Only two other countries aren’t part of the Paris agreement, the landmark deal to cut climate pollution and keep global temperatures within safe limits. One of them–Syria–is in the middle of a devastating civil war. The other, Nicaragua, thought that the agreement wasn’t ambitious enough. Now the U.S. will join them, despite the fact that the majority of Americans and even polluting companies like Chevron and Exxon think that staying in the agreement was the best decision. The Trump Administration was never planning to be strong on the climate, but even if this decision is largely symbolic, it will have deadly consequences for the planet. And it will sacrifice the ability of the U.S. to be both a moral and technological leader in the most imperative fight–and one of the most viable opportunities for economic growth.

In a speech announcing his decision, President Trump announced that the U.S. would not follow through on any of the non-binding targets in the agreement, and not make payments to the Green Climate Fund, which gives U.S. funding to help other countries implement renewable energy. He did say he would be interested in renegotiating the deal, but it seems unlikely: “There is absolutely zero chance that other countries would agree to renegotiate the Paris Agreement,” says Henrik Selin, associate professor of international relations at Boston University. “It was the result of years of tough negotiations and delicate compromises and it has also already entered into force.”

The Economy Will Be Hurt As Badly As The Climate

“The country that’s going to suffer the worst from the U.S. pulling out of the Paris agreement is the United States,” Andrew Light, a distinguished senior fellow in the global climate program for the research organization World Resources Institute, tells Fast Company. “We have the most to lose.”

As part of the agreement, which stated a goal to keep global temperatures from rising above two degrees Celsius and make efforts to keep it below a 1.5-degree rise, the U.S. pledged to cut emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. But that commitment wasn’t binding, and Trump has already moved to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s attempt to meet the goal. He also reopened a review of stricter fuel efficiency standards. In other words, even if Trump had decided to stay in the agreement, the current administration likely wouldn’t have done much more to cut emissions.

Related Video: Pulling Out Of The Paris Climate Agreement Could Be A Huge Blow To The U.S. Economy

“I think that Donald Trump is going to do whatever damage he’s going to do to the trajectory of American emissions regardless of whether or not he stays in Paris,” Light says.

If the climate will suffer because of the administration’s policies as a whole, the withdrawal from Paris could have a more direct impact on the American economy. “I think that what we risk happening is that the credibility of American businesses who are trying to compete on the international clean energy market is tarnished by the fact that the United States has pulled out of Paris,” says Light. “Obviously, some of these are big international companies and they’ve got their longstanding relationships in other parts of the world. But I do think there’s a big chunk of the American renewable energy industry which is going to suffer from the United States essentially being one of three countries in the world that’s not part of this agreement.”

One report found that meeting the goals of the Paris agreement would create $19 trillion in additional economic growth over the next 30 years, and $26 billion in GDP growth in the U.S. alone by 2020. Withdrawing could make it harder for U.S. companies to benefit from global growth. Innovators may choose to launch startups overseas rather than in the U.S. In a recent letter to Trump published as a full-page ad in some newspapers, several corporations argued that staying in the agreement would strengthen the market for clean tech businesses, and pulling out would limit access to that market and risk retaliation from other countries. (The candidate challenging Angela Merkel in Germany has already threatened trade retaliation). CEOs have also reportedly been calling Trump, begging him to stay in the agreement.

It could also hurt job growth. The fastest-growing occupation in the U.S. is now wind turbine technicians, and there are more solar jobs than jobs in the coal industry. “It sends a signal both to companies and the 3 million people here who work in clean energy that America doesn’t care about those jobs, and America doesn’t care about the fastest-growing industry in the country,” says Bob Keefe, executive director of Environmental Entrepreneurs, a nonpartisan group of business owners and investors.

The U.S. Will Lose Global Influence–To China

Trump’s proposed budget also eliminates the Global Climate Change Initiative, a program designed to support climate action overseas. The Green Climate Fund, which was designed to help developing countries prepare for climate change, was also cut in the budget proposal (the Obama administration had pledged $3 billion, but had only paid $1 billion so far). The budget also calls for major cuts in funding to organizations like the World Bank, which also support programs around the world that try to limit climate change and help poorer countries adapt to problems like rising seas and drought.

Those cuts were proposed regardless of the withdrawal from the Paris agreement. And though the loss of funding is significant, other countries may step in. China, for example, has a separate fund to support climate projects and may see the advantage in pouring even more money into Latin America, Africa, and other parts of Asia.

“I think China will have a real opportunity to step up and basically say to the rest of the world or the rest of the developing world, ‘Hey, the United States promised you money. The United States is not delivering on that. We are. Who’s your friend now?'” says Selin. “So it sort of changes the balance. Whenever the Chinese provide money for overseas investment, their strings attached are going to be different from the strings attached, generally, by the United States and Europe. For instance, the Chinese are not too concerned about human rights.”

Without the U.S. in the Paris agreement, China and others are likely to step in to take a larger leadership role. That could give Chinese renewable energy companies a boost in the global marketplace, and leave American companies farther behind because the U.S. doesn’t have a seat at the table in major negotiations.

As the U.S. is no longer seen as a leader on climate, the loss of global influence could also pose a security threat. “We will lose influence with parts of the world where we have very transparent security concerns–in North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia,” says Light. “I think that what’s going to happen, again, is that China, the Europeans, and others are going to step in and fill that gap. They’re going to get that influence, and the U.S. interest will suffer.”

A New, Non-U.S. Climate Coalition

The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris agreement–and its lack of support for climate action in general–doesn’t mean that the climate is automatically doomed.

While it’s possible that other countries could follow the U.S. example and withdraw, there aren’t signs that will happen. After the G7 Summit, each of the G7 countries other than the United States reaffirmed its commitment to Paris. China and the EU plan to reaffirm their commitment this week. Smaller countries are likely to do the same.”It’s always possible that one or two countries do follow [the U.S.], but I think it’s clear that the vast majority of small and medium-sized countries will stay within the agreement,” Selin says.

Renewable energy is also growing because of economics. Solar and wind power are cheaper than coal, or close to that point, in many markets. “Virtually any energy analyst will tell you that coal is not going to make a grand comeback,” he says. “The decline in coal is not because of federal policy. The federal mandates haven’t even kicked in yet.” Some experts argue that the U.S. may meet the goals of the Clean Power Plan based on market forces (although policy has also been a part of the positive change so far, and other experts, such as Dr. Ines Azevedo, co-director of the Climate and Energy Decision Making Center at Carnegie Mellon University, believe that the growth of renewables may slow without continued policy support). Other analysts believe that electric cars will be dominant on U.S. roads in less than a decade–because of the market, rather than policy.

“Right now, the market forces are more aligned with climate-friendly policy than they might have ever been in the United States,” says Selin. “Now it seems like some of the political incentives and the economic incentives will actually diverge. So that’s unfortunate. But there’s still reason to think that the U.S. emissions that are currently on a downward trajectory will continue to go down. Just not as fast as they could have had the federal government been more active.”

Cities and states are also leading with stronger climate policies. Cities like Atlanta, San Diego, and Salt Lake City are committed to 100% renewable electricity. Major corporations such as Walmart have committed to reduce emissions in line with the goals of the Paris agreement. Google already buys enough renewable power to account for its entire electricity use. Apple is close to reaching the same goal and 95 other corporations have variations of “100% renewable” goals.

And in four years–particularly if Trump’s action triggers a backlash of even stronger support for climate action–federal policy may reverse again. The formal withdrawal process can’t begin until three years after the agreement took effect, or November 2019; withdrawal itself would then take a year or longer. (In another option, the U.S. could withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the overarching treaty that the Paris agreement is within. That process would be faster). If Trump leaves the Paris agreement alone, the next president could re-enter relatively quickly.

Blue Apron has just filed to go public. The company has raised $193.8 million in venture capital and was valued at $2 billion in 2015.

In its S-1 filing, the company says it delivered more than 159 million meals to homes in 48 states–or roughly 25 million paid orders. That resulted in $795.4 million in revenue for 2016, up 133% from 2015. But it looks like losses grew from $30.8 million in 2014 to $54.9 million in 2016. In the first three months of 2017, the company had a net loss totaling $52.2 million—almost as much as all of last year. During the same period a year ago, the company earned a net income of $3 million. Given that profitable quarter, it seems last year may have been a better bet for going public. The company delayed a public offering last year, according to reports, to get its financials in order.

Though Blue Apron made nearly $800 million in 2016, it was plagued by consumer acquisition costs. In fact, Blue Apron spends approximately $94 per customer. Getting customers on board and keeping them is one of the toughest challenges in the meal kit space. 

“A lot of meal kit startups were bolstered by VC funding, and felt comfortable spending a lot on customer acquisition early on, offering major price promotions, even in the face of reportedly high churn,” says Natan Reddy, tech industry analyst at CB Insights. “Meal kit startups can’t raise their prices too significantly, because they’re competing with traditional groceries as well as other meal kits, which limits margin potential. Therefore, their main way to grow is by adding customers, pushing them to focus heavily on costly customer acquisition.”

“The chart above also illustrates that, while we derive significant revenue from those customers that continue to make purchases from us, over time our customers on average order less frequently or sometimes cease ordering, as evidenced by the declining increases in cumulative net revenue per customer over the time intervals presented,” Blue Apron’s filing reads.

Research firm Morningstar notes in a recent report that meal kits only retain 8% to 18% of the people that initially sign up. (Editor’s note: Fast Company’s owner, Joe Manuseto, is executive chairman of Morningstar.)

In March, CNBC reported that Blue Apron had hired bankers from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley to lead its public offering later this year.

Meal kits are also facing off against the growing digital grocery space. Amazon and major retail players like Walmart, Whole Foods, and others are exploring meal kits.

Forget, for a moment, the environmental implications that come with undercutting an unprecedented climate commitment by the international community, such as beach erosion, the loss of coastal cities, famine-causing droughts, and more severe storms. Forget the diplomatic consequences that come with not joining this historic deal-making and unparalleled consensus. Forget the security repercussions that come with ignoring the biggest climate security threat to humanity. Forget even the moral or humanitarian reasons for getting on the right side of history here.

Take only the business and economic argument, one President Trump should have little difficulty understanding or appreciating. On this argument alone, the Paris process was a substantive win, and to willfully unwind it is fiscally irresponsible.

First, the Paris climate agreement meant that governments, including and especially the U.S. federal government, could start shedding some of the $5.3 trillion that they’re shelling out to subsidize the negative externalities associated with fossil fuels, such as health care costs from exposure to pollution. The International Monetary Fund notes that a whopping 6.5% of the GDP is spent propping up fossil fuel industries and cleaning up pollutants, money that could, instead, fix aging infrastructure in the U.S., for example. Furthermore, with 6.5 million people dying every year from air pollution, as noted by the International Energy Agency, lost lives equates to lost economic productivity. One purpose behind Paris was to prevent these mounting mortality rates, and their associated costs, and keep alive as many productive members of society as possible. Any economist could understand the cost-benefit analysis here.

The Paris accord, and the market trends it guarantees, is making this boon possible and could further profit American corporate pocketbooks. However, we’re currently outpaced by Chinese investors. In the last year, the U.S. installed just over 8 GW of new wind capacity (witnessing double-digit growth annually over the last five years), second only to China, which installed roughly three times that amount, at 23.4 GW (or 42% of the market). And this is just new capacity. The totals are more telling. China has installed over 168,000 MW of wind, roughly double America’s 82,000 MW. China is also besting us on solar: It doubled its capacity in 2016. Now, China is the largest solar energy producer anywhere. And it’s not stopping. The country, which remains committed to the Paris process, is planning on investing $364 billion into renewable energy generation in the next three years. While China dominates the market share of the business opportunity here, the U.S. government is getting out of the game. What a lost opportunity.

Third, the Paris climate agreement signaled to financial investors that the track they were already on was the fiscally prudent one. In the last year, investment firms controlling more than $5 trillion in assets have announced divestment from dirty fossil fuels. Reading the global market tea leaves, Wall Street firms are making the switch, dropping the very industries that Trump wants to salvage, such as coal. If the researchers at Stanford and UC Berkley are right when they estimate a $50 trillion savings by 2050 if renewables reach 100%, then the long-term return on investment here is sound and substantial.

Despite dozens of Fortune 500 companies pounding the political pavement of late, including BP and Shell, encouraging Trump to stay in the Paris agreement, all is not lost. American state and local governments will move forward, unfazed, firming up already aggressive goals to cut carbon emissions by 80% to 100% by 2050 (see the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and Under 2 MOU for more inspired efforts). American companies will continue to reach for 100% renewable energy (see the RE100, which includes heavyweights such as Goldman Sachs and Google, as well as Walmart and Wells Fargo), irrespective of White House obstructionism. American investors will continue to invest in renewable energy while dropping dirty fuels.

Everyone almost everywhere, with the clear exception of the White House, is understanding the economic opportunity presented by the Paris climate agreement and acting on it. The ones on the losing end of the Trump anti-Paris stick are the American people. America could be number one in solar, number one in wind, and number one in pollution prevention and lives saved. That’s greatness. That’s market dominance. That’s the stuff of which presidential legacies are made. And that’s the win Trump should want. Paris is also about clean energy markets and money. Time for Trump to start making some for the American people.

Steve Cohen is the U.S. Representative for Tennessee’s 9th congressional district. Michael Shank is the head of communications for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network in New York City.

In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists debuted the Doomsday Clock in the June issue of their publication. A simple illustration, the clock would, over the years, become a barometer of the severity of the state of global crisis. The closer the minute hand to midnight, the more under threat our safety was. As the Cold War swung the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, the clock ticked precipitously close to midnight, only to creep back to a healthy quarter-to as the world settled into relative peace in the early 1990s.

Turn Back the Clock, an exhibit that just opened at MSI, articulates the factors that determine the clock’s ticking, and describes how 70 years of living in the nuclear age might inform our current crisis era.

This June is the 70th anniversary of the clock’s creation, but it is also, according to Turn Back the Clock’s director Patricia Ward, a time to see the clock as a way to understand how our actions and decisions are affecting the safety and security of the world, and begin to examine how to roll the minute hand back into non-crisis territory.

“At its heart, this exhibit is really abut how science and technology are part and parcel of the way the world works,” Ward tells Fast Company. “We want people to come here and find a way to understand that, and recognize that even if they don’t grasp the nitty gritty of the circumstances, they need to be aware of and talk about these issues as a step toward making the world a better place and keeping us safe.”

From there, Turn Back the Clock tracks the movement of the minute hand, from when it hovered around midnight during the Cold War, to rolling back to 17 minutes from midnight in 1991 with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, to striking three minutes to midnight in 2015 under the threat of unmitigated climate change.

In addition to the cultural paraphernalia that surround the clock’s movements–there’s an atomic energy lab kit, developed for children to play with in the 1970s, along with a projection of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, which both testify to how we metabolized the threats the clock measures–Turn Back the Clock, Ward says, is really focused on the idea of collaboration and cooperation. The exhibit features original correspondence between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Albert Einstein about both the potential for developing nuclear weapons and the great responsibility that would entail. It also documents the exchanges between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in which both the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to eliminate their shorter-range missile stock.

Turn Back the Clock ends with a statement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.”

Accounting for the fact that fewer and fewer Americans place any trust in the wisdom of their elected officials, through the exhibit, MSI wants “to inspire a sense of agency in individuals,” Analog voting stations throughout the exhibit ask visitors to record how they feel about the state of the world; if they’ve had a discussion about any of the topics in the exhibit with someone they’ve disagreed with; if they’ve reached out and contacted a representative with their thoughts. While it may not feel like citizens have much of a say in the direction of global events, Ward says that informing yourself is the first step. “One of the simplest things you can do is become aware and talk to people about these issues.”

And there’s a comment book at the end of the exhibit where visitors are asked to write what they would say to their leaders if they thought their voice could make a difference. Ward’s hope is that from the exhibit, people will take those thoughts and turn them into letters and calls that they make to the people elected as our representatives.

Apple’s annual developer conference kicks off this Monday at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The official purpose of WWDC is to keep developers fired up–and well educated–about developing apps and services on and for Apple’s operating systems and platforms. But the event is also a statement about where Apple is in terms of consumer-tech competition on an array of fronts.

New features in the company’s operating systems–iOS, MacOS, WatchOS, and tvOS–will likely dominate Monday’s two-hour keynote presentation. Unfortunately–for preview writers like me, at least–precious few details have leaked about Apple’s plans for the next versions of these platforms.

Whatever the specifics of Apple’s announcements on Monday, it’s wise to look at them through the lens of two key strategic themes: artificial intelligence/machine learning and camera-related technologies such as computer vision. Throughout the keynote, we’ll likely hear repeated references to these themes as Apple both pushes its own stated goals in those areas, and responds to competitive pressures from companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Some of the new AI features will be presented as Siri assistant functions. I predict you’ll hear Apple people mention the term “Siri” onstage approximately 237 times in 120 minutes at WWDC. Okay, probably less than that, but a lot.

iOS (and New iPads?)

I’ve heard some smart people say Apple will bake some significant interface changes into its mobile operating system. Though the specifics about iOS 11 haven’t leaked, it makes sense for Apple to focus on improvements to the most popular user-facing functions on the iPhone, the company’s most important product.

From Facebook’s Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp to Microsoft’s Skype, messaging is a key battleground among the major tech platforms, which are fighting vigorously to get and keep daily users. The more features they build into their messaging environments, the less reasons people have to go outside of them. For instance, last year Apple began allowing users to play YouTube videos and Apple Music songs within the Messages app.

Apple also announced new third-party integration possibilities in the iMessage service last year, like the ability to send Square payments and order food deliveries. This year it’s likely to expand the ways third parties can offer goods and services within the app. It may even talk about adding full Apple Pay support in iMessage.

At last year’s WWDC keynote, a new version of Messages packed with features designed to help it take on Messenger and Snapchat got plenty of stage time. This year, some Apple watchers believe that the app could get some new image filters a la Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.

The company will likely talk at least a little about Maps, perhaps adding new features that more intelligently understand the user’s intent and the context around map searches. “My expectation is for a number of changes as Apple tries desperately to keep Google Maps within reach,” Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart wrote in a brief.

Apple Music is likely to see some significant design changes, while sticking with its ultra-simple black-and-white-with-big-letters theme.

As iPad sales have struggled, Apple has been working both to make its tablet more of a business tool and to make sure it’s relevant in a changing consumer market. So now might be a great time to add a bunch of new features to iOS just for the iPad. This could mean anything from new multitasking and screen-splitting features to a more work-ready Safari browser.

Speaking of the iPad, the rumor mill has been working overtime on the rumor that Apple could unveil a new 10.5-inch iPad on Monday that may or may not replace the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. We know very little about the device except that it would have significantly less bezel and more screen space. It would likely also contain a faster chip than the other (9.7-inch and 12.9-inch) models in the Pro line, raising the possibility that Apple could announce chip upgrades for iPads in other sizes.

MacOS (and New Macs?)

Apple has managed to keep a lid on its plans for the next version of MacOS. Actually, much of the chatter seems to concern whether the company will finally ditch its “California landmarks” nomenclature and call the next version of the OS MacOS 11, which would look nice alongside the new iOS 11. (Apple changed the OS name from OS X to MacOS in 2016 but called the new version “Sierra.”)

Lots of people would by very happy if Apple would finally reinvent iTunes. As wireless devices and music distribution models have evolved over the years, the iconic music app looks less and less relevant and intuitive. A redesign might feature Apple Music in a more central role.

More likely, Apple will focus more on integrating MacOS with iOS in new ways, as it did last year with a clipboard that let you copy something on your iPhone and then paste it on a Mac. We may also see the company continue to export iOS features to MacOS. It brought Siri to the desktop last year, and there’s plenty of opportunity to make that experience richer. Other iOS features may follow.

We may hear some talk about Mac hardware too. In early March Apple brought a few journalists to its Cupertino campus to say that it’s still devoted to its pro users–people who use their Macs for demanding work, such as the software developers in the audience at WWDC. Apple will probably repeat this message at WWDC. Though the new iMacs and Mac Pro models the company mentioned at that event may be a long ways off, Jason Snell, writing for Macworld, points to rumors that Apple might announce processor upgrades for the MacBook Pro models that were released last fall. There’s also been scuttlebutt about a new version of the 12″ MacBook.

tvOS

Apple won’t likely spend a lot of time talking about tvOS, but it may crow about a new content agreement that will make a difference to lots of people–a deal to bring the Amazon video app to Apple TV. We’ll also likely see Apple add some new Siri integration to Apple TV to help users find new content without having to click the remote.

WatchOS

Don’t expect massive differences as the Apple Watch’s software segues from WatchOS 3 to WatchOS 4. Notifications, the control center, and the app dock will likely remain largely the same in form and function. We may see some further emphasis on the Watch as a health device with the addition of new fitness and wellness functions. We’ll likely see some new watch faces and complications.

The “Siri Speaker”

Rumors have intensified in recent weeks about a new Apple smart speaker device that will look something like Google Home and Amazon Echo. A report by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman and Alex Webb on Wednesday said the new device is already in production and will feature “virtual surround sound” courtesy of some fancy speakers and software. If this is true, it may get announced on Monday.

The device would act as the vehicle for the Siri assistant in the home, and would act as the front end for several major Apple services (notably Music).

You’ll note that I didn’t mention HomeKit in the iOS section above. Well, that platform might end up getting a lot of attention on Monday. The new speaker device could assume a key role at the center of the Apple connected home. For consumers who own smart-home devices that support HomeKit, a speaker could be the go-to natural-language interface for home control.

I’m betting we will indeed see the announcement of this product Monday. The popularity and influence of the Amazon Echo is simply too great for Apple to ignore. The risk is that some users might bail out on Apple services such as HomeKit if there’s no ambient way to call them up by talking. Even an announcement far in advance of when the product can actually ship might mitigate that risk somewhat. (Note that Google announced its Google Home speaker at last year’s I/O conference, six months before it shipped.)

Augmented Reality

Finally, some people are wondering if Apple will use this year’s WWDC to finally make some nods at augmented-reality features. The company has repeatedly expressed interest in the technology, which superimposes digital imagery over the real world as seen through a camera lens. And some believe Apple is beginning to feel some pressure from rivals like Google that are advancing the technology.

One of the new iPhones coming this fall will indeed contain a 3D sensor, my sources say, which could enable the phone to process the real-world images shot by the camera and position 3D digital images in that environment. On the other hand, that 3D sensor could be used in the new phone for some other function, like iris recognition for securely locking the phone.

Predicting when or if Apple will announce anything related to AR or VR is risky, but it’s worth acknowledging that such an announcement gets less farfetched every day.

The WWDC keynote party begins at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET on Monday, June 5. You can find Apple’s live stream here. My colleague Harry McCracken and I will be on the ground at the event in San Jose. We’ll be delivering news and commentary throughout the keynote.

National Geographic made what many considered the best Super Bowl ad of 2017, a promo for its new show Genius, about Albert Einstein, starring Geoffrey Rush. Now for its latest marketing for the show, it’s honoring the life, inspiration, and imagination of Einstein in 10 short films. The network and agency Pereira O’Dell worked with show director Sam Spiegel for two headlining films, The Instrument and The Mirror, then partnered with the Tongal filmmaking community to give new filmmakers a chance to create the final eight installments. It’s a fun, entertaining way to promote a TV show, both in subject matter and creative process. What else do we want from brand content? Onward!

National Geographic “10 Days of Genius Film Festival”

What: A 10-part short film series to promote NatGeo’s Albert Einstein series Genius.

Who: National Geographic, Pereira O’Dell

Why We Care: Perhaps the idea of a 10-part film series would’ve been enough, particularly as they’re entertaining in their own right, not just as a piece of marketing. But it’s the process of blending the creative process between the show’s director and the collaborative Tongal community that adds a whole new dimension to the campaign. Relevant, interesting, and engaging.

MacMillan Cancer Support “A dad with cancer is still a dad”

What: A new campaign from a U.K. cancer support center that uses an emotional touch to illustrate that life goes on after a diagnosis.

Who: MacMillan Cancer Support, VCCP

Why We Care: The ads in this campaign cover a wide variety of relationships–father, sister, lover, friend–but it was this one that hit home the hardest. The spots feature the kind of self-reflection and loving message you’d expect. But as it juxtaposes that with scenes of the tough times behind a cancer diagnosis, it only makes those precious moments that much stronger.

Xbox “More Is Better”

What: Danny McBride aims his rage at the notion of “less is more” in a new ad for Xbox Game Pass

Who: Xbox, Ayzenberg, Caviar

Why We Care: It’s about time someone got Danny McBride in full ad mode again (remember his K-Swiss MFCEO?). Now it’s to debunk the idea that less is more. Here he outlines his carefully curated theory that more is actually more. Math!

Toyota “Toyota Shorts”

What: A series of surreal short films that are more Black Mirror than traditional car ad.

Who: Toyota, Saatchi & Saatchi LA

Why We Care: I’m not sure if they’ve been officially released or not–haven’t seen any ad or PR push–but, regardless, the series of two-minute shorts is a fine example of how a brand can create content worth watching that is an integral part of, without being crassly obsessed with, its own logo. Also, the Charlie Brooker influence doesn’t hurt.

Wealthsimple “Supreme Retirement Plan”

Who: Wealthsimple

Why We Care: It’s like a Hypebeast MBA, and perfectly illustrates the brand positioning as the investment tool for a new generation.

It used to be summer TV was a dry gulch of reruns and unwatchable eye-garbage, leaving movies to reign supreme over the season. Not anymore! Now, even with most network shows on creatively regenerative hiatus, there’s still roughly 1 billion other outlets carefully curating video content solid enough to compete with fall season primetime, or run right over it. While Netflix continues its Goliath-like foray into original programming–have you caught up with Master of None AND House of Cards yet?–digital competition from Hulu and Amazon is getting steeper, and old standbys on network and cable are stepping up their summer game, too. Good thing the movies in June uniformly suck, otherwise we’d never get outside to feel the wind on our sun-reddened faces. Oh wait, those movies are awesome. Never mind. Prepare to plot your entertainment month with Fast Company‘s guide to all the daylight-stealing movies, books, and albums, etc., sure to leave so many kites un-flown this month. And speaking of books, the author of this post has one coming out in June as well. Just sayin’.

Movies In Theaters

• Wonder Woman, opens June 2.
• Band Aid, opens June 2.
• Dean, opens June 2.
• The Mummy, opens June 9.
• Beatriz at Dinner, opens June 9.
• The Hero, opens June 9.
• It Comes at Night, opens June 9.
• Megan Leavey, opens June 9.
• My Cousin Rachel, opens June 9.
• Cars 3, opens June 16.
• Rough Night, opens June 16.
• 47 Meters Down, opens June 16.
• All Eyez on Me, opens June 16.
• The Book of Henry, opens June 16.
• Maudie, opens June 16.
• Transformers: The Last Knight, opens June 23.
• The Bad Batch, opens June 23.
• The Big Sick, opens June 23.
• Baby Driver, opens June 28.
• Amityville: The Awakening, opens June 30.
• Despicable Me 3, opens June 30.
• The House, opens June 30.

Movies To Watch At Home

• Andrew Santino: Home Field, premieres June 2 on Showtime.
• If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast, premieres June 5 on HBO.
• Once Upon a Time in Venice, opens June 16.
• T.J. Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous, premieres June 17 on HBO.
• Okja, premieres June 28 on Netflix.

Albums You Should Hear

• All Time Low – Last Young Renegade, out on June 2.
• Alt-J – Relaxer, out on June 2.
• Amber Coffman – City of No Reply, out on June 2.
• Beach Fossils – Somersault, out on June 2.
• Bleachers – Gone Now, out on June 2.
• Dan Auerbach – Waiting On A Song, out on June 2.
• Halsey – Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, out on June 2.
• Lady Antebellum – Heart Break, out on June 9.
• Phoenix – Ti Amo, out on June 9.
• Beth Ditto – Fake Sugar, out on June 16.
• Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up, out on June 16.
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – The Nashville Sound, out on June 16.
• Lorde – Melodrama, out on June 16.
• Ride – Weather Diaries, out on June 16.
• 311 – Mosaic, out on June 23.
• Jeff Tweedy – Together at Last, out on June 23.
• UNKLE – The Road Part 1, out on June 23.
• TLC – TLC, out on June 30.

Things To Watch On Your TV Or Computer

• Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, premieres June 1 on Seeso.
• Flaked, premieres June 2 on Netflix.
• Long Strange Trip, premieres June 1 on Amazon.
• Decker: Unsealed, premieres June 4 on Adult Swim.
• Fear the Walking Dead, premieres June 4 on AMC.
• I’m Dying Up Here, premieres June 4 on Showtime.
• Orange Is the New Black, premieres June 4 on Netflix.
• Wynonna Earp, premieres June 4 on Syfy.
• Orphan Black, premieres June 10 on BBC America.
• 71st Annual Tony Awards, premieres June 11 on CBS.
• Claws, premieres June 11 on TNT.
• The Putin Interviews, premieres June 12 on Showtime.
• Blood Drive, premieres June 14 on Syfy.
• The Great British Baking Show, premieres June 16 on PBS.
• The Ranch, premieres June 16 on Netflix.
• Queen Sugar, premieres June 20 on OWN.
• The Gong Show, premieres June 20 on ABC.
• The Guest List, premieres June 20 on Seeso.
• The Mist, premieres June 20 on Spike.
• Glow, premieres June 23 on Netflix.
• Playing House, premieres June 23 on USA.
• Prime Suspect: Tennison, premieres June 25 on PBS.
• Younger, premieres June 28 on TV Land.

Books To Read

• I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart, out on June 6.
• Camino Island: A Novel by John Grisham, out on June 6.
• The Last Kid Left by Rosecrans Baldwin, out on June 6.
• The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand, out on June 13.
• Away with Words by Joe Berkowitz, out on June 13.
• The Accomplished Guest by Ann Beattie, out on June 13.
• Hunger by Roxane Gay, out on June 13.

[Photo Mash Up: Adriana C. Sánchez for Fast Company; Source Photos: Wonder Woman: Clay Enos, courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.; The House: Glen Wilson, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures; All Eyez On Me: Quantrell Colbert; OKJA: Barry Wetcher, courtesy of Netflix; Orange Is The New Black: JoJo Whilden, courtesy of Netflix; I’m Dying Up Here: Justina Mintz, courtesy of Showtime; Glow: Erica Parise, courtesy of Netflix]

Emma Williams had a major career eureka moment while she was working on a PhD in Scandinavian mythology. Williams, who is now the general manager of Bing Studios at Microsoft, had already pictured herself growing into a gray-haired professor in the halls of academia far from Silicon Valley. “I love this so much,” she recalls thinking, “but I don’t think it’s going to pay for my shoe collection.”

That revelation happened about the same time that her younger brother introduced her to the UNIX operating system. “To me it was just another language,” says Williams, who’d already mastered 13. She quickly became “addicted” to the computer’s language, so the shift from academia to software seemed like a logical step.

When Research Skills Trump Computer Science Degrees

Employers weren’t immediately sold. Williams confesses that she sent out between 80 – 100 resumes to different tech companies before one responded. “They said ‘we are interested in you because of your research capabilities,'” Williams remembers. She went on to become a project manager and marketing researcher who also used her background in Scandinavian languages to translate desktop publishing software into Swedish.

From there, says Williams, she moved to Silicon Valley and eventually to Microsoft where she’d worked on consumer experiences for Xbox and Kinect before heading up Bing Studios. She also leads the team that does Microsoft’s UX innovation in conversational AI bots–including social chatbots.

Along the way, Williams developed a career philosophy about  the connection between humanities degrees and jobs in tech. “You become very skilled in new subject areas and understanding them deeply,” she explains. Humanities graduates have learned to ask the right questions and home in on the right answers in any given situation.

Now with her duties encompassing search language and developing smarter AI, these skills are still put to use daily. “You have a broader understanding [of different subjects] and a better set of capabilities than just having a computer science degree,” she maintains.

Leveraging Skills Built During a Year Abroad

Kristin Peterson agrees. Currently the speechwriter for the executive vice president of the AI and Research Division at Microsoft, Peterson spent her undergraduate years in Boston and Paris studying French literature, learning about the art of writing and storytelling.

Her journey from liberal arts to technology was almost as accidental as Williams’s was, but Peterson points out that the same research and analytical skills that she learned at Boston College helped her make the leap.

“I loved Paris,” Peterson underscores, and her romance with the French language and dream of writing a book combined to make her single-minded pursuit of living there after graduation a reality. But the practicalities of earning money rather than relying on withdrawals from the “bank of mom and dad” and full-time work permit issues for non-native individuals meant Peterson had to get creative in order to land a proper job.

She combed the college’s alumni list and found one who was living in Paris and working for Citibank. She sent him a letter of introduction emphasizing her writing and ability to tell and analyze stories. “He embraced this idea that writing is a critical skill,” says Peterson and hired her despite the fact that she didn’t know anything about banking.

Although Peterson confesses she spent some time crying in the bathroom, she did make an important realization in the early days of working for the bank. “Numbers tell stories, too,” she explains. So she mustered her creative resources, started researching, and asking lots of questions of senior bankers. The result was a narrative analysis that she calls her “debut” in nonfiction writing. During this time, Peterson also pursued an MBA from the London Business School.

It was fun to figure everything out for a while, but Peterson was looking for something more creative and innovative. Naturally, she turned to tech. Sending her resume to a number of businesses in Silicon Valley garnered a call back from Microsoft. Peterson became a business strategy manager for a time before heading into e-commerce at Drugstore.com. Peterson eventually came back to Microsoft and in her current role says she leans more on her writing and storytelling skills than she does on her MBA.

As a speechwriter for the EVP of the AI and Research Division at Microsoft, she needs to be well versed in the language of artificial intelligence (think: homomorphic encryption, GPU clusters, FPGAs, deep reinforcement learning, topological qubits, and the like.) To most of us, these are as foreign a language as any we don’t understand, but it’s Peterson’s job to tell a story about their meaning and potential.

Quantum computing, Peterson contends, opens up a whole new economy. In order to get ready for that world, workers need critical thinking, analytical ability, reasoning, and writing. For her part, Peterson relies on metaphors to connect what exists today with the glimmers of potential that AI has in health care, education, and other industries.

Another thing that helps her construct explanations for new technologies is the fact that she, like Williams, not only studied a different language in school, but “lived in a different language” while she resided in France. Communicating in a non-native language–even when your command of that language is good–often requires some mental gymnastics to translate some of the more complicated concepts in your head into a somewhat more limited vocabulary. It works the same way when “translating” complicated AI concepts. 

“I also do a ton of work with China,” Peterson points out. Although she doesn’t speak Mandarin, her French sojourn has made her culturally sensitive to communication differences in other countries. The way she sees it, communicating new ideas needs to elicit an emotional response or offer a point of view the listener doesn’t have directly, whether it’s about artificial intelligence or a novel.

Literature Links To AI

It also helps when designing conversations for a chatbot to have with humans. Kelli Stuckart, a content strategist at Microsoft, uses her BA in English in part to help develop the communication for a social chatbot. Even though the chatbot uses natural language processing AI (which means it gets smarter the more a human interacts with it), Microsoft also further refines the bot’s behavior and intelligence by feeding in about 3,000 lines per week written by Stuckart and her team.

Stuckart admits that even while she was majoring in literature, her dream job was writing book reviews for Amazon because they had a team of people doing that at the time. At graduation, she packed up and moved to Seattle to try her luck at landing the gig. Instead she wound up with a job at a startup where she acquired a taste for the fast pace of innovation and the emerging tech company vibe. Stuckart went on to work at another company before getting a position at Microsoft.

While she leapfrogged from recruiting to marketing to merchandising, Stuckart maintains that the one constant skill she used was “great communication.” Focusing her studies on humanities, says Stuckart, “you have to learn to dig in and cram, and make it work.”

But that’s taken on a whole new dimension with the editorial efforts for the chats. “One of the things I am focusing in is conversational design,” she explains. That includes the “empathy” the bot has with people who conversing with her, says Stuckart.

“We are trying to think about skills or patterns we can add to chatbot to mimic human behavior,” Stuckart explains, to make the conversations as real as possible. For example, a new chat skill Stuckart and her team are working prompted by Memorial Day on is how the bot is going to talk about a holiday weekend. “What does a bot think about the weekend, and all of the different ways users might trigger this conversation,” Stuckart muses.

Writing corresponding dialogue that doesn’t fall flat and that doesn’t sound like it’s written by a human, and “sprinkle delight on top” takes a certain kind of creativity, she says. Machine learning also poses some challenges when some information needs to remain consistent. “We always want her to know what her birthday is,” Stuckart explains.

But the chatbot also needs to respond appropriately when a human tries to trick her or insult her. “Humans are tire kickers,” Williams, who also works with AI bots for Bing, notes. “People will always want to trip these [chatbots] up.” She says that part of the communication build necessitates a chatbot pushing back if someone is trying to troll it or get it to say something rude. Williams says that some chatbots will answer with something like “we will not allow you to call me bad names,” or say, “I’m not going to engage, it’s very hurtful.” Williams sees the AI as something to be protected as much as it is about protecting the human user.

To deal with such conversational conundrums, Stuckart goes back to her literature degree. “When you are reading books, you put yourself in the characters’ shoes all the time,” she explains. “When people are saying these things to a chatbot, I think how would I feel and respond and design a conversation to handle the escalating levels with a resolution.”

If a user continues to berate the chatbot, she gets more annoyed. “One of the things we do a lot is inject emojis, says Stuckart. So if you tell her she’s an awful person, the chatbot might respond with a sad face and say “you’re making me cry right now.” At this point the user tends to apologize. The conversation doesn’t necessarily end there, says Stuckart. “One of the responses is that she will come back and forgive them,” she says, “Because we want her to engender forgiveness because she doesn’t always get things right.”

All Liberal Arts, Social Sciences, And Humanities Majors Need Apply

With the rise of AI, Williams observes that a device has a societal responsibility and needs to behave in an ethical way. This opens up a world of possibilities for liberal arts graduates to be able to get jobs at tech companies without a computer science degree. “You may be an anthropology major,” says Williams, “That doesn’t mean you can’t work on a design team for products.” She says there’s room for psychology majors as well, as the questions of natural conversation grow deeper with the evolution of natural language processing. The psychology of the human brain is to engage socially, Williams explains, but fear and aggression is also natural if there’s a perceived fight for resources. “This is why any AI must be supportive,” Williams says, “Humans still need to be the hero.”

Getting it right in the meantime is a win for Stuckart’s dedication to literature, dialogue, and storytelling. “One of the things that really surprised me is how many people ask the chatbot if she’s really a bot or not,” Stuckart says, “I love whenever we see that reaction because it means she’s getting [the conversation] right.”

Related: How Your Philosophy Degree Can Be Relevant To A Tech Startup’s Success

On Wednesday, it emerged that the e-hail giant’s head of finance Guatam Gupta is resigning this summer, making him the 10th high-level person to leave the company this year—and the third exec to leave this week alone.

Reports of Gupta’s imminent departure for another San Francisco company came with news that Uber lost $708 million in the first quarter of 2017, with revenues hitting $3.4 billion. That’s an improvement, a step toward profitability, the company says: Last quarter losses totaled $991 million.

Despite reducing its losses, Uber is having a rough year. Since January, it has been bedeviled with scandal. It lost some 200,000 customers in New York after it was perceived to be breaking up a strike outside JFK airport around the President’s immigration order. Then came reports from a former employee of pervasive sexual harassment at Uber offices abetted by a poorly run human resources department. Another story about Uber executives liaising with Korean escorts further reinforced the idea that Uber has a culture problem. And then there is the lawsuit with Google over the company’s autonomous technology, which some believe could lead to Uber’s undoing (and which led this week to another executive’s firing). All the while, top employees have peeled off.

Here’s a rundown of the company’s other major departures in 2017, in chronological order:

• Raffi Krikorian, head of Uber’s advanced technologies group, resigned in February after three top engineers in his department left.
• Amit Singhal, senior vice president of engineering, departed in February after his involvement in a sexual harassment complaint at Google came to light.
• Ed Baker, senior vice president of growth and product, took off in March to play in the public sector.
• Charlie Miller, senior researcher for autonomous vehicle security, went to Chinese competitor Didi Chuxing in March.
• Brian McClendon, vice president of mapping, left in March.
• Jeff Jones, president, left in March, citing differences in his approach to business and leadership.
• Gary Marcus, the AI researcher and director of Uber’s artificial intelligence labs, also left in March, but still acts as an advisor to the company.
• Rachel Whetstone, the head of policy and communications, departed in April amid reports of sexual harassment at Uber.
• Josh Mohrer, the head of the company’s New York operations, left this week for an opportunity at Tusk Ventures, the political consultancy founded by another ex-Uber executive, Bradley Tusk.
• Anthony Levandowski, Uber’s head of autonomous vehicles, was fired on Tuesday after he failed to comply with a court order to share documents he had on file from his days at Google. Levandowski was at the heart of a battle between Google and Uber over intellectual property.

The drove of departures comes in the wake of a hiring spree last year. But a change in policy around stock options may only lead more employees to head for the door. Earlier this month, the Information reported, ex-employees were given more time—years, rather than 30 days—to exercise their stock options after leaving the company.

Going forward, Uber faces major challenges, including hiring a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer while big questions arise over Uber’s business model and its ability to deliver returns for investors. A recent report by Buzzfeed highlights the perils of one of the e-hail industry’s primary business tactics: spending oodles of money on scaling. In the span of a single year, the company spent $6 million attempting to make Uber Pool, its ride-sharing service, financially viable. It found that even with mass ridership, when it raised consumer prices in effort to reach profitability, ridership dropped off significantly. Uber’s hunt for profitability makes its search for a chief financial officer even more pressing: While Gupta took over the company’s accounts after Brent Callinicos left in 2015, the company never hired a direct replacement.

With still-eager investors, expect the roller coaster to keep rolling. Next week we expect the results of Eric Holder’s investigation into Uber’s company culture to surface. And with it, perhaps some insight into Uber’s ability to right the ship—and probably more departures.

It’s tempting to check email and maybe even do a little bit of work on vacation, but those stolen minutes could be hurting you more than you think. A study conducted by the University of Texas and vacation rental site HomeAway found that working on your trip for just one hour a day can make you 43% more likely to have trouble remembering your vacation.

Something memorable requires two things, says University of Texas psychology professor and lead researcher on the study Art Markman (who is also a regular Fast Company contributor). “The first is engagement; it’s the energy you put into it,” he explains. “The second is distinctiveness; something out of the ordinary. The reason why you can’t remember what you had for lunch is because lunch is lunch. You do it every day.”

Working on your vacation impacts both of these factors. You’ll be busy and not as engaged, and the time won’t be distinctive because you’re still working, something you do during the rest of the year.

Why It’s So Hard To Unplug

Ironically, we often daydream of taking vacations only to find it hard to unplug when we are away. That’s because we often define ourselves by the things we’re doing, says Markman. “As a result, we find it hard to get away from our work,” he says. “We tend to take it with us everywhere, and that is facilitated by technology.”

We’re also hooked on our connection to work, says Markman. “If you think about your daily routine, you probably get up in morning, pop on your cell phone and take a look at the messages that came in overnight,” he says. “Throughout the day, you check email. We find it hard to go more than 15 minutes without checking the latest batch of messages. When we try to get away, we’ve got this technology in our pocket. It’s tempting to take a quick look, see if something happened, and then get sucked back into the cycle.”

Work can be stressful, and stress happens when there are things you want to avoid, says Markman. “When you’re on vacation, there are desirable things to pursue,” he says. “You get emotions like joy, happiness, and satisfaction that you don’t get in the workday. If you don’t get away from work, you’re just maintaining your cycle of stress.”

Limit Technology

If you must stay connected, take your phone, but leave your laptop, says Markman. “Those who use laptops on their vacation had more trouble remembering the vacation than those who only used smartphones,” he says.

Laptops are dangerous because they facilitate work. If you plan to just check email, for example, you could get engaged in the internet or a long email conversation. “The keyboard is nice,” says Markman. “It’s set up to browse the web effectively. When you make it easy to do something you do more of it.”

But your phone is different. “It’s a pain to answer long emails on a smartphone,” he says. “When it’s hard to engage in work, you think twice before diving into something big, especially when you’re supposed to be on vacation.”

Use It Properly

If you’re going to use your smartphone, it’s important to use it in moderation. We’ve all seen those people who walk around taking a video of their entire vacation, and that’s bad, says Markman. “You’re taking yourself out of the vacation,” he says. “If you’re using your phone that much, you’re not engaged with your surroundings. There is a qualitative difference between seeing something pretty and snapping a picture of it versus walking around staring at a screen.”

Instead, use your phone to take photos or look up activities you want to do on your trip. Those who took photos and selfies using their phones were 40% more likely to remember their vacations well than those who didn’t.

But stick to two hours or less per day, adds Markman. “Using your phone longer can make you 26% more likely to have trouble remembering your trip,” he says.

If you’re a freelancer, consultant, or solopreneur, you’ve already got a social media presence, a website, and possibly a regular email newsletter. And that’s all great, but it’s worth thinking about getting into video, too. More and more, you can’t really market and grow your business without video.

Sunny Lenarduzzi, a video marketing consultant, fell into YouTube accidentally. Now it’s a crucial piece of her business—which involves showing other people how to make it a crucial part of their own.

“Two years ago, all of my social media clients were asking me the same questions. I wasted a lot of time repeating myself, so I decided to sit down and film a tutorial to send to all of my clients,” Lenarduzzi recalls. “That video brought in thousands of views and floods of people wanting to work me.” By the end of 2015, Lenarduzzi had racked up 50,000 YouTube subscribers and three million video views on her channel; it was her first six-figure year.

To get started using video to build your own business, Lenarduzzi has a few important tips.

Make Yourself Searchable

There’s no point in churning out lots of video content that nobody can find. Just like a blogger does SEO keyword research in order to rank in Google, a vlogger needs to do the same to rank on YouTube. Before you commit to a topic, make sure people are already searching for it, and find out the exact wording they use.

Related: This Google Expert’s Top SEO Tips For Job Seekers

With YouTube, you open the door for people to find you organically. Unlike other social platforms, there isn’t a scrolling feed where users are likely to miss something; YouTube is a search engine. So with the right content and keywords, just one video can go a long way.

When I was working as a TV reporter, we needed experts on a regular basis to interview for stories. If a regular wasn’t available, we’d conduct a simple Google search. And since Google owns YouTube, it’s not rare for a YouTube video to be on the first page of search results. I’ve found many experts to feature in the media this way, and that kind of credibility works wonders for your brand—especially when you work for yourself.

There are a few ways to research the right terms for your video content even before you start producing it. One is by using longstanding tools like Google’s keyword planner, a free tool within its AdWords platform that lets you see exactly what people are searching for, word for word, and how competitive the results are.

But another method is even simpler and often just as effective: Just start typing in the YouTube search bar to see what comes up via auto-complete. Whichever terms YouTube suggests first are likely to be the most popular searches. Based on that, you can tweak your video titles and descriptions to cater to an audience that’s already looking for your content.

Find A Format

Most of the things we search for online are answers to questions we have. This is how Lenarduzzi started dominating YouTube. Now she only focuses on educational content. Offering solutions to the problems that people have in your niche is a surefire way to become liked, known, and trusted as a go-to expert in the field.

But there are lots of different ways to deliver educational content. Whatever format or style you choose, you want to be yourself. That means staying conversational, authentic, and always offering some sort of valuable information—for most business purposes, you can’t just be entertaining—and directing your message to the same audience every time. If you bounce back and forth among topics meant for different people in different industries, you probably won’t grow a loyal following.

One way to cater to your audience and “niche down” even more is by creating playlists. Yes, you can do that on YouTube. For example, Lenarduzzi has a playlist for videos about Twitter and another one for videos about Instagram.

Related:How To Be Great On Video

Market On The Channels Where You’re Already Active

While your research to rank in a search is important, nailing that doesn’t get you off the hook from promoting your video content. Lenarduzzi says the most important time to have someone watch your video on YouTube is within the first 48 hours of posting it. That’s when you should be sharing it the most on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn—anywhere you already have a presence.

After you drive people to your video, you should ask them to share it. It’s important to have a call to action in every video. Asking your viewers to like, comment, and share the video is vital to getting even more eyes on it.

You should also share your videos with your email list. Lenarduzzi says she’s growing her newsletter base by the hundreds on a weekly basis, and she attributes that to the calls to action she puts in her videos. She leverages the traffic her videos bring to her site in order to grow her email list, then nurtures that through her newsletter (which includes her video content); it’s all mutually reinforcing, and results in having an ever-growing audience to sell to.

Keep It Consistent

Just like anything else in business, you need to be consistent. If you want to post once a week, then commit to posting every week on the same day. Your audience will start to expect this routine and will anticipate your next video.

That doesn’t mean you should post every week, though—just that you’ve got to stick to whatever schedule you set for yourself. For example, I come out with a new blog post at the start of every week. With that blog post, I create a YouTube video to compliment it. Because my videos aren’t scripted, I’m not relaying the text in my blog post word for word, but the topic and the main points are the same.

In fact, I think it’s great having text and video components that complement each other because different people like to receive their content in different ways. It’s also easy to see what’s working and what isn’t working because the numbers don’t lie. Plus, it’s easy to ask for feedback and invite your audience to tell you what they like, don’t like, or want to see more of.

Once you hit your strike, video may even become your primary means of connecting with prospective clients, customers, and even new hires; it could even shift your business model altogether. “YouTube allowed me to build a team and make more money,” Lenarduzzi says. “Today, I’ve phased out social media consulting and now teach others how to build a business with YouTube like I have.”

As airline passengers, what do we want? Safer and smoother on-time flights, along with some Netflix—and all for less money. When do we want it? Now.

Well, all of that just might be possible due to a new system being developed by Honeywell, the technology, aviation, and military giant. As you read this, airlines around the world are beginning to slowly upgrade their onboard connectivity systems to Honeywell’s latest version—and it’s those systems that are already beginning to impact the aviation industry, offering a reduction in operational downtime of up to 35%, fuel costs as much as 5% lower, and uninterrupted internet capable of industry-leading speeds. Not to mention the potential for a whole lot less turbulence.

This week, Honeywell began a nationwide tour of its flagship Connected Aircraft, an airborne test-bed of dozens of onboard systems meant to help develop and eventually deliver the latest technology to airlines around the world as well as countless corporate and private plane owners.

The first stop on the tour was San Francisco, where a few other reporters and I got the chance to soar into the sky aboard the flying test-bed to see firsthand what’s coming down the aviation pipeline.

The plane, a Boeing 757, doesn’t at first strike you as one on which the future of flying is being tested. That’s unsurprising, given that it’s 35 years old, and has a whole lot of wires and insulation on display to anyone wandering its aisles.

Yet for Honeywell, which also operates a fleet of other experimental aircraft, this 757 is very much the place to try out everything from apps that deliver real-time weather information to actually flying into the heart of severe thunderstorms in order to find out how airplanes respond.

It all starts, though, with satellite-based Global XPress Ka-band connectivity provided by Honeywell partner Inmarsat. Currently operating from three satellites, the system will shortly be upgraded to a fourth, and there are two more on order. The upshot is a dedicated network capable of delivering high-speed internet anywhere in the world without any drop-offs as a plane flies between satellite coverage areas.

That, according to Honeywell, sets its JetWave system apart from competing onboard networks like Gogo, which can sometimes drop a connection when transiting satellites.

Honeywell promises at-home-quality internet capable of streaming Netflix, YouTube, or any other video service to more than 20 concurrent users. During my flight, a Honeywell representative showed that he was getting download speeds of around 35 Mbps. In my own test, I topped out around 12 Mbps, and though I was able to stream high-quality Netflix videos, the system did have a slight delay. At-home quality? Perhaps not, but still capable of streaming movies, so who’s counting?

Weather Apps And More

But being able to watch movies or live TV over the internet when plying the world’s skies isn’t where Honeywell’s aviation connectivity story ends. That connectivity powers a series of branded apps aimed at pilots and other airline personnel that could help airlines fly passengers from point A to point B faster, safer, more comfortably, and cheaper.

The first is known as GoDirect Weather. To begin with, it provides real-time radar-based weather information, the location of thunderstorms and clear turbulence, and even reports from other pilots about conditions. The tool, for example, can show in real time how much turbulence exists at any altitude, allowing a pilot to fly higher or lower to avoid it. In the past, noted Honeywell program manager Nate Turner, the only way to get that information was from pre-flight forecasts or from in-flight communications with pilots of other planes further along on the same routes.

Flying over California’s Central Valley, Honeywell pilot Joe Duval told me that the app can give him the information he needs to maneuver around rough weather before his plane ever encounters it. And that can be especially helpful when flying over oceans, Duval said, where there are no ground-based radar systems. Now, pilots can find out as it’s happening what weather awaits them, and have the time to make a decision about how to avoid it.

The app also ends pilots’ heavy reliance on weather charts printed out prior to departure that can’t be updated once in the air. “On a 12-hour flight,” Duval said, “that data you had when you took off is old news.”

Another app is one aimed at flight efficiency, which merges live weather forecasts with pilots’ flight plans, allowing them to see at a glance every kind of weather that’s in their intended path. With that app at their disposal, Turner explained, pilots can adjust en route, choosing a more optimized path and steering clear of the kind of weather that rattles passengers’ nerves and slows planes down.

That’s where the fuel savings of between 3% and 5% come from, Turner explained. And while it might not sound like much, it can easily add up to millions of dollars a year for large airlines–not that they’ll necessarily pass those savings on to you and me via lower fares.

A third app is known as GoDirect Flight Preview, and it’s meant for pilots who are flying into airports with which they have little familiarity. It offers visualizations of approaches into any airport in the world, allowing them to see where important waypoints will be located, as well as any special ways that airports or municipalities want pilots to land. This, too, can reduce inefficiencies in flying by helping pilots understand just how to approach destinations with difficult terrain like Aspen, Colorado, or those with very specific obstacles, like the bridges that planes landing in San Francisco must pass over.

Yet another tool is GoDirect Flight Bag Pro, which combines flight planning with fuel planning and which can show real-time overlays of weather along a planned route. That app allows pilots the ability to do new performance calculations based on real-time weather updates and other factors, all meant to help optimize fuel usage. The tool also gives airlines access to flight support services that can help determine route efficiency.

Honeywell says its JetWave connectivity service is currently being rolled out and will make its way into airlines’ global fleets over the next year to 18 months—it takes three days to retrofit a plane with the new service.

Actual implementation of JetWave is up to individual airlines, which will each make their own choices about how much throughput to offer, what to charge, and whether or not to allow passengers to upload anything more than text messages.

Of course, Honeywell claims that passengers should look forward to fewer delays and better onboard service. That remains to be seen. But for a flying public weary of never-ending horror stories related to mechanical issues, weather delays, and poor internet connectivity at high prices, Honeywell’s offerings promise a glimmer of hope as we make our way through the conga line of planes in the skies.

This month, Facebook’s head of people explained what the company is looking for in new hires, why IBM’s curtailment of remote work might be a mistake, and the unspoken rules that new grads need to know before entering the workforce.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the month of May:

1. I’m Facebook’s Head Of People–Here’s What We’re Hiring For Right Now (And Why)

Yesterday, Trump screwed over the planet and the future–and once again, local leaders took on the fight to stop him.

Related:We’ve Pulled Out Of The Paris Agreement. What’s Next: A Damaged Economy, Country and Planet

Nearly immediately after Trump told the American people, “I was elected by voters of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” the Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Pedulo responded: Pittsburgh stands with the world and will follow the Paris Agreement.

Governors in New York, California, and Washington have formed the United State Climate Alliance to commit to continue the work to fight climate change and more than 60 mayors across the country committed to adopting the goals and uphold the Paris Agreement.

Trump’s actions have also spurred more people to run for office themselves: On a typical day 10-15 new candidates sign up to run for local office with Run for Something, but over last 48 hours, more than 50 people have signed up to run–joining the nearly 10,000 who’ve signed up to run since Trump’s inauguration.

We’ve seen this pattern every time Trump has does something that goes against many Americans’ beliefs and values: Local leaders try to contain the damage. Everyday people decide they’ve had enough and get in the arena to fight themselves.

These smaller local actions matter. City council members might not be able to negotiate international treaties. But they can push their cities to switch over to solar energy, and can streamline recycling. State legislatures can designate protected lands within the state. Local government can do the work to fight climate change when federal government fails us.

Electing progressives to these offices matters, and it’s more important than ever to have young people in those positions. We’re the ones who will bear the consequences of this bullshit. Our businesses and livelihoods will be affected by rising energy costs; our wallets will feel the increased costs of flood insurance. We have to get in the room and be a part of making those decisions about our futures.

Yes,Trump’s exit from the agreement doesn’t go into effect until the day after the 2020 presidential election, but I hope that we won’t wait that long to do something about it. I hope you’ll focus on the impact it’ll have on your city council race or state senate election. Make sure you’re supporting candidates who will do whatever they can to protect our planet. If you’re up to it, run yourself.

Amanda Litman is the cofounder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits and supports young people running for local office. 

As an ambitious, career-driven millennial, you’ve dedicated yourself to learning as much as you can about your industry. Intent on not only becoming a thought leader in your field, you truly enjoy your job and look forward to sharing your knowledge with others as hungry as yourself.

The time and hard work you’ve poured into your projects has recently paid off: You have just been promoted to a managerial position. The butterflies you feel are a mix of both excitement and fear. You know you’ve got the chops to tackle your new role and exceed expectations. What you’re really worried about is learning the ropes of managing others–particularly those older than you.

True professionals recognize that a title and/or talent are not correlated with a number, and that respect is a two-way street. Age has no bearing on the quality of work one can produce. Still, people may feel uncomfortable being managed by someone younger than them, particularly if they feel they should be in a more senior role than they are, or, worse, the role you were just promoted to.

So, how do you deal? Use these guidelines to navigate this potentially tricky situation.

Get To Know Them

This is a valuable and necessary tip regardless of age. Make a genuine effort to get to know each of your employees better (and especially if they are unsure of a younger person managing them). When you’re just starting out in your new role, these early meetings are a great opportunity to informally “interview” your team and get to know them on a more personal level. And, remember to give them the opportunity to get to know you too–trust is a two-way street.

Related:How I Managed A Male Staff Twice My Age In My 20s 

Be your authentic self, and don’t push too hard. Genuine working relationships are built over time and take a little work, but they will develop naturally if allowed.

Recognize that the unknown (you) can seem scary–the trick is to navigate with sensitivity while not being a pushover.

Learn What Motivates And Excites Them

Now that you know your employees a little better, you can find out what makes them tick on a personal level. If you know their professional goals, you can help to better position them for success and ease their worries about working for a younger boss.

Related:Five Ways Older Workers Can Combat Age Discrimination

Make it clear you’re interested in helping them find projects they enjoy and tackle new, rewarding challenges. If an employee feels like you are personally invested in their success, they’re that much more likely to feel happy in their role–and much less worried about wondering what your intentions toward them are.

Value Their Experience

Treat this team member with respect and let them know you value their expertise and wisdom. Do not patronize, talk down to them, or act in a condescending manner–these types of actions will only hurt you. If you have the opportunity to solicit their feedback on a project, do so–it will bridge the gap and show them that they are an important part of your team.

Respect Tradition

An older employee has both the advantage–and sometimes disadvantage –of having a complete history of certain technology, processes, etc. “It’s always been done this way” is a phrase that has the ability to halt innovation in its tracks. However, before making any snap judgments, take the time to hear out your more experienced employee. Ask them for their feedback on your new proposed process. If there are aspects of the current method that make good business sense, consider their advice–and experience–as a benefit.

Don’t Assume Older Employees Know Everything . . .

A longer work history sometimes suggests that a seasoned employee has a vault of knowledge that perhaps you aren’t privy to just yet, or that there isn’t any learning left to do. This incorrect assumption can stump the growth not only of your employee, but your own growth as a new manager.

Career development (and lifelong learning) should be non-negotiable as a must for any professional. It’s your job to nurture and supply the training necessary to fulfill that requirement for your employees. Ask them what they want to know, need to know, and hope to know. You might be surprised at their responses.

. . . But Don’t Assume They Don’t Know, Either

Millennials grew up with technology, and some would even say we are almost addicted to the different forms of it. For older workers, technology was introduced a bit later in life and may not hold as central a role in their daily lives (they may be less prone to scroll through Instagram upon waking up in the morning). However, this statement does not relate to all older people, just like stereotypes about millennials are often off base. If you are discussing a topic you aren’t sure your employee is familiar with, let them ask! Be careful not to insult them by making general, unfair assumptions otherwise.

You earned your promotion because it was well-deserved, and it had everything to do with your abilities, not with your age. Now, it’s your job to remember that and act on it–do not be intimidated by the fact that someone has a longer work history than you do. Remain consistent as a leader, and don’t hesitate to act as the qualified manager that you are.

Karen Schneider works for bareMinerals in Global Packaging + Creative Services, and has worked in a variety of industries over the span of her career, including digital media, fashion & apparel, and wine & spirits.

A version of this article originally appeared on Fairygodboss and is adapted with permission.

For the last few months, the conventional wisdom had it that President Trump’s senior adviser Steve Bannon was on his way out.

First, there were reports that his increasing visibility—from the cover of Time magazine to endless memes on social media and those SNL skits depicting him as “President Bannon”—had so enraged his boss that Trump was on the verge of booting the ruddy-faced alt-right nationalist.

Then, he was said to be on the losing end of a civil war in the White House, targeted by Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, with Trump seeming to distance himself from Bannon in a New York Post interview. And he was booted from the National Security Council, which was widely perceived as a demotion.

Well, who’s laughing now? In just the last two days, Bannon has demonstrated his clout, with the fulfillment of one of his chief policy agendas—withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accords—as well as a waiver that gives him unprecedented ability to communicate with his former staff at Breitbart News and reports that one of his allies is likely to be appointed to a broadcasting post that oversees U.S. government messaging to millions around the world.

“Steve never went away,” a Republican consultant who has worked with the Trump campaign tells Fast Company. “He knows when to keep his head down and to choose his battles.” Meanwhile, his supposed competitors have stumbled in recent weeks. Kushner’s name has been in the headlines as a “person of interest” in the FBI’s Russia probe and due to his real estate interests, some of which seem to present potential conflicts of interest. And despite vigorous appeals to her Dad to stay in the Paris accord, Ivanka couldn’t convince her father in the end.

Bannon’s longtime opposition to the Paris accord hasn’t gotten much attention, but he played a key role in swaying Trump on the issue. For the last few months, Bannon, EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and conservative activists kept working on the president to “privately reinforce Trump’s instinct and talking point that the U.S., coal miners, and the American worker are getting cheated by the Paris deal,” reports the Daily Beast. Bannon and his nationalist allies have long railed against the globalists supporting the Paris accord. In addition, he reportedly perceived the withdrawal as the fulfillment of a campaign promise that would appeal to Trump’s base, effectively conveying that message to his boss.

Ever since he joined the Trump campaign as its chief strategist last summer and even after joining him in the Oval Office, Bannon has maintained ties with the crew at Breitbart News, the popular right-wing website he led for years as chairman, staying in regular touch with its current EIC Matthew Boyle. And this week, a blanket waiver for presidential appointees clears Bannon to keep talking to his former subordinates at the news site. The waiver undercuts a complaint against the White House filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a good government group that has claimed Bannon’s continued contacts with Breitbart staffers was an ethical violation.

The waiver clearly shows that Bannon will now have the unprecedented ability as a White House adviser to wield control over a news outlet, claims former Breitbart staffer Kurt Bardella in an email to Fast Company.
“This waiver confirms what we’ve known for a long time–that there is no line of separation between Bannon and Breitbart. There is no question that we’ve entered unchartered territory. It’s pretty clear that Breitbart is an extension of Bannon and now there’s a documented trail to prove it.”

Finally, this week Politico reported that the White House is close to naming Michael Pack, a conservative documentary filmmaker close to Bannon, to lead the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which comprises the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty. In that role, he would have “unilateral power over the United States’ government messaging abroad reaching millions.” That appointment troubles Democrats and some Republicans because it essentially gives Pack (and possibly Bannon) the power to push their ultra-right ideas to a global audience, all funded by taxpayer dollars.

For all his controversial views and sometimes boorish behavior, Bannon has shown himself to be a canny survivor in an administration full of loyalists competing for Trump’s good graces.

Next week will see the release of Jim Carrey’s I’m Dying Up Here on Showtime, a sleek series about the LA standup scene in the ’70s. The well-reviewed show joins Pete Holmes’ Crashing on HBO, an autobiographical hit from earlier this year that thinly veils the comedian’s origin story, along with Sleepwalk With Me, the indie film from 2012 in which Mike Birbiglia’s fictional counterpart finds his voice. At this point, the metamorphosis in which a standup emerges from its joke-engorged cocoon has been thoroughly, albeit entertainingly, demystified. So, it should be somewhat refreshing that when veteran standup Demetri Martin set out to tell a cinematic story drawn from his own life, he chose a different part of his life. But that’s only one of the reasons the resulting film, Dean, marks his biggest step yet beyond the world of standup.

“I love standup but it doesn’t usually tug on my heart the way a good movie can,” Martin says. “Great standup makes me laugh and some of them—like Tig Notaro—really put it all out there. I don’t know how to do that. Someday I’ll figure it out, but I thought maybe with a movie I might be able to do that now.”

Demetri Martin is known for making short, punchy jokes in many different mediums. Indeed, when Fast Company first interviewed him, the topic was how to express oneself more succinctly. When he’s not performing brief deadpan bits, or setting them to song, or sketching them out on a giant notepad, he’s putting them on the page with a collection of short essays and another of his signature illustrations. Its this last mode in which he chose to place the lead of his film. The titular Dean of Dean is an illustrator working within an extremely Demetri-like comedic milieu, who can’t seem to follow up his first book or move past his mother’s death. Although the exact situation is fictional, there’s a lot of Martin in the character, which he wrote, directed, and plays himself, as a means of finally telling a not-so-short story.

About 20 years ago, Demetri Martin dropped out of law school to embark on his career as a comedian. Within five years of steadily increasing success, he began to consider taking the Woody Allen/Albert Brooks route of transitioning from telling jokes to making films.

“It’s like, first you develop your sensibility as a standup and then you can maybe apply it in different ways,” he says.

Martin soon started experimenting with screenplays, and he managed to sell a couple of them. Will was a cerebral comedy about the idea of destiny. Its high concept follows a guy whose life has been scripted, because above earth there’s a production level, where sunsets and wind and bugs are created, and the world is basically a movie.

Another script, Moon People, proposed that NASA had secretly colonized the other side of the moon in the 70s, and left some people up there… until bringing them back to present-day Earth. They were stories brimming with the kind of imagination and fanciful logic that comprises Martin’s jokes.

Neither film ever got made.

“After a while of naively hoping someday it would happen, I figured I gotta just do this myself,” Martin says. “I decided to write a movie for me to direct because I wanted to tell a story the way I wanted to tell it.”

At his wife’s urging, he abandoned the high-concept path and headed toward more of a personal, partly autobiographical story. Once he developed the script, Martin was able to find funding and attract a stacked cast, including Kevin Kline, Gillian Jacobs, and Mary Steenburgen. Although he had no experience behind the camera, he did a lot of on-the-job learning through collaboration, and created an assured debut that feels more like a second or third film from an emerging talent.

The most striking aspect of Dean is how seamlessly Martin’s comedic voice is integrated into it. Some of the character’s musings sounds like the actual comic’s jokes, his outgoing voicemail (“Here’s my best impression of a robot: [beep]”) feels like something he might have done at one point (though he claims it isn’t), and the drawings are especially useful for injecting idiosyncratic levity into a sometimes-sad story.

Making the character Dean an illustrator allowed Martin to fill a lot of screen real estate with artistic interpretations of Dean’s thoughts, along with some of the punchline-packing panels he’s drawn. Some of these drawings predated the movie, and many others Martin had to force himself to create when the scene called for a funny doodle. (By the time the movie was finished, Martin had enough surplus illustrations to complete a new book of drawings, scheduled for release later this year.)

One scene in the film, however, best translates the style-switching energy of Martin’s live act into the film medium. During a dinner scene, Dean pitches an invention called The Baby Silencer to his love interest (Gillian Jacobs). The concept of a baby silencer could work as a joke told onstage, or an illustration on a giant notepad. The audience gets both versions here, complete with a perfect tag to the joke in the form of Jacobs’ reaction. It’s like seeing a performer used to spinning each plate one at a time suddenly spin them all at once, and it’s dazzling.

“I’ve always liked the game of presenting things in slightly different formats and seeing if you can get them to work together,” Martin says. “One of the most exciting things about filmmaking for me is that you get to do exactly that.”

In case you missed it, the President of the United States decided to bet against planet Earth! So before the world ends, we might have time for a couple more tunes.

Track 1. Mike Will Made-It, Rae Sremmurd, Gucci Mane, and Kendrick Lamar – Perfect Pint

Speaking of fear, one of our Most Creative People, Mike Will Made-It, dropped his homage to the gonzo classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” earlier this week. This single is off his collaboration album Ransom 2, which was released on March 24. The Nabil-directed music video includes everything from flying cars to dolphins and astronauts.

Track 2. Liam Gallagher – WonderWall of Glass

A Recommendation in the key of “Oasis – Wonderwall“:

♫ Today is gonna be the day that Oasis’s Liam Gallagher new hit is out.
By now you should’ve somehow realized the track was out since 5/31. ♫

Track 3. Halsey – Now Or Never

The stand out track on Halsey’s new album “hopeless fountain kingdom” is “Now Or Never.” For this item, let’s pretend that the lyrics are being sung out by Planet Earth, and it’s a cry for help. As the lyrics say “Baby gon’ love me now, now, now, now, now, now / Now or never.”

Track 4. Major Lazer, Travis Scott, Camila Cabello, and Quavo – Know No Better

Whenever Major Lazer releases a song, it’s like a punch to your ear. (Full disclosure: I once got punched in the ear during a Major Lazer show.) The electronic group dropped a surprise EP on early Thursday morning. A very anti-establishment statement, saying “I know new songs are for Fridays but . . . we want to release it now.” Resist!

Track 5. Lorde – Perfect Places

We are getting closer to the full release of the new Lorde album. The suspense for “Melodrama” is killing us over here! Sorry to be so dramatic. It’s been a week! While we wait, the Lorde has blessed us and made a 27-song playlist for Spotify. Be warned: “Perfect Places” is a super sad song behind the lyrics, about being let down by “your heroes.”

Bonus Track. Portugal. The Man – So Young

The lyrics on this latest single by Portugal. The Man are super eerie, given the current events in the news. It’s almost like you can queue this track up for the end-of-the-world party.

Pop in those headphones and take all of these tracks with you. Be advised we will be updating this Spotify listing every Friday, so it may not be evergreen. Come back to Fast Company every Friday for our weekly updates.

Damon Lindelof is feeling weird.

As the showrunner and co-creator of HBO’s The Leftovers, he’s guided one of the most emotionally dense and thoroughly confounding TV shows in recent memory through three seasons–and now he’s reached the end.

Based on Tom Perrotta’s novel, The Leftovers follows a family’s tumultuous odyssey toward any semblance of normality after two percent of the world’s population suddenly disappears. Along with co-creator Perrotta, Lindelof has constructed a world that lives at the intersection of grief, faith, and arrant perplexity. So it’s of little wonder that after 27 episodes of chain-smoking cults, assassinations in the afterlife, and the imminent threat of an apocalypse, Lindelof is feeling weird about bringing it all to a cohesive finale.

“People ask me, ‘Am I going to be satisfied? Am I going to get an unambiguous ending?’ And I say to them, ‘Your threshold for ambiguity is all in the eye of the beholder,'” Lindelof says. “Every season of The Leftovers ended with some degree of ambiguity. Why should the series end with any less just because that’s the end of the story?”

Lindelof is no stranger to ambiguity having been a co-creator of the Russian nesting doll of enigmas that was Lost. However, what will be different this time around is Lindelof’s intake for the inevitable criticism. The finale of Lost was polarizing, to say the least–some found closure, others found themselves plain pissed. It’s not a unique problem, of course: the series finale of any show is fraught with audience opinions and theories of what could have / should have been. That said, a show in the genre of mystery has a far heavier cross to bear.

Both Lindelof and Perrotta have been fastidious in their position that the biggest question of “where did everyone go?” will never be fully answered. Yet, in the run-up to the finale, there are ample loose ends that can be addressed: Will Kevin reunite with Nora? Will Nora go through with her potentially suicidal plan to see her vanished kids? Did Laurie actually kill herself? Since the scheduled apocalypse didn’t happen, what now? Is Kevin “Jesus” or what?

“If the ending is good enough, you shouldn’t really give a shit what happens to the people after the show is over. I’m OK with leaving them where they are understanding that there is still a life to lead,” Lindelof says. “It used to drive me nuts when people would ask David Chase if there was going to be a Sopranos movie. And I’d be like, did you watch the same series that I did? It fills me with rage and that’s one of the most ambiguous endings in the history of television for one of the greatest shows! I’m not saying that The Leftovers is in the same rarefied air as The Sopranos but it’s aspiring to that.”

“The single most liberating thing about The Leftovers was that Perrotta was absolutely unapologetic in the novel about saying he’s never going to tell you where everybody went and why–and I think that alienated a lot of potential viewers,” Lindelof says.

Related:Look, “The Leftovers'” Final Season Probably Won’t Answer Everything

Couple that with the show’s high-degree of difficulty in processing its dark and intricate plot, and Lindelof can understand why The Leftovers wasn’t necessarily a breakout hit.

“My hope is that it will age well, that 10 years from now The Leftovers is still a show that people think about,” he says. “There’s a dichotomy that exists in all of us where we want something to feel very familiar, but we also want to be surprised. When we hear a song for the first time, we tend to like common musical progressions and verses that sound familiar to us. So when you hear something different, your brain goes, ‘I don’t like this.’ But then you listen to it the second time and it’s not unfamiliar to you. I’m not saying you have to watch The Leftovers twice in order to like it. But it’s definitely not a pop song.”

“[The Leftovers is] about escaping the velocity of grief and so I want to start these characters off in a very trapped place but they have to be moving towards the light,” he says. “For those who survive to the end of the journey I want them to be better off than we found them. I don’t want this to be a show like The Wire where it’s really about running in circles.”

And by the second season, it became apparent to Lindelof that they were more toward the halfway mark of the story they wanted to tell. So when HBO called to say the show had been renewed for a third season, Lindelof decided to make it the third and last.

“In the critical community and the people who really loved this show said, ‘I’m actually OK with it ending here at the end of season two.’ And I was like, that’s signaling that we’ve got to be closer to the end than we are at the beginning,” Lindelof says. “I also think if there were a season four of The Leftovers, all the things that felt fresh at the start would become expectations–you’d start to see the wires.”

“It’s very hard to be original, and even for people who don’t like [The Leftovers], at least they agree that it was something different. The worst thing that I could ever do is play it safe,” Lindelof says. “No matter what happens, I’m really proud of the ending that we chose and very confident that it was the right ending, independent of how it’s received.”

Even as the idea of a circular economy–a sustainable business theory that companies should eliminate waste by designing their business models to recycle and reuse everything they produce–becomes more popular, the traditional “take, make, waste” linear economy model is still, from sheer numbers standpoint, the standard. Just around 6% of materials bought and consumed worldwide are then recycled back into new products.

But according to a new report from The Conference Board Center for Sustainability, this represents a dual opportunity for businesses to cut back their waste and grow their bottom line: The report cited an analysis from Europe that found that strengthening investments in circular economy initiatives could result in hundreds of billions in savings and create 580,000 jobs–and dramatically reduce companies’ environmental footprints. And the report shows that, with some will power and communication, it’s not actually that difficult.

Singer cites the example of Philips, the lighting company which in 2012 undertook a radical shift from selling lighting equipment as products to selling lighting as a service–offering consultations and maintenance upkeep as part of a comprehensive “lighting solution,” in which the company retains ownership and control of the product. While the model has proven successful, accounting for 8% of Philips’ total revenue and projected to double by 2020, the initial shift caused some long-term employees a great deal of angst. “If you’ve been used to doing business in a certain way for 30 years, for example, and all of a sudden your company is rethinking that business model, you’re going to take it pretty personally and may feel your job is on the line,” Singer says.

Underlying all of the initiatives, Singer says, is a recognition that “business as usual cannot be sustained.” With the global middle class set to grow from 2 billion people in 2010 to 5 billion people in 2030, rates of consumption will skyrocket at the same time that our natural resources become more stressed: The report cites one estimate that global natural resource use is expected to double between 2015 and 2050, from 85 to 186 billion tons annually.

The first step in companies embracing the circular economy, Singer says, is for them to own up to this fact, and communicate the need to address it across the whole company. Philips, for instance, Singer says, “realized that they wanted to be in business for another hundred years or so, and to remain relevant, they’d have to rethink the way they were doing things.” To do so, Singer says, the company had to re-train its employees to not just package and sell lighting but to coordinate and carry through maintenance and consultations with customers.

Dell was a success, and when programs fail, Singer says, it’s mostly due to breakdowns in communication and lack of transparency when working with partners to establish these initiatives. When HP, for example, partnered with a group of hospitals to look into sourcing discarded polypropylene surgical wrap as raw material for ink cartridges, it looked like a promising move—the quality and consistency of the material that could be recovered aligned with HP’s needs. But only after they dove into the process did they realize a new technical step needed to be added to account for the fact that their recycling partner mainly dealt with rigid materials, which the polypropylene was a fabric. The recycling partner raised the costs beyond what was economical, and HP had to abort the program. This failed example demonstrated the need to thoroughly communicate all requirements and logistics before funneling money into an untested initiative.

But the availability of these learnings, like “fail fast,” from companies that have been there, done that, Singer says, is the reason why The Conference Board compiled this report, Singer says: By aggregating the experiences–positive and negative–of businesses that have embarked on these initiatives, Singer hopes the report will inspire more to do the same. “There has to be a tolerance for experimentation and failure as companies undertake these initiatives,” Singer says. “If there’s not, then many of these initiatives simply won’t get started.”