its latest annual report, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that wild-caught seafood has officially been eclipsed in global production by farmed seafood. Some 70% percent of salmon now comes from farms.
Only a handful of species have defied ongoing attempts at large-scale commercial farming: squid, eels, deep-sea crustaceans like lobsters, some large fish such as bluefin tuna. But wild squid are plentiful. Eels have a small market. Lobster is a luxury. Tuna simply requires too much space.
For decades, attempts to farm these eight-legged animalsthe common octopus in the Mediterranean, the western rock octopus in Australia, the Patagonian red octopus in Chilehad sputtered. In 2017, after scientists from Japans Nissui Corp., owner of frozen-seafood brand Gortons, artificially incubated eggs, the company boasted that it would be selling farmed Octopus sinensis in grocery stores within three years.
In a world obsessed with protein and anxious about fat and cholesterol, octopus could be the ultimate catch. Its leaner than chicken, high in amino acids, offers 75% of its calories in the form of protein, and is almost entirely edible. It grows fast, takes up little space, produces relatively little wasteand fetches top dollar. One could easily imagine lots of companies processing it into the kinds of palatable octobites now being sold to L.A. Dodgers fans.
Octopuses are marvels of mechanical engineering and masters of using their problem-solving skills and fluid forms to stage daring escapes from aquariums. They have throats that pass through their doughnut-shaped brains, three hearts pumping green blood, and arms they sometimes eatand can regenerate.
Fascination with them has exploded over the past decade. A year after Sy Montgomerys 2015 bestseller, The Soul of an Octopus, debuted, Peter Godfrey-Smiths Other Minds framed encounters with octopuses as the closest humans will get to meeting an intelligent alien. Documentaries followed, including Netflixs popular My Octopus Teacher in 2020. Fan clubs formed, Mak Robers octopus maze video racked up 100 million views on YouTube, novels featured octopus heroes, and department stores showcased octopus-themed home decor. We are in the golden age of octopus appreciation, Montgomery says.
The more en vogue octopuses have become, the harder it has been to defend raising them for food in tanks. Even Montgomery tells me that if Nueva Pescanovas farm had been proposed five years sooner, there would have been less moral outrage.
Nueva Pescanova discovered this the hard way. When the company unveiled its plans in 2019 for its $75 million Canary Islands breeding facility, animal advocates and scientists opposed the project, fast and loudly. Montgomery blasted it as extremely cruel. Godfrey-Smith, a professor of animal philosophy, joined three othersan environmental ecologist, an animal welfare expert, and a marine biologistto write what became opponents touchstone paper, The Case Against Octopus Farming.
They argued that octopuses would suffer stress, injury, and disease in captivity. They pointed to experiments like marine biologist Roger Hanlons 1977 attempt to raise Caribbean reef octopuses: He noted problems with cannibalism, containment, dependence upon live food, and the death of pregnant females.
The animals appetite also raised ecological concerns. Octopuses feed-conversion ratio is at least 3:1, the authors said, meaning that it takes at least 3 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of octopus. In animal agriculture, this is quick math for assessing environmental efficiency: One pound of beef requires 6 to 10 pounds of feed, pork 3 to 5, and chicken closer to 2. Because octopuses are carnivores, their feed requirements would devastate wild fisheries, the authors argued.
As opposition grew, members of Greenpeace and Spains animal-rights political party, PACMA, gathered in Gran Canaria, the site of Nueva Pescanovas planned facility. They painted themselves to look like octopuses and held signs reading OCTOPUS SLAVERY and STOP THE OCTOPUS PRISON. A manifesto asserting that octopuses are too intelligent for captivity was read aloud at protests in Berlin, New York, Mumbai, and Sydney.
Jane Goodall backed a petition that has collected more than 162,000 signatures. When I learned Spanish companies plan to imprison these sensitive, fascinating creatures in octopus farms, I was deeply distressed, the late primatologist wrote. PETA warned of horrific terror and pain and predicted that the octopuses captivity would almost certainly lead to unnatural aggression, cannibalism, injury, and death as they fight and struggle to escape.
The pressure turned personal. Tur says that an activist organization spammed his work email account with thousands of messages per minute, crashing it.
[Illustration: Chloe Niclas]
Tur had visited the proposed farming site at Gran Canarias port of Las Palmas several times, with an eye toward implementing some of the humane aquaculture practices hed been working on for years. A building onshore would contain nearly 1,000 tanks, to keep density low. Seawater would be pulled from the bay (and then cleaned before being returned). Plans included sand-padded raceways circulating water to give young octopuseswhich hardly stop movingsomething like an underwater treadmill. Adults would move to offshore enclosures similar to Veigas batea and be fed an advanced version of the same food.
When I reached out to Nueva Pescanova in 2023, asking to see the progress, the company invited me to visit the Biomarine Center once the research was ready. But as activist pressure ramped up, the company went silent. It never broke ground on the facility. In response to questions for this article, the press team replied, We dont have a spokesperson available at the moment.
Jennifer Bushman, executive director at the responsibly sourced seafood advocacy group Fed by Blue, wonders what the activist pressure has accomplished. Despite the outcry, consumption didnt decrease. It grew. We have determined wild-capture-only isnt scalable, Bushman argues. We have two options, as she sees it: Limit the quantity a growing world can consume, which would make prices soar, or find a way to do what weve done with the rest of our foodswe raise it.
Even the Romans knew how to fatten octopuses, researcher Pedro Domingues explains as we peer into one of Vigos ancient cetáreas, or stone pools, which stretch to the Mediterranean and mark the earliest attempts to raise seafood in controlled environments. The thing, Domingues says, is getting them to go to the bottom.
In the ocean, a female common octopus lays up to 500,000 eggs and dies after giving birth. The staggering number is natures hedge: Until hatchlings reach the size of rice grains and begin to settle, they drift in the current. Nearly all perish.
When hatchlings eat enough, though, they fall to the seafloorand their survival rate shoots up to almost 100%. Since the 1960s, researchers on at least three continents have tried to produce feed thats both ecological at scale and palatable to tadpole-size carnivores. Domingues succeeded, developing a special feed for Octopus maya with Carlos Rosas, a researcher in Yucatán, Mexico, who since 2004 has been helping a local fishing co-op there raise the Mexican four-eyed octopus in tanks outside his lab. At the Spanish Institute of Oceanography in the late 2010s, Domingues and Rosas discovered that if they mixed fish discards with polyunsaturated lipids and other ingredients, ran the result through a meat grinder, dried it, then milled that into powder, the picky hatchlings would eagerly consume it.
In the fall of 2018, Nueva Pescanovas Biomarine Center took eggs from a wild-caught mother and reared a group of juveniles that included baby Lourditas. The next July, Lourditas gave birth. A month later, those hatchlings sank to the floor, officially making her and Goliath parents.
For the next several months, Tur and Domingues logged 12 hours a day, seven days a week, tossing the special feed into tanks, collapsing exhausted each evening. They didnt stop eating, Domingues recalls. The pair watched the hatchlings go through their awkward puberty phase, sprouting elongated arms, discovering their suckers and clumsily sticking them onto the walls.
By October, 7 in 10 had survived. (The team also managed to save Lourditass life after spawning.) Using conservative estimates, Tur projected that Nueva Pescanovas anary Islands facility would have a survival rate at harvest of around 40%not perfect, but 39% better than nature, they said.
Meanwhile, whereas captive octopuses in Vigo Bay had required almost 6 pounds of feed to gain 1 poundnearly twice the already high ratio critics citedTur and Domingues say they achieved 1.4 pounds per pound gained, approaching the rate for salmon, one of the planets most sustainable animal proteins, at between 0.5 and 1.3 pounds per pound gained.
But salmon cant compete on time to market. Farmed salmon takes three years to mature. Even a palm-size oyster needs two. An octopus at Nueva Pescanova could be ready in just nine months. With two or three females, youd get 1 million eggs, explains Domingues. If even half survive, thats 500,000 octopuses. You can have aquaculture just with three female octopuses.
The technical barriers were falling. But Turs team needed to prove something else: that octopuses could be farmed humanely. That is where researcher Pep Rotllant came in. I met the marine biologist, who studies stress in octopuses, at his lab at the Spanish National Research Councils Institute of Marine Research in Vigo, where there are two floors of tanks for rearing sea creatures, aquariums of zebrafish whose stripes have been CRISPRd off, bags of glowing red algae, and an octopus room that I was surprised to find totally empty. He shrugged. Under European Union rules, he says, studying octopuses now requires scientists to submit the same amount of bioethics paperwork you would for humans or dogs and cats. He motioned toward the ocean outside. Meanwhile, fishermen can catch octopus without any problem and keep it in a boat.
Last year, his team published two papers with Tur and Nueva Pescanova that challenged common assumptions about octopus stress and health. One confirmed that the octopuses raised in captivity had skin microbiomes that did not contain pathogenic bacteria, unlike their wild counterparts, suggesting that by at least one biomarker, aquaculture might be healthier. The other tested for corticosteroids, the hormones that regulate well-being in vertebrates, and found octopuses produce nonemeaning that how they feel, so to speak, remains unclear, but its biochemically different from the way humans, birds, and even fish do.
Both sides can cite findings to bolster their arguments. Yet it is worth noting how many cephalopod researchers warn against over-ascribing intelligence to the octopus. The animal is genetically more closely related to a barnacle than to livestock, and it has half as many neurons as a crow, two-thirds of which sit in its limbs.
Roger Hanlon, author of the landmark 1977 study, has long urged caution about reading too much of ourselves into the species, once reminding audiences at the height of public blowback that thinking is a loaded word. Hanlon even titled the paper he wrote on his 1977 experiment with a reference to Octopus briareuss potential for mariculture (as marine aquaculture is also called), writing that his methods could be applicable to mariculture on a larger scale. Now retired, Hanlon did not respond to requests for comment. However, his colleague Jennifer Mather, author of Octopus: The Oceans Intelligent Invertebrate, wrote in a 2019 letter in the journal Science, I would like it if no one killed and ate the intelligent and fascinating octopuses that I work with, either caught in the wild or farmed in captivity. But I am a realist; people have to eat.
Still, suggesting that an animal capable of staging daring aquarium escapes could be healthier in captivity often feels futile. It is difficult when the public is busy watching a guy on Netflix befriend an octopus, Rotllant says.
Over the past year, the heat around octopus farming has intensified. Science ran a letter in late 2024 signed by Sy Montgomery, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and almost 100 other conservationists, environmental experts, and scientists at 77 institutions in 10 countries urging Congress to pass the OCTOPUS Act, outlawing octopus aquaculture in U.S. waters. O. vulgaris, the species featured in the award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, lives in the intertidal zone and is capable of problem-solving and play, they wrote. This species is not suited for a life in a controlled, sterile, and monotonous environment with set diets and regimented feeding schedules.
In response, 118 hard-biology cephalopod experts from 66 institutions in 25 countries, including Domingues and Rosas, formed the Sustainable Cephalopod Aquaculture and Welfare Group and issued their own letter last May. They challenged the idea that octopus sentience renders farming them unsuitable, noting that pigs, cows, and chickensno less sentienthave been farmed for millennia.
Seafood companies, meanwhile, are charging ahead. Since the public blowback, the industry has clammed up, choosing to play their cards close to their chest, says Japan-based marine biologist Ian Gleadall, organizr of the Sustainable Cephalopod Aquaculture and Welfare Group. Last year, one of Nueva Pescanovas Spanish rivals, Grupo Profand, announced that it had received a license to start an experimental octopus hatchery in Vigo Bay, but said it would be a regenerative project to restore and improve ecosystems only, with zero commercial aims. Activists, however, have already vowed to create a PR disaster for Grupo Profand, mirroring Nueva Pescanovas. (The company didnt respond to a request for an interview.)
Meanwhile, Nueva Pescanovas project, despite being stalled for three years, may not be entirely dead. Beatriz Calzada, president of the Port of Las Palmas, told me that in its latest update to her office, the company said it is now reconsidering the Canary Islands facility design, not abandoning it.
Richard Schweid, an author and journalist who got a tour of the Pescanova Biomarine Center last year for his forthcoming book Life on the Octopus Farm, tells me he doubts Nueva Pescanova will ever sell farmed octopus, but he believes that some company will commercially scale it (his money is on one of the Japanese ones hes tracking).
Chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern, a longtime blue food advocate and cofounder of the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture, tells me that if farming what he considers a profoundly sentient being proceeds, it must be done with precision and restraint, with input from universities, governments, and local communitiesnot just industry.
Back in Vigo, Tur is busy trying to build something like that. He and Nueva Pescanovas former aquaculture chief, David Tronosco, have founded a consultancy and project management company called Green Parrot Aqua Solutions and have begun reassembling the old team of scientists plus government partners and local fishermen for a new phase of study. In October, they established what Tur calls the worlds first offshore lab for octopus aquaculture research, on Carlos Veigas batea.
Their pilot project, dubbed Octopus Prime, involves fitting underwater enclosures with cameras and sensors to track animal health and behavior. Researchers in Spain, Portugal, and Mexico are involved, including Domingues and Rosas; Rotllant is using the data to hunt for welfare biomarkers. Tur says that theyre on track to reach a feed-conversion ratio of 1.2 to 1, edging closer to salmons benchmark.
Eventually, they hope to advance what Carlos Veiga and his fishing co-op have been doing in these waters for generations. You get profit, and you get something thats almost pure proteinno fat, low cholesterol, low pollution, low biological waste, Domingues says. What else do people want?
The small American bookstore is back. Over the last five years, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. jumped by 70%. In 2025 alone, 422 new bookstores opened, according to the American Booksellers Association.
The industrys success was far from inevitable. For a long time, indie bookstores were struggling. In 1995, when Amazon opened as the Earths largest bookstore and started undercutting the prices at brick and mortar stores, readers quickly started shopping online. Small stores, which were already facing competition from chains like Borders, started to close. By 2009, the number of independent bookstores across the country had dropped to an all-time low. Experts predicted that the industry would collapse. But then instead of continuing to declline, the numbers instead started to reverse The growth accelerated after the pandemic.
If you step back and try to understand what really happened from 2010 to today, it is a story of resilience, says Ryan Raffaelli, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies industries that beat the odds and survive in unexpected ways in the wake of technological change. Raffaelli has spent years researching the turnaround of indie bookstores. Its a story of hope. And its a story about the power of community.
[Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar]
A new strategy for a digital threat
Soon after the rise of Amazon, some bookstores tried to compete directly with the online giant by adding more titles to their stores, Raffaeli says. But others eventually adopted a different strategy, doubling down on whats uniquely possible in a physical space.
First, theres the ability to convene peoplesomething that small bookstores have always done with readings and other events, but that theyre doing even more now. Some stores have as many as 500 events a year. These are not just author events, but birthday parties, all these other types of things that are inviting people into the actual physical space to engage with other like-minded individuals that are passionate about literary topics, says Raffaeli. People start finding their own tribe and they go, and I want to be around these people.
Theyve also leaned into curation: They start curating whats in the stores quite differently than what you would experience if you were going on Amazon, where you have this algorithm thats sort of saying, okay, heres the last three things you bought, this is what youd like, he says. Independents, because theyre so tapped into the author community, are often doing things to introduce readers to books and genres that the algorithm has yet to figure out. Its unclear if it will ever figure it out.
Thats possible because the people who work at independent bookstores are at the cutting edge of whats happening in literary culture, he says. Amazon hasnt duplicated that. (When Amazon tried to open physical bookstores itself, they quickly failed because they didnt have the same foundation of booklovers choosing books, or any sense of authenticity.)
[Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar]
Maybe most importantly, independent bookstores have made a sense of community core to their identity. They were some of the first businesses to advocate for shopping local. It begins to shift the value proposition for why you would pay more in the independent bookstore compared to as if you were shopping online at a discount,” says Raffaeli. “Because many consumers will say, I will pay extra because I know that this is actually an investment in my community.
That wasn’t the case in the early 2000s, when consumers were more willing to chase a deal online. Now more people are aware of the value of keeping physical bookstores open. “This is a part of a two-decade process of educating the consumer,” he says. “And also retooling the stores to highlight things that may have always been there, but to really help people understand and appreciate the experience of entering an environment like this.”
[Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar]
The pandemic boosted support
The pandemic was another existential threat for bookstores, but ended up boosting support. “I think that in some ways, the pandemic woke people up to processes that were invisible to them before and made them realize that they had to act to support what was important to them,” says Andy Hunter, the founder of Bookshop.org, a platform that launched in 2020 to help indie bookstores sell books more easily online.
Online sales helped many bookstores survive the shutdown, and still provide significant support. (Bookshop.org has sent more than $9 million to local stores in 2025, and independent bookstores’ own online sales have also grown.) But after the pandemic, there was even more interest in spending time in stores in person. “I think they benefitted from digital fatigue,” says Raffaeli. “People were excited to come back in and shop local and feel like the experience could exist and engage with other people in the store.”
[Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar]
Bookstores have always been a meeting place, but they keep finding ways to nudge people to stay longer. I didnt want to have a bookstore where it was just transactional, like youre coming in, looking at books, and leaving, says Maura Cheeks, the owner of Lizs Book Bar, a bookstore in Brooklyn with a cozy bar that serves wine, beer from local breweries, and coffee and tea. I wanted to create a public space where people could come and relax, feel inspired, meet strangers, and just sort of spend time.
The store is one of a growing number to have a bar. It’s also a way to help a low-margin business survive and afford steep New York City rents. On a typical weekday, Liz’s Book Bar is filled with people talking and working at the bar; the store sees higher book sales on weekends, but the bar provides critical revenue. Other bookstores have found creative ways to add other merchandise with higher margins than books, from literary-themed socks to cookware next to a section of cookbooks.
[Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar]
Sharing best practices
Because the stores are geographically constrained, they’re more willing than other businesses to share best practices with each other. (They’re also motivated by the fact that bookstores are seen as cultural institutions, and there’s a shared goal to preserve that culture, not just compete as a small business.) The industry association, the American Booksellers Association, hosts frequent events where booksellers can meet and share tips or take classes.
“I took a class and you could see how these practices were being institutionalized into the new way of thinking about how we compete,” says Raffaeli. “All these stores that start opening are benefiting from this experimentation that happened in the early 2000s…the survivors around that time started diffusing these practices at the industry level. I think that’s a big part of the story: they’re coming together and they’re teaching each other.”
Raffaeli is now studying how the lessons from booksellers can be applied to other situations, from museums to movie theaters to companies that want to bring workers back to the office. “We’re seeing people want to engage with one another,” he says. “They want to feel like they’re part of something, a part of the social fabric of their community or their organization. But you have to give them a reason to engage and you have to create the right conditions for that to happen.”
As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winterand put their holiday bookstore gift cards to worktheyll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next?
People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there, says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. Where do you start?
Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. Its a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence cant yet replicate, though its still quite mathematical in nature, with new hires guided in tuning their scores to the sites standard. Then, Whichbook users can indicate their own current preferences with a set of sliders to find a set of books that match. Operating for free since 2003, at times thanks to funding from libraries, its designed to be a low-pressure way to discover interesting books.
I think when it’s more playful, people take more risks, and that’s where they end up finding something that maybe suits them better, Van Riel says. It’s also very nonjudgmentalwhatever you like, lots of sex, no sex at all, your choice.
Whichbook shies away from recommending big bestsellerssince, as Van Riel says, people are generally already aware of thembut it can suggest books similar to current literary hits, or help people find books from particular parts of the world via an interactive map. Its one of a growing number of websites, apps, and online communities helping people find something to read through various mixtures of algorithms and human insights.
Readers can take cues from influencers, like the loose community of literary-themed TikTok creators commonly called BookTok, or ask for personal recommendations on any of several subreddits set up for the purpose, like r/suggestmeabook or r/booksuggestions. Or they can take to book-based social networks, like Amazons Goodreads, The Storygraph, or Fable (recently acquired by Scribd ebook unit Everand), sharing suggestions and reviews with friends or friendly strangers. Each of those social sites also offers some automated recommendation features, as do many online bookstores, though the nuances of what makes a book a good read at a particular time can make the problem especially tricky.
We began just from the idea that there isnt a great book recommendation system, says Sebastian Cwilich, cofounder and CEO of online bookseller Tertulia, which launched in 2022. Even to this day, I dont think us or anyone else have absolutely cracked it.
Tertulia began with the idea of building machine learning models to generate recommendations based on literary conversations then happening on Twitter. That approach became less viable once Elon Musk acquired the site, now X, since book-related posting on the site dramatically dropped and the new ownership significantly raised prices to access such data, Cwilich says.
Its recommendations are still fairly data-driven, albeit more hand-curated, with the company tracking bestsellers, critical reviews, celebrity book clubs, and recommendations posted on Instagram. Much of that information is organized into a database for easy access by Tertulias editorial team. I think we do a really, really good job of unpacking a particular micro-genre or a particular author that’s kind of trending or in the cultural zeitgeist, says cofounder Lynda Hammes.
Tertulia also offers a sprawling set of other features, from recommendations by authors from poet and novelist Patricia Lockwood to actor and memoirist Lukas Gage, an integration with online book club community Belletrist, and a newly launched platform for authors to quickly build their own websites.
Of course, its also a bookstore, complete with a paid membership co-op program, and all those sources of book recommendations naturally help sell books, much like the staff recommendations bookstores large and small have long offered visitors. Even bookselling giant Amazon, in addition to personalized recommendations, offers editorial recommendations through its Amazon Book Review subsite.
We’re all very passionate readers, so we really try to keep our fingers on the pulse of what’s trending and what’s interesting, says Amazons senior editor Lindsay Powers, who is also a published author.
The site isnt simply recapitulating a list of Amazon bestsellers or titles highlighted by publishers, says Powers, whose work includes compiling monthly nonfiction and history lists for the site. She and her colleagues collectively read thousands of books each year, with Powers alone reading more than 300, and are given considerable freedom in their choices, she says. The site recently published a set of Best of 2025 lists, as well as holiday gift recommendations.
Since 2013, Amazon has also owned the online reading community Goodreads, which enables readers to log and share their own reading, see updates from friends, and access a mix of algorithmic recommendations and editorial content. One day, you might see a book recommendation from a friend in your newsfeed, says managing editor Cybil Wallace. The next, you might see an editorial roundup that really appeals to you. We just want to make sure there are lots and lots of different ways for you to find a book that you love.
Goodreads has almost two decades worth of data about what people like to read, and even editorial write-ups are heavily driven by what the stats show. We really pride ourselves in looking to our reading community to inform what we write about, Wallace says.
Other sites use their own data-driven approaches to connect people to books and help them track their reading, sometimes also attracting users who prefer minimizing their ties to industry giant Amazon. The StoryGraph, often compared to Goodreads, offers tracking features along with AI-driven recommendations and filters to find new reads. And PipeRead, another startup, recently launched with its own AI-powered recomendations, presenting suggested books in a Tinder-style swipe interface.
Fable, which launched in 2021 as a platform for online book clubs and now hosts more than 100,000 clubs for almost four million users, also includes an AI recommendation agent, as well as fitness tracker-style visualizations of individual reading habits that are often shared on social media. But the platform, which was acquired by Scribds digital book division Everand in 2025, still focuses heavily on person-to-person recommendations, whether thats through small-scale private book clubs, sprawling public clubs that can have thousands of members, or recommendations from celebrities like LeVar Burton or Paris Hilton.
Theres a big crossover between Fable and BookTok, which makes sense with 90% of Fable users younger than 40, says Kim Allee, marketing director for Fable and Everand. And a recent survey the company conducted found personal recommendations still remain one of the most popular ways to find something good to read.
I think finding that right book at the right moment from the right person means you’re going to have a deeper, kind of more human experience actually engaging with that book, says Allee. And I think especially in this day and age, that’s something that people really explicitly value.
Some book recommendation sites still rely entirely on human expertise. Five Books, launched in 2009, offers readers what it calls the best books on everything, presented through interviews with various experts where theyre asked to discuss their areas of interest and five books from the field. The site, says cofounder and editor Sophie Roell, was inspired by the classic British university system, where tutors assign a list of books to study.
It has recently featured a noir fiction list curated by activist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, a list of books on World War II chosen by military historian Antony Beevor, and a set of five books on Jesus selected by Oxford theologian Robert Morgan. Their expertise means their recommendations can carry more weight than casual posts on social media. Morgan, for instance, has read more than 100 books on Jesus, says Roell.
“I thought he’s a reasonable person to choose the best books on Jesus, because if he’d only read seven, then, quite frankly, I’m not interested in his top five, she says. But if hes read 100, thats goodthats a pretty good filtering mechanism.
The site takes donations but is primarily funded by Amazon affiliate commissions, meaning its recommendations also need to appeal to readers enough to sell books and keep the business afloat. One advantage is that many visitors come to the site through Google, searching for books to buy on a specific subject rather than seeking a general-purpose recommendation.
It’s just such different strokes for different folks, really, with books, Roell says, which makes recommendations very hard.
For years, deepfakes were treated as a political or social media oddity, a strange corner of the internet where celebrity faces (of women 99% of the time) were pasted onto fake videos (porn in 99% of the cases) and nobody quite knew what to do about it. But that framing is now dangerously outdated, because deepfakes have quietly evolved into something much more systemic: an operational risk for corporations, capable of corrupting supply chains, financial workflows, brand trust, and even executive decision-making.
Recent headlines show that synthetic media is no longer a fringe experiment. It is a strategic threat, one that companies are not prepared for.
When a deepfake can steal $25 million
In February 2025, global engineering firm Arup fell victim to a sophisticated deepfake fraud. Attackers used AI-generated video and audio to impersonate senior leadership and convinced an employee to transfer $25 million in company funds. The World Economic Forum described it as a milestone event: the moment synthetic fraud graduated from experiment to enterprise-scale theft.
For any executive who still thinks of deepfakes as a social media phenomenon, this should be a wake-up call.
Arup had strong cybersecurity. What it didnt have was identity resiliencethe ability to verify that the human on the other side of the call was actually human.
CEO fraud, but this time with perfect replicas
In the past year, deepfake CEO-fraud attempts have surged, targeting CFOs, procurement teams, and M&A departments. A 2025 report noted that more than half of surveyed security professionals had encountered synthetically generated executive impersonation attempts.
Its easy to see why:
Deepfake video is now real-time and high-resolution.
Voice cloning requires only a few seconds of audio.
Attackers can now spoof emotion, urgency, or stress, exactly the cues that override employee skepticism.
One midsize tech firm reportedly lost $2.3 million after a convincingly faked audio call instructed finance to transfer funds for an urgent acquisition.
Clearly, traditional anti-phishing training doesnt prepare employees for a perfectly reconstructed version of their boss.
Deepfakes are no longer about politics: Theyre about business models
When a deepfake impersonates a celebrity to promote a fraudulent investment scheme, thats reputational damage. When a deepfake impersonates your spokesperson, CFO, product, or supply chain partner, that becomes a corporate disaster.
Weve entered a phase where synthetic media sits squarely inside the business risk landscape, according to Trend Micros 2025 industry report. Synthetic content now drives new waves of fraud, identity theft, and business compromise.
This isnt hypothetical. Its operational.
The new supply chain risk executives are not seeing
Brands increasingly rely on complex ecosystems: logistics partners, suppliers, distributors, influencers, service providers, third-party integrators. Every one of those nodes depends on trust.
Deepfakes turn trust into an attack surface.
Imagine these scenarios:
A fake video from your CEO announcing a shift in sourcing strategy sends suppliers into panic.
A voice clone instructs your Asian manufacturing partner to halt delivery.
A synthetic leaked clip of a defective product goes viral before your PR team wakes up.
A deepfake of a key supplier falsely confirms cybersecurity weaknesses, causing downstream partners to sue.
These are not science fiction. They are logical extensions of attack patterns that are already being deployedand they expose a blind spot in corporate risk management: the integrity of identity itself.
Why deepfakes hit brands harder than politics
Political deepfakes spark outrage. Corporate deepfakes trigger something worse:
Loss of customer rust
Stock volatility
Insider trading vulnerabilities
Lawsuits from partners
Regulatory scrutiny
The Securities an Exchange Commision has already warned the financial sector that AI-generated impersonation is reshaping fraud strategies, calling for upgraded identity-verification standards.
If regulators are paying attention, executives should too.
Why the traditional cybersecurity playbook isnt enough
Firewalls wont stop a deepfake. Multi-factor authentication wont stop a deepfake. Encryption wont stop a deepfake.
Deepfakes weaponize something no cybersecurity team has historically been responsible for: trust in human appearance and voice. The weakest link is no longer a password. Its a persons belief that theyre speaking with someone they know.
Identity, not infrastructure, is the new vulnerability.
Why brands must treat deepfakes as supply chain risk
Most companies still relegate deepfakes to the PR desk or misinformation team. Thats naive.
Deepfakes threaten:
Procurement workflows (fake POs, fake cancellations)
Vendor relationships (fake disputes, fake compliance issues)
Finance approvals (deepfake CFO instructions)
Customer trust (fake product failures, fake CEO messages)
Employee morale (synthetic HR directives, fake memos)
This is not just about fraud. Deepfakes can disrupt the coordination mechanisms that make supply chains work. They can paralyze a system without ever touching a firewall.
What business leaders must do (now)
Here is the emerging best-practice playbook for executives:
Add deepfake risk to your enterprise risk management framework: If ransomware is a board-level issue, synthetic identity needs to be too.
Implement verification protocols that do not rely on voice or video: Use secondary digital signatures, secure channels, or pre-agreed workflows.
Audit your vendors, suppliers, and partners: Ask whether they have deepfake-resilience policies, because their vulnerabilities become yours.
Deploy detection systems, but dont trust them blindly: Infosecurity Magazine notes that detection tools are improving but remain unreliable.
Train employees to distrust urgency: Most deepfake fraud leverages emotional acceleration: This is critical, do it now. Your strongest defense is giving employees permission to slow down.
Build an internal identity resilience policy: Define exactly how major decisions and financial approvals must be confirmed. No exceptions for I saw them on video.
The uncomfortable truth is that AI has made seeing and hearing obsolete. With AI, weve crossed a psychological Rubicon: Your eyes and ears are no longer authentication mechanisms.
Executives who fail to internalize this will face the same fate as companies that ignored phishing, ransomware, or cloud governance a decade agoonly faster, and with higher stakes.
Deepfakes are not about what is true: They are about what is believable. And in business, believability is often all that matters.
The new leadership challenge
The companies that thrive in the AI era wont be those with the biggest models or the flashiest copilots. They will be the ones that redesign trust, identity, and verification from the ground up.
Because if deepfakes can corrupt your operations and supply chain, then defending against them is not an IT problem. It is a leadership problem.
And if you dont solve it now, someone else (perhaps an algorithm with your CEOs face) might solve it for you.
