Just in time for Thanksgiving, the USDA is raising the alarm about raw turkey. The news comes as Jennie-O Turkey Store Sales recalled 91,388 pounds of raw ground turkey products after the USDA linked a pack of raw ground turkey to the cause of a patient’s salmonella poisoning.

The recalled ground turkey products were all produced on September 11, 2018:

• 1-lb. packages of “Jennie-O GROUND TURKEY 93% LEAN | 7% FAT” with “Use by” dates of 10/01/2018 and 10/02/2018
• 1-lb. packages of “Jennie-O TACO SEASONED GROUND TURKEY” with a “Use by” date of 10/02/2018
• 1-lb. packages of “Jennie-O GROUND TURKEY 85% LEAN | 15% FAT” with a “Use by” date of 10/02/2018
• 1-lb. packages of “Jennie-O ITALIAN SEASONED GROUND TURKEY” with a “Use by” date of 10/02/2018

This recall is the latest chapter in an ongoing hunt for the root of a salmonella outbreak linked to raw turkey. The outbreak started in November 2017, but wasn’t made public until July 2018. Since then, more people have gotten sick, bringing the total to at least 164 in 35 states. One person in California has died, and 63 people have been hospitalized. Government agencies are still searching for the source.

It’s unclear where the turkey at the center of this outbreak came from, as there doesn’t appear to be one centralized distributor, and the USDA is (somewhat controversially) not naming particular brands. The ongoing hunt has found the salmonella strain in raw turkey pet food, ground turkey, turkey patties, and in live turkeys, indicating “it might be widespread in the turkey industry.”

Before Thanksgiving meal preparation gets under way, it can’t hurt to brush up on proper raw turkey handling techniques. According to the CDC:

• Wash your hands after touching it.
• Cook products thoroughly to avoid getting sick.
• Thaw turkeys in the refrigerator, not on the counter.

Or just skip the turkey this year in favor of duck, chicken, lamb, rabbit, or Tofurkey. Better yet, just eat twice as many sides, which everyone knows are the real stars of the Thanksgiving feast.

A federal judge just ruled that the White House must temporarily reinstate CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials. The network had sued the Trump administration after it revoked his access, following a bizarre sequence of events.

Acosta, during a press conference, asked Trump a series of questions that the president didn’t much like. An intern tried to get Acosta’s microphone back, and he held on to it for a short time. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then claimed that the journalist swatted at the intern, which was absolutely not the case. She backed up her claim using apparently altered footage.

In its testimony, the White House did not use this line of reasoning for banning Acosta, but instead claimed that it has broad discretion to deny press credentials. The judge, whom Trump had appointed, did not agree, and ruled that the administration must give Acosta his credentials back.

This is an early victory: The judge ruled that a temporary pass restoration was in order because due process had been neglected. He did not, however, decide whether or not the First Amendment had been violated. The White House could take further measures to revoke Acosta’s press pass and fight this battle in court.

But, for now, it’s at least heartening that freedom of the press is being honored by some.

After shuttering its iconic Fifth Avenue toy store due to rising rents and a changing retail landscape, FAO Schwarz has reopened just in time for the Christmas shopping season—sending its toy soldiers to man the doors of a brand-new flagship location in New York City.

On Friday, FAO Schwarz opened its new location in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, a new store with a new owner, but with a lot of the charm of its former location. Visitors to the new 20,000-square-foot store will recognize old favorites like the famous giant clock tower and, naturally, the giant floor piano made famous in the movie Big.

The store’s 2.5 floors are filled with teddy bears, nostalgic favorites, the latest toys, rocket ships, giant gummy bears, kid-sized shopping carts, and interactive experiences all meant to return a little wonder to the world. “FAO Schwarz was built on in-store experiences, which has made it a global destination over the years,” says David Conn, CEO of ThreeSixty Brands, FAO’s new owners, which is also the company behind The Sharper Image and Melissa & Doug Toys.

Now that the flagship location is re-ensconced on Fifth Avenue, the company is already looking to expand with pop-up locations in Britain, Spain, and Australia, as well as a permanent store in Beijing. But first, FAO has to square off against Amazon, survive the madcap Christmas season, and hopefully pay the rent in Rockefeller Center.

It’s easily one of Britain’s most highly anticipated ads of the year, something that has made it increasingly difficult for retailer John Lewis & Partners and its agency, adam&eveDDB, to actually surprise us with an original Christmas campaign. But this year they eschewed the tried-and-true cute kid/adorable animal combo for the Rocketman himself. As cliché as it may seem to credit one inspired Christmas gift for Elton John’s incredible career, this story still manages to hit you right in the feels. Onward!

John Lewis & Partners “The Boy and the Piano”

What: The John Lewis Xmas Ad Experience 2018 Edition

Who: John Lewis & Partners, adam&eveDDB

Why we care: Holiday schmaltz of the highest order. And a solid mix of brand story and celebrity

KFC “The Colonel’s Original Recipe x Nigo’s Human Made”

What: A new streetwear collection collaboration between the fast feeder and the Japanese fashion label

Who: KFC, Human Made, Hypebeast, Wieden+Kennedy

Why we care: This isn’t KFC’s first foray into swag, but its commitment to keeping a straight face while producing streetwear is impressive. If last year’s nearly-sold-out collection taught us anything, it’s that classic branding does have a style appeal (just ask Andy Warhol fans). Here we get a unique collaboration that adds legitimacy to KFC’s fashionable ambitions, while also adding brand value. Crispy.

Fisher House Foundation “Veterans Day Is Not for Sale”

What: A simple reminder of what the holiday is all about

Who: Fisher House Foundation, GUT, m ss ng p eces

Why we care: A simple message, well told. It’s not easy, but it really is that clear cut. A retail gesture that was perhaps first conceived as a way to raise awareness for the day we honor veterans has almost taken it over. Here we have a message to remind everyone that the first thing we should be thinking about is sacrifice, not sale price.

Burger King “Whopper Shopper”

What: A new website that only features online banner ads from other brands so that they can be used to pay for your next Whopper

Who: Burger King, Grabarz & Partner Werbeagentur GmbH

Why we care: When you click on a banner ad, the website hosting that ad earns a cut of that sale. So ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, BK set up a site that features nothing but banner ads and then is donating every cut to buy free Whoppers for people. Anything that harnesses the power of a mediocre ad platform for free burgers gets a high five from me.

Cadillac “Now That’s a Cardiac”

What: A sponsored, brand content version of Nick Kroll and John Mulaney’s “Oh Hello!”

Who: Cadillac, Kovert Creative

Why we care: It’s not the most obvious brand connection. In fact, as I said earlier this week, it’s about as loose as they come. But honestly, sometimes it’s a good move to just give the people what they want, and any day Nick Kroll and John Mulaney suit up as Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland is a good day. Bonus: Gil’s pronunciation of “podcast.”

What: A partnership designed to cultivate prestige content.

Who: Apple and A24.

Why we care: Once upon a time, it just took one hit show to put a channel or streaming service on the map. A Breaking Bad, perhaps, or a Transparent. Now there are so many channels and streamers offering so much content that trying to find that one breakout show is like drinking out of a firehose that shoots out other firehoses that all shoot out fire. One of those services hoping to make a splash is Apple’s nascent entertainment division, which hasn’t shown even one establishing shot of original content, but has allotted a billion-dollar television production budget, locking down marquee talent like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Chris Evans. Not satisfied with setting up a TV shingle, Apple has just announced its foray into the film space with a new prestige partnership.

Apple has tapped Hollywood’s hottest independent shop, A24, to produce a slate of films in the near future. While the tech monolith’s TV ambitions are marked by a kitchen-sink approach to hit the broadest audience possible, teaming up with A24 hints at a desire for more niche–and possibly even high-brow–material. You don’t sign up the studio behind Moonlight, Ex Machina, and Hereditary to make cinematic comfort food for the masses; you do it to lure in the connoisseur crowd and hopefully win some awards in the process. In short, Apple wants to eat Netflix’s lunch for them and maybe even win an Oscar in the process. Since launching in 2012, A24 has received 24 Academy Award nominations. The studio has also won several major ones, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Documentary.

The only question now is whether Apple’s notoriously exacting standards will lead the company to interfere with A24’s creative freedom.

There’s no shame in Scotch tape or Elmer’s glue. Even still, the bright green and orange branding reminds us of grade school–and there’s not a lot of design innovation in their packaging, either.

Now, the “we design every object you can imagine” design firm, Nendo, has remade glue sticks and tape as high-design objects, available for a low price from the stationery company Kokuyo. These new adhesive products are called Gloo, and they feature quiet packaging. Each object is white with a low-contrast gray font, designed to fit into the landscape of your desk more like a sculpture than a 2-for-1 deal at CVS. The only color on the packaging is used to denote each product’s function–gray is standard stickiness, blue is re-stickable, and red promises a strong bond.

The functional pièce de résistance has to be the Gloo Glue Stick. It’s shaped like a square rather than rounded, which means you can glue right up to the corner of your paper, and if you lay it on its side, the stick won’t roll away. The ergonomics of the cap also allow you to “click” it open and closed it with just one hand.

The Gloo Roller Tape Glue sits like a perfectly balanced teardrop. But with a twist, it reveals a roller that can paint a tape onto any surface. Want to cut the tape? Just lift the roller up and the job is done.

The Gloo Tape Dispenser takes your standard desk tape dispenser and transforms it into a minimalist circle sitting on a stand, while the bottom hides a suction cup that can secure itself to your desk.

The three items, along with another glue dispenser, are available in a pack for about $26. That said, they’re only for sale in Japan. Next time you stop by, maybe you could grab us a supply, too?

Do you feel God in this Chili’s tonight? Or is that just the Christmas spirit? The fast casual chain known for bargain baby back baby back ribs and data breaches is celebrating Cyber Monday with an online pop-up boutique full of clothing meant to make your friends and your enemies jealous and, presumably, hungry.

There’s a $35 Baywatch red swimsuit emblazoned with “Welcome to Chili’s,” which is sure to help you make a splash next year on Spring Break. Or if you’re looking for a present for a young professional or a dapper dad, try the $20 Chili’s baby back ribs cufflinks (which may be leftovers from Chili’s line of royal wedding accessories). And of course Chili’s couldn’t pass up the chance to cash in on the famous Chili’s episode of The Office, so it is selling an “I Feel God In This Chili’s Tonight” T-shirt, which is the perfect thing to wear to Chili’s and enjoy one too many Second Drinks.

Finally, if you or someone you love are a member of the fast-growing cult of Skillet Queso lovers, pick up a Chili’s Skillet Queso bomber jacket for $75 before the the cult gets the inevitable podcast treatment.

Bitcoin mining uses massive amounts of energy as computers churn through the steps needed to make a record on the blockchain. Now, one mining company is recycling some of that energy to heat buildings.

Heatmine, a Canadian mining company, works in Quebec, where almost all electricity comes from renewable sources, so its carbon footprint is relatively small. But the company saw that it could also extend the value of that electricity by harvesting the waste heat from its mining machines.

The company started first with its own large warehouse. “We’re in Quebec–it’s very cold 10 months of the year,” says Jeremy Dahan, Heatmine’s COO. “So we started recycling the heat.” Heatmine first used the excess energy from its processing systems to heat its water.

Now, though, the company is experimenting with a network of decentralized mining machines that can connect to heating systems elsewhere, like private homes and businesses. Essentially, Heatmine connects a small mining machine to a heating system. As the machine runs and mines bitcoin, the heat the process generates is transferred to more productive use, like warming a home.

In one recent test, Heatmine piloted this equipment at a local greenhouse that grows strawberries. “Most of the farmers have an issue because they don’t make any profit because they spend a lot of money on the heat and electricity,” says Dahan. With the new system, the cost of heat is covered 75-100%. The greenhouse was able to produce its strawberries as cheaply enough to compete with berries imported from Mexico.

One of the company’s machines can provide 75,000 BTU in an hour, or enough to heat up to 300 square meters 24 hours a day. In larger buildings, the company can install additional units. The system can be used in houses or in industry. It’s similar to projects that heat buildings with waste energy from servers (often giving eliminating heating bills for residents) or data centers that send heat into district heating systems for neighborhoods.

It’s one small way to offset bitcoin’s massive footprint. Globally, the process of bitcoin mining uses so much electricity that, by one estimate, the industry is already using as much power as the entire country of Ireland. One recent study projected that if the industry grows at a similar rate as some other technologies, it could single-handedly produce enough emissions over the next 15 years to lock in the world for 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. The industry will be forced to evolve. But harvesting waste heat makes sense now, and could also make sense in the future.

Heatmine plans to continue to expand in Canada, and will also begin to distribute its machines in the U.S., working in places that have cheap electricity and are particularly cold.

It’s that time of year when leaders get together to hash out their strategic plan for next year. It’s the time when they look at who’s performing well, and who they should and shouldn’t promote. It can be an exciting time, but it’s also a time that comes with considerable risks.

A leader sees the individual’s potential when they’re exhibiting mastery in their craft: top designer, best strategist, highest-performing salesperson, and most senior engineer. They’ve excelled year over year and progressed within their discipline. They often express a desire for more responsibility, visibility, and focus on their professional development.

And so, with all good intentions, managers take them from being at the top of their craft and ask them to step into roles they’ve never held, without the training and support they need. And they’re surprised when those employees fail.

Good employees don’t always make good managers

Managing people requires us to tap into our human-centered skills. We all have them, but we haven’t been encouraged to cultivate them because we spend most of our adult life trying to be better at our chosen craft.

Moving into a managerial role is usually considered a high point in one’s career. It’s a sign that the company recognizes your leadership potential. In actuality, being a good employee doesn’t automatically translate to being a good leader. That transition requires learning a lot of new skills, sometimes from scratch.

When new managers struggle, so do their teams. The likelihood of losing employees under a struggling manager is high. And that gets costly when you look at all that goes into replacing employees. Statistics on the cost of replacing a new hire run from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5 to two times the employee’s annual salary.

But the statistic that matters most isn’t widely or easily measured. It’s the unintended consequences of stripping a new manager of their confidence. That person has gone from a high-performing master of their craft to a wobbling, failing leader. And the impact is deeply felt and hard to shake–both for them and the organization. If they’re able to recover and stay with the organization, their reputation often takes years to build back up. If they leave, or are forced out because of their underperformance, they’re likely to make the same bad habits in another organization and continue to fail. To avoid this scenario, you need to set new managers up for success.

Train before you promote

Many companies train managers when they move into a managerial role, but this is far too late. They need training before they step into a supervisory role, and they need the runway to learn the leadership skills they need.

Make a case for an associate program—one that teaches leadership skills without the promise of a promotion. This type of scenario gives potential leaders a chance to try out the role before they commit to taking it, and provides valuable learning opportunities, even if they don’t become managers.

Invest in a coach

Too often we invest in individual coaching only once a manager is in real trouble. But if you truly want a new manager to thrive and grow, you need to make the coaching investment upfront. This way, they can have the space to bring their challenges and struggles, and they’ll be in a better spot to navigate the new role with dignity and confidence.

Try creating a mentorship program where more senior leaders take a mentor/coach role with newly promoted managers. It’ll provide continued growth for the seasoned leaders, and gives them more in-depth insights into what new managers struggle with at your organization.

Gather low-stakes feedback from their teams

It’s also important to make sure that your investment in new leaders is paying off. Provide regular opportunities for departments to give candid feedback. Not only does this reflect the growth and development of the new manager, but you’ll also be able to see what additional training or coaching can benefit them.

Gathering feedback through standardized 180 or 360 platforms independent of annual performance reviews is one way to give a new manager valuable insights–without feeling like it’s negatively impacting their more formal assessments. And it goes a long way toward feeding a broader growth mind-set, providing opportunities for meaningful conversations around increasing their leadership skills. Creating the culture of feedback early on in a manager’s career sets them up to ask for feedback–and to value and act on it–throughout their professional lives.

When you invest in your employees’ growth, you deepen their engagement. Any investment in your managers is also an investment in their teams. So provide them the training they deserve, the coaching that will help them engage, and the feedback from their teams that will keep everyone thriving. You’ll be so glad you did.

Dacia J. Faison Roe is the head of people development at SYPartners.

Functional mushrooms? That’s so last year.

As the food industry increasingly adopts greater health and wellness trends, once wholly unknown categories are now becoming more mainstream. That means Kellogg’s now sells a probiotic cereal and Coca-Cola is potentially contemplating CBD beverages.

Whole Foods, a leading retailer in the healthy foods space, just announced the emerging trends creeping into your shopping cart. Some seem thoroughly expected (faux meat), while others sound rather novel (Pacific Rim flavors). Will these categories fare as well as predicted? In years past, Whole Foods pretty much hit the mark: In 2016, it was “coconut everything” and wellness tonics, while 2017 marked plant-based diets and sparkling water.

So, maybe get excited about seaweed snacks? Check out the slideshow above for the full list.

Next year, Microsoft will reportedly go where no major console maker has gone before with a disc-free Xbox One console.

Brad Sams, a well-connected Microsoft reporter, claims that the console will only support game downloads, and that Microsoft will offer a “disc to digital” program that lets users trade in their physical games for downloadable copies. The goal is to release an Xbox One for $200 or less, and dropping the disc drive will help Microsoft get there.

Microsoft had considered making the Xbox One discless all along, and Sony reportedly planned to do the same for its PlayStation 4. Both companies decided against it due to concerns over the connection speeds required to download large games. (They also may have wanted to avoid upsetting game retailers like GameStop and Best Buy.) A Nielsen survey from earlier this year found that 66% of console players still prefer physical media.

Microsoft isn’t dropping game discs entirely: Sams notes that the company also plans to launcher a cheaper Xbox One S in 2019 with a disc drive–but a disc-free version might be a way for Microsoft to test the download-only market as it develops a next-generation Xbox for 2020.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters on Thursday that the company was dropping its contract with an opposition research firm that had been hired to spread negative stories about its rivals, he adopted a moralistic tone and did his best impression of Claude Rains in Casablanca. In addition to claiming ignorance about his company’s work with Definers Public Affairs, Zuckerberg said that Definers’ tactics are “the sort of thing that might be normal in Washington,” but that they are “not the kind of thing we want to be involved with here.”

Too late.

Definers Public Affairs and its affiliated firms, staffed largely by Republican strategists and researchers, have gained quite a reputation in recent years for its public affairs work, research skills, and tactics—targeting critics of Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and digging up dirt on Labour Party candidates in Britain.

And the company has become increasingly active in the tech sector, working on behalf of companies as varied as Facebook, Qualcomm, Lyft, and Lime, in addition to being accused of orchestrating a smear campaign against prominent tech investor Shervin Pishevar.

In the New York Times’s devastating exposé, it was revealed that on behalf of Facebook, Definers shared negative stories about Apple and Google with journalists and tried to damage the reputation of prominent protesters by linking them to George Soros. Negative stories about Apple and Google, as well as stories that downplayed the impact of Russian propaganda were published on its conservative “news” website affiliate, NTK Network. The site—which a former Definers employee who spoke to NBC News called“our in-house fake news shop”—frequently had its stories picked up by Breitbart News and other popular right-wing news outlets. The site’s editor-in-chief, Joe Pounder, is also the president of Definers and a co-founder of America Rising, a political action committee that campaigns for conservative candidates.

Definers has introduced a new set of tactics to Silicon Valley, where multibillion-dollar tech giants battle fiercely over user growth, valuable patents, and personal feuds. For years, lawyers and investigators were paid by companies to get competitive intelligence on their competitors. The intensity ramped up a few years ago with even more aggressive tactics, such as Uber allegedly hiring former CIA case officers to conduct surveillance, bug hotel rooms, and get sensitive information on its rivals.

And more recently, firms like Definers have brought the rough-and-tumble world of opposition research practiced by politicians for decades in the nation’s capital and in state houses around the country to the sunny streets of the Valley. In addition to learning about what technology your competitor is secretly developing, now it’s about spreading negative stories and misinformation about them.

As well as Facebook, Definers has reportedly been paid by Qualcomm, and the firm has circulated negative stories about Apple, with which Qualcomm has been engaged in a fierce, years-long patent dispute. The NTK Network is flooded with negative stories about Apple and positive stories about Qualcomm, especially when it comes to posts about their legal feud. One post, written by NTK staff, is headlined “Report: How Qualcomm Turned the Tide on Apple.” Just last month, they paid for dozens of political ads on Facebook with articles critical of Apple, including one that read: “The biggest threat to American innovation isn’t coming from overseas, but from intellectual property theft by large American companies like Apple and Comcast.” A rep for Qualcomm did not return requests for comment from Fast Company.

Overall, NTK Network paid for hundreds of political ads, including some attacking Democratic leaders and torpedoing “liberal billionaires” such as Michael Bloomberg. (America Rising is readying an opposition research campaign against the former New York mayor, CNBC reported this week.) One ad, which cast Bloomberg as a “threat to Americans’ Second Amendment rights” was removed by Facebook this summer for not including a “paid-for” label.

NTK is also full of stories critical of Amazon, Uber, and Google, which is attacked for its non-presence at recent congressional hearings and accused of search results that described the California GOP as “Nazism.” Sources close to Definers say that the negative stories about Google are less about directly attacking the company, and more about muddying the waters in the debate over digital privacy on behalf of Facebook. “That was classic whataboutism,” says a person close to Definers, noting that the firm is importing tactics used every day by partisans in Washington.

The backlash has been fierce. Soros’s Open Society Foundation called Facebook’s use of such methods “reprehensible,” with group president Patrick Gaspard writing in a letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that such tactics “threaten the very values underpinning our democracy.” On Thursday morning, Facebook claimed that “it is wrong to suggest that we have ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf, or communicate anything untrue,” and announced it was firing them.

“The relationship with Facebook was well known by the media—not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf,” a spokeswoman added.

Many employees have “war room” in their titles

Definers Public Affairs, started by longtime Republican strategists Matt Rhoades and Joe Pounder, is staffed by at least 50 employees who’ve almost all worked for GOP politicos—from John McCain and Mitt Romney to Marco Rubio and Tim Huelskamp—and many of whom have “war room” in their current and previous job titles, referring to their skills at digging up dirt on their opponents.

With offices in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, the firm has skillfully carved out a role for itself as a key weapon for politicians, lobbyists, and corporate executives from Silicon Valley to the Beltway trying to get a leg up by advancing their priorities and sometimes smearing their competition. One of its advisers is Sarah Pompei, who used to head up public affairs for Lyft and corporate communications at Hewlett-Packard.

“They’ve been very effective at exploiting their vast network of relationships formed in D.C.—Bush Republicans left out in the cold during the Obama and Trump years—many of whom now work for Big Tech, to get new clients,” says a competitor. “They’ve brought oppo research to Silicon Valley.”

And Definers has close ties to Facebook: The tech giant’s current director of policy communications, Andrea Saul, used to work under Rhoades on the Romney presidential campaign, and Facebook spokesperson Jackie Rooney served as Rhoades’s chief of staff on that same campaign.

Part of its operation includes straightforward communications work for Facebook, such as emailing stories to reporters that promote the company’s agenda. They varied, from innocuous Reuters stories about the company, and a Bloomberg column praising Zuckerberg’s performance at his hearing in Congress, to an op-ed by a former Sesame Street executive producer defending Facebook’s Messenger Kids app by noting that “some of the same groups attacking the program said that Elmo was dangerous, too.”

Who's paying a GOP/corporate oppo group to dig up dirt on Uber? https://t.co/RpErRNItnm

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 19, 2017

Other emails sent by Definers included news stories about ride-sharing giant Uber and The Governance Project, a group led by venture capitalist Mike Hirshland that seeks to help state and local governments make the most of a provision from the 2017 tax law for “Opportunity Zones,” which are economically distressed areas that may qualify for certain tax breaks. A spokesperson for Uber said that the company has never used the company. Hirshland did not reply to a request for comment. A rep for Lyft declined comment.

Its affiliate, a political action committee called America Rising, has done research for Republican candidates. In 2016, the “presidential election of Big Oppo,” Pounder bragged to Time about the extent of their research: “Our [Hillary] Clinton file is over 7,000 pages of distilled research and over 10,000 video clips,” adding that the files “are ready to be shared with an American people who, because of social media and the diversification of news platforms, now have an insatiable appetite for more information.”

Most recently, it offered its research to political strategists during one of the most pivotal dramas in the weeks before the hotly contested midterm elections: the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. While multiple women came forward with allegations of assault and misconduct by the judge, threatening to thwart his confirmation, Definers teamed up with another firm to conduct a survey, concluding that “it’s clear that obstruction of Judge Kavanaugh will be a political albatross for Democratic Senate incumbents in the lead-up to November 6.” Definers polled 7,000 voters in the 10 states with Democratic senators up for re-election that Donald Trump won in 2016. They then matched those responses to a “consumer data enhanced voter file” and tested a “variety of machine-learning techniques” to score voters on their likelihood to support candidates who support or oppose Kavanaugh.

The firm made headlines last spring when it was revealed that it had been hired by EPA, whose then head, Scott Pruitt, was facing a cavalcade of investigations over misspending and intimidation. Definers affiliate America Rising was paid by Pruitt to monitor the emails of agency employees and critics. Later, Definers was given its own $120,000 contract by the agency to monitor media coverage of the EPA. The revelations sparked outrage, with one EPA employee telling the Times: “This is a witch hunt against EPA employees who are only trying to protect human health and the environment.”

America Rising—which shares the same Arlington, Virginia, address as Definers—has also targeted environmentalists such as Bill McKibben, liberal donor Tom Steyer, and New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, whose reporting has shed light on the influence of Charles and David Koch, the oil billionaire brothers who have contributed hundreds of millions to GOP candidates. To smear Mayer, America Rising made an evidence-free allegation that one of her distant relatives who worked for Lehmann Brothers had done business with Nazi Germany.

The mystery of the fake police report

The firm made a fascinating cameo in another Silicon Valley drama last winter, when reporters (including me) were chasing rumors that prominent tech investor Shervin Pishevar had been arrested on suspicion of rape last year at a hotel in London. Amid months of reporting by Fast Company, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNN, and other outlets, but before a single story had been published, Pishevar sued Definers in a lawsuit that stunned the tech sector.

In the suit, Pishevar claimed that Definers and its principals had orchestrated a smear campaign against him, spreading rumors about his friendship with Russian president Vladimir Putin and sexual dalliances with escorts. He further claimed that Definers had been hired by “one or more of his business competitors” in order to “assassinate” Pishevar’s character and to “destroy his career.”

What was striking about the suit, in addition to the fact that it cited salacious allegations that had yet to be reported, was the extent of detail. One curious detail that stuck out to reporters was the inclusion of Uber’s communications chief Jill Hazelbaker, who had worked with Definers president Joe Pounder on the McCain campaign in 2008, seeming to imply that she played a role. (At the time, she declined comment to Fast Company.)

Definers vigorously denied the claims made in the lawsuit, with Miller saying that Pishevar’s claims were “delusional” and that “Definers has never engaged in any of the actions in his complaint nor done any work with regards to him.” Days later, Pishevar admitted in a statement to Fast Company that he had indeed been arrested on suspicion of rape by London police in May 2017, but was released and de-arrested and never charged. He strongly denied the rape claim, though Bloomberg later published a story that included the accounts of six women accusing him of sexual misconduct.

Pishevar denied those allegations but later resigned from his VC firm, Sherpa Capital, and stepped down as chairman of Hyperloop One, one of the main developers of the futuristic technology. Definers filed a motion to dismiss the suit and claimed that Pishevar sued the firm as part of a cover-up. Pishevar’s goal, the firm claims, was to “intimidate women and the press from revealing reports of alleged sexual misconduct and harassment.” Pishevar quietly withdrew the suit months later, though he vowed to continue to pursue those he accused of a smear campaign.

Another curious aspect of the Pishevar saga was the sharing with several reporters of an apparently fabricated police report with salacious details about Pishevar’s arrest. Later, Pishevar’s crisis communications team released a letter from the comptroller of the city of London, stating that the report contained several inaccuracies and had not been created by the police, adding that the London police were launching a criminal probe into the origin of the “fake” report. Yet, 10 months later, the chief counsel for the comptroller’s office told Fast Company that “there was no criminal investigation” of the matter. To this day, the source of the report remains a mystery.

A growing global reach

Definers is quickly expanding across the globe. Early last year the firm set up a high-powered London affiliate, UK Policy Group, staffed by former aides to British Prime Minster Theresa May and her predecessor, David Cameron; its vice president is Andrew Goodfellow, the former research director for the U.K.’s Conservative Party. It has introduced the new era of opposition research to the world of British politics, leaking dirt on Labour Party candidates to right-wing websites. “It is understood that this is the first time that one of Britain’s political parties has stood accused of outsourcing its attack research to an external company; a tactic frequently used in U.S. elections,” reported the Mirror.

And in November 2017, Definers linked up with Denton’s law firm to launch a global research firm called 3D Global Affairs, offering services such as “governmental relations and lobbying support to shape the environment” and “communications and rapid response professionals to direct the narrative.” Of course, it also offers “war-room-style media monitoring”—”to identify and react immediately to opportunities arising out of the news cycle, and to flag potential challenges and crises before they take on a life of their own.”

Tim Miller, a Definers partner and co-founder of America Rising, vigorously defended his work for Facebook against what he called “unfair” accusations, in a Medium post on Friday. (In the wake of the Times story, Miller was suspended from the popular podcast Pod Save America, where he is a recurring conservative pundit.) He said the job for Facebook consisted of “basic media monitoring and PR around public policy issues facing the company,” as well as helping the company “push back against critics,” including groups like Freedom From Facebook and Open Markets. That work included a document linking such groups to Soros, which is at the heart of the current controversy, since Soros has become a target of anti-Semitic attacks, including a suspected pipe bomb sent to his home several weeks ago. Miller explained:

To sum up: a few months ago, Definers staff sent a background document to reporters that included these connections. That is literally all that was done on this issue. I never publicly said anything about Soros related to Facebook. Or ran any ads about it. Or did anything else except have verbal conversations with reporters about their funding questions. [Emphasis is Miller’s.]

And while he acknowledges sensitivity about making claims about Soros and has “resoundingly criticized those conspiracies and smears,” he says that Facebook “doesn’t agree with Soros and others on the left and right who think Facebook should be broken up or nationalized.” He added that examining activist groups’ ties to Soros was justified.

“I don’t think pointing out to reporters that someone funds or supports a group that the organizers have admitted he funds/supports is out of bounds. Reporters and political opponents repeatedly point out which organizations are funded by the Kochs or Sheldon Adelson,” Miller wrote. “It is relevant and fair game.”

This story has been updated.

With additional reporting by Alex Pasternack.

Democratic hopeful Stacey Abrams has effectively conceded the Georgia gubernatorial race to secretary of state Brian Kemp after an election and vote count riddled by claims of voter suppression.

“I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election,” Abrams said at a press conference Friday.

But she didn’t officially concede. “I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right,” Abrams said.

Her opponent had been widely criticized for remaining in the chair as secretary of state–the office in charge of state elections–while also running for governor. Kemp finally resigned as secretary of state on November 8 after declaring victory in the race the day before.

As secretary of state Kemp was responsible for, and widely criticized for, voter purges that removed more than a million people from the rolls between 2012 and 2016. His office has also been criticized and sued for changing voter rules in ways that disproportionately affect minority voters.

Kemp was caught on tape during a ticketed “Georgia Professionals for Kemp” event saying that Abrams’s voter outreach effort “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to Rolling Stone.

Even former president Jimmy Carter called for Kemp to resign as secretary of state at the end of October.

Kemp was a big supporter of Donald Trump, while Abrams, a progressive, was trying to become the first black woman to be governor of a U.S. state.

Abrams said she’s establishing a new group called Fair Fight Georgia that will file a lawsuit against the state of Georgia “for the gross mismanagement of this election.”

What’s the reaction you have when you see a speaker who’s nervous? Chances are, you probably catch the feeling, feel their suffering, and cringe at the thought that it could be you. Then you’ll probably start hoping that it will never be you. Fear is a powerful emotion and is extremely contagious.

It’s normal to be anxious when you’re giving a speech. You don’t necessarily need to fight it. You just need to manage it so that it comes through in your demeanor. Here are the five tools you can use to hide your nerves when you’re giving a speech.

1) Breathe

Everything starts with self-awareness. Understand how loudly you breathe–whether you gasp or sigh, your listeners will notice the breath you take before you speak.

The best way to do this is to focus on the exhale. Under pressure, your nervousness drives you to want more. A big breath is good, and a bigger breath is even better. Think about controlling your breath like taking a sip of air–the less air you have to hold, the less sound you’ll make when you breathe.

2) Pace yourself

When speakers get nervous, they accelerate into a fast-paced delivery that showcases a hyper level of intensity. But this kind of rapid-fire delivery is incredibly jarring to the audience, and they might end up focusing on that feeling rather than the substance of your message.

The best way to keep the focus on your message is to get into a relaxed rhythm. To discover what this means for you, notice your pace next time you walk–what feels comfortable? Then start talking–mentally if you’re in the streets with lots of people, or out loud if you’re alone in the woods. Let your speaking connect with your walking, and notice how your sentence structure changes. Pay attention to when you pause and what patterns naturally emerge when you let your movement drive your sentence structure.

By taking this whole body approach to your speaking, you’ll discover the control that comes from grounding your speech in your natural rhythm. It’s a small exercise that can make a big difference.

3) Move from your center

When speakers get nervous, they often tighten their bodies and move their hands with floppy movements from their wrists and elbows, kind of like the flippers of a penguin. Their body is rigid. To control these nervous gestures, you have to add more by moving from your core–not just your arms.

To experience the feeling, next time you stand, raise your arms to the ceiling. Raise them as high as you can go, then raise them even higher. To get that last inch, you’ll have to lift with your whole body. This movement allows your full energy to flow through your entire body, which makes you appear calm and collected on the outside–regardless of what you’re feeling on the inside.

4) Stretch your vowels

When speakers get nervous, they often compress their sounds. Think of that commercial where you put all those clothes in a bag, suck out all the air, and cram it all in one small carry-on-size suitcase.

Nervous speakers compress their sounds, which becomes more clipped. Staccato sounds, scratchy sounds, mumbling sounds all make it difficult for the audience to understand what you’re saying–especially if you are on a conference call or video chat.

In this instance, the worst thing you can do is to focus on articulation. When you focus on articulation, you concentrate on consonants. But consonants clip sounds even more, so your speaking becomes compressed and choppy.

The key is to focus on stretching out your vowels, slurring your sounds together. By focusing on stretching out your vowels, you’ll sound sharp and clear. You’ll project confidence outward even though you may be quivering inside.

5) Stand solid

When speakers get nervous, they often sway from side to side. This makes their bodies seem unweighted, fragile, like a vase on a table tipping from side to side and about to fall over. To avoid this impression, put one foot slightly ahead of the other–shoulder width apart. Now, take a knee bend. As you come up, feel the connection with the floor and stand solid. Of course, you can move from time to time–but make sure you remain solid. This allows you to project outer strength, no matter how weak-kneed you feel on the inside.

Sometimes, eliminating nerves before a big talk seems impossible. But just because you might feel those emotions on the inside, you can still take actions to project strength and confidence on the outside. Start by adopting these five techniques. Over time, you might just find that you no longer have to fight your anxieties, because they’re no longer there.

Add up all the five or 10-minute bits of time you spend mindless scrolling Twitter/Facebook/Instagram etc. and you might be embarrassed about how much of your life you waste on something that studies have shown makes us unhappy. Now imagine how many more hours you would have in your week to get the real work that matters to you done if you logged off completely.

Here, we’ve compiled some expert advice for curbing your addiction to social media, depending on what level of intervention you need.

Moderate

Sometimes the obvious solution is also the best: Delete the apps from your phone. If everybody did, we’d reduce an incremental creep that makes it harder and harder to resist social pressure, says Ana Homayoun, author of Social Media Wellness.

Aggressive

Social check-ins during a few minutes of downtime can become second nature, says Homayoun. Apps like Flipd block time-sucking/time-wasting sites from your phone or computer either for a period of time you set—or for good.

Related: How singer-songwriter, actress-activist Janelle Monáe gets so much done

Extreme

If your habit is bigger than you can handle on your own, enlist help. Ask a friend or partner to hide your phone for periods of time. Or become a born-again Luddite, joining the 23% of Americans who don’t own a smartphone at all.

Speak to the New York Times and get fired.

That’s one of the things CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told Facebook employees around the world during an hourlong video conference on Friday. Ironically, news of the video conference was leaked to the Times itself. Zuckerberg held the video conference in order to let employees ask questions about the company and to boost morale, but he also made it clear that Facebook would fire employees caught leaking to the press.

Facebook has been embroiled in scandal after scandal in the past 18 months. Most recently, the New York Times exposed that the company hired the Washington, D.C., consulting firm Definers Public Affairs, to seed opposition research to journalists about anti-Facebook groups and members of the media. The firm also tried to link funding of such groups to liberal financier George Soros.

When an employee asked what happens to Facebook employees who are found leaking to the press, Zuckerberg reportedly made it clear that he would fire any employee who spoke to the New York Times or other publications before explaining that leaks are generally caused by “issues with morale.”

For what it’s worth, Facebook isn’t alone in telling employees it will fire people who leak information. Apple has said something similar. So much for morale in the tech industry, I guess.

That’s because in addition to cutting back on iPhone XR production earlier this month, Apple has reportedly told manufacturers it will also cut back on iPhone XS production, says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal cites the lower than anticipated demand for the new models and an overall shrinking smartphone market that has made it more difficult for Apple to anticipate how many units it will need for the holiday season.

Weaker demand in China is also reportedly another reason for the cuts. Though Apple is thought to have cut iPhone XR production by 30% earlier this year, the report suggests iPhone XS and XS Max cuts are less steep. Apple’s stock has fallen more than 5% recently after it told investors it would no longer report iPhone unit sales and issued a lower-than-expected sales forecast for the Christmas quarter.

And no, he didn’t say DuckDuckGo. Instead, he told Axios that Google had the best search engine out there, despite often criticizing the company for its lack of privacy. Cook made the comments during an interview on Axios‘s HBO series. When asked if Apple’s multibillion search deal with Google to make it the default search engine in Safari on iOS devices was a violation of Apple’s privacy beliefs, he dodged a bit, instead stating why Apple makes Google default in Safari (besides making the company a ton of cash):

One, I think their search engine is the best.

Cook went on to explain that other privacy tools built into iOS’s Safari can help nullify Google’s data collection:

But two, look at what we’ve done with the controls. We have private web browsing, we have intelligent tracking prevention. We come up with ways to help our users through the course of the day. It’s not a perfect thing, but it goes a long way in helping.

In the interview, Cook also touched on the need for government to regulate tech companies when it comes to privacy:

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of regulation. I’m a big believer in the free market. But we have to admit when the free market is not working. And it hasn’t worked here. I think it’s inevitable that there will be some level of regulation. I think Congress and the administration at some point will pass something.

He also added that tech companies should embrace any privacy regulations, not fight them:

This is not a matter of privacy versus profits, or privacy versus technical innovation. That’s a false choice. Your device has incredible intelligence about you, but as a company I don’t have to have that.

For what it’s worth, Apple does makes it incredibly easy to change the default search engine in Safari on iOS to a more privacy-focused service. But until other search engines can pony up the cash that Google drops in Apple’s lap every year, it’s likely Google will stay Safari’s default search provider for the foreseeable future.

The price of bitcoin is continuing its plummet. This morning, it edged closer to $5,000, hitting a low of $5,165.24, according to Coindesk. That’s the lowest the cryptocurrency’s value has gone since October 2017.

While the overall cryptocurrency market is in constant fluctuation, the reason for this dive likely has to do with the recent bitcoin cash fork. This other digital coin was due for its software update, but two different factions formed about what its updated code should be. Now, the two groups are in a computing arms race, where the one with the most power wins.

As a result, overall cryptocurrency confidence has gone down, thus causing prices to nosedive. Other coins like ethereum and litecoin are also seeing a dip.

We’ll have to wait and see if bitcoin can recover. The price is right now slightly above its low–but that doesn’t mean it won’t fall again. And if it goes below $5,000, that could induce even more panic.

Taking their seats across from me in a conference room at their airy red-brick headquarters in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood on a brisk August morning, Adam Bowen and James Monsees, cofounders of the breakout e-cigarette company Juul, lay their smartphones and vapes on the table and begin recounting their Silicon Valley origin story.

It begins more than a decade ago: before the lawsuits and the FDA investigations; before the accusations that their company had unleashed an epidemic of teenage vaping on the country; before regulators, legislators, teachers, parents, and even some devoted users began looking at Juul—with its pocket-friendly design and playfully flavored nicotine pods—as a high-tech, highly addictive second coming of Philip Morris. Bowen and Monsees were simply two graduate students—Bowen, clean-shaven and studious; Monsees, bearded and gregarious—who met in Stanford’s product design program in 2002 and bonded, during late-night working sessions, over an idea that could save millions of lives and disrupt one of the world’s most powerful industries.

“Look, smoking hasn’t evolved in 100 years,” Bowen says, recalling the pitch to their thesis advisers. “It’s killing millions of people. We’re smokers. We’re at risk of suffering the same fate, and we want to work on this: How do you create a new ritual to replace the old one?”

Early e-cigarette models, such as R.J. Reynolds’s “Premier,” which launched in 1988, had failed to win over large numbers of smokers because their nicotine levels were too low and they relied on clunky technology and weak batteries. Plus, they often mimicked the iconography of cigarettes—round tube, glowing tip—but didn’t taste or smell as good. “[Big tobacco] had been trying to build a safer cigarette, and that’s not what anyone wanted,” says Monsees. He and Bowen realized that “people wanted to move past cigarettes.” A video of the pair’s 2005 thesis presentation at Stanford shows Bowen unveiling their prototype, called the Ploom, to professors and classmates. Through elevated design, he explains, it should be possible to “take tobacco back to being a luxury good and not so much a drug delivery device that cigarettes have become.” The presentation includes filmed endorsements from beta users—all cigarette smokers.

“The orthodoxy in a lot of the smoking stuff is, you just quit, man up, cold turkey,” says their thesis adviser, Michael Barry, who today is a Stanford adjunct and founder of Quotient, a design consultancy. “And if you fail, you’re weak.” (Less than 5% of smokers who try to quit abruptly are successful.) The sense of shame that results is “literally the kiss of death for any kind of behavior change.” Early studies suggest that e-cigarettes, which are not nearly as deadly as combustible cigarettes, offer an effective alternative. In the U.K., officials at Public Health En-gland have gone so far as to laud e-cigarettes as “the nation’s favourite stop smoking aid,” having helped an estimated 1.5 million people successfully kick the habit.

After graduating, Bowen and Monsees began to turn their vision into a business, launching Ploom and later Pax, a vaporizer for loose-leaf tobacco and marijuana. Both products reflected their view that smoking needed to be reinvented for a wellness-focused generation, not eradicated. Then, in 2015, a decade after leaving Stanford, they turned their focus to a form of liquid nicotine called nicotine salts and unveiled a sleek, rectangular e-cigarette with a name befitting their original luxury aspirations: Juul.

By almost every measure, Juul has succeeded in creating the type of compelling new ritual that Bowen and Monsees envisioned. Last year, parent company Juul Labs sold 16.2 million vapes—that’s $245 million worth of its $35 devices and $16 pods, which come four to a pack in flavors including mint and mango. In 2018, sales will easily surpass $1 billion. Today, Juul controls more than 70% of the U.S. e-cigarette market. A July fundraising round, which generated $1.25 billion in growth equity, valued the company at more than $16 billion, and it has started expanding into Canada, Israel, and the U.K. Bowen and Monsees, who today serve as Juul’s chief technology officer and chief product officer, respectively, are now paper billionaires helping to oversee 1,000 employees, a robust R&D lab, and one of the fastest-growing consumer products in history.

They are also in the center of a vape-cloud maelstrom. Over the past nine months, Juul has been hit with several lawsuits—including a nationwide class action suit—claiming that the company deceptively marketed its e-cigarettes as safe and targeted minors with lifestyle-based ad campaigns. The FDA, meanwhile, launched a formal investigation into the company’s marketing practices this past spring, and last week announced plans to restrict sales of flavored e-cigarette pods in an effort to address widespread vaping among teens.

In setting out to give the world’s billion smokers an alternative to combustible cigarettes, Bowen and Monsees have now become the antiheroes in an increasingly familiar twist on the classic Silicon Valley fable, involving breakthrough product design, viral user growth, and pervasive (perhaps willful) naïveté. If the traditional startup narrative once followed the outlines of “identify a need, scale the solution,” the modern version looks something more like “identify a need, scale the solution, and deal with the unintended consequences and regulatory backlash.” It’s no coincidence that Juul, like Uber, has become a verb.

Monsees draws a contrast, however, between Juul and tech giants like Facebook or Google, which opened up what he calls “a Pandora’s box” as they pursued new opportunities in uncharted territory. Smoking is a real crisis, “the leading cause of preventable death in the world,” he says. “We have a very clear opportunity to make potentially the largest impact on public health [of] any consumer product. The mission could not be more clear.”

As its sales have soared, Juul has become the first digitally native smoking brand. It’s a dubious honor. On Reddit, there are Juul memes involving Drake; paparazzi snaps of celebrities, such as Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington, with their Juuls; and discussions about FDA regulation (“FU FDA”). On YouTube, a 20-minute sketch by online comedian Stevie Emerson, titled “Dude, Where’s My Juul?,” racked up more than 1 million views in less than a month over the summer. On Instagram, there is a subculture dedicated to vapor-based #juultricks, many of which involve breasts or beer.

The most alarming posts are the most invisible. Skylar, a middle school student in Texas, tells me that she has never seen the official Juul Instagram page and doesn’t know anything about the company. But she is familiar with the product, which is a frequent prop in the Snapchat Stories of her peers. “It became really popular last year,” she says of Juul. “A lot of the popular kids do it because their friends think it’s cool.”

Although Juul and other e-cigarettes don’t burn tobacco, they do contain nicotine. Juul, in particular, has pioneered the use of nicotine salts as a way to deliver a hit equivalent to that of a combustible cigarette. As a result, Juul can be as addictive as cigarettes, especially for adolescents, whose brains are still developing. Even today, with laws constraining tobacco ads, 90% of smokers are hooked by age 18, according to the CDC. What’s more: An increasing body of evidence suggests a correlation between teens’ use of e-cigarettes and combustible ones, lending credence to concerns about the “gateway effect.” (Teen Juul-ers may also be exposing their lungs to particulates that cause respiratory problems over the long-term, though the science is still inconclusive.) Hence the FDA’s panic upon discovering, earlier this fall, that roughly one in five high school students had used an e-cigarette in the previous 30 days, more than a 75% increase from the prior year, according to preliminary data from the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey, which is conducted by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study found that the total number of middle and high school students using e-cigarettes rose by 1.5 million from 2017 to 2018 to reach to 3.6 million. “These data shock my conscience,” FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement announcing the findings last week.

Teens are also drawn to exotic flavors, a fact that the tobacco industry has known for years. (Flavored cigarettes, except for menthol, have been illegal in the U.S. since 2009; the FDA is now seeking a ban on menthol-flavored tobacco, too.) The CDC recently found that among teens who report trying e-cigarettes, the second-most common reason is the availability of “flavors such as mint, candy, fruit, or chocolate.” In a study published last year, researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine found that 75% of e-cigarette users ages 12 to 29 would quit if flavors were unavailable. After years of more of less sitting on the sidelines, the FDA is now officially cracking down. The agency announced last week new restrictions on how e-cigarette flavors (with the exception of menthol, mint, and tobacco varieties) can be sold: Brick-and-mortar retailers must sequester flavored pods into what the agency calls “age-verified areas,” and online sellers are subject to additional age-verification practices.

The question for regulators is how exactly Juul came to be so ubiquitous among teens. For critics of the company, the answer is obvious: the youthful marketing campaign that accompanied Juul’s 2015 launch. Times Square billboards and print ads in Vice magazine featured attractive twentysomething models against Candy Land–colored backdrops and echoed, intentionally or not, the types of advertising that tobacco companies historically used to appeal to younger audiences. The company also hosted sampling events at festivals and nightclubs, including New York City celebrity-magnet 1 Oak. Photos of patrons holding Juuls began to appear on the company’s Facebook and Instagram pages, lending a cool factor to the brand. “The portrayal was of young adults in highly attractive settings,” says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a nonprofit focused on anti-tobacco advocacy. “I mean, it’s the Virginia Slims woman, it’s the old Winston, Marlboro, and Newport advertising come back to reality. And then for Juul to say, ‘We were shocked, shocked that it appealed to young people,’ [that] defies credibility.”

After taking a notably hands-off approach to e-cigarettes, the FDA began looking into Juul’s launch campaign this past spring, and tasked the company with handing over documents pertaining to its marketing efforts. The agency stepped up the pressure at the end of September when it sent agents, unannounced, to Juul’s headquarters to gather additional materials. (Agents also visited other e-cigarette manufacturers around the same time—at least one of which, the Imperial Brands–owned Blu, continues to feature images of sun-dappled young models in its investor presentations.)

According to a source familiar with Juul’s launch, the campaign had been designed to target smokers ages 25 to 34. The company wanted to set a “premium” price for Juul, says this source, and when it ran a survey of different demographics, “that was that age range that [the higher prices] popped for.” Juul’s board of directors signed off on the company’s launch plans, and Monsees, who was CEO at the time, personally reviewed images from the billboard photo shoot while it was in session. No one seemed to foresee that the bright colors and positive messaging might appeal to audiences even younger than 25. “We were a company full of people in their late twenties, early thirties, without tobacco experience,” says this source. “We lacked any sensitivity as to how it would be perceived. We looked at it as launching a new technology.”

The wake-up call came via an October 2015 segment on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that criticized the company’s youth appeal. Juul quickly developed new ads with muted colors and cropped heads, unsure of which models would read as too young. Within six months, there were no traces of the original offline campaign.

Juul maintains that the launch initiatives had little to no effect on its business; sales did not take off until nearly two years later. Another fact in the company’s favor: According to the CDC, vaping became more popular than smoking among teens for the first time in 2014—a year before Juul entered the market. Juul may have exacerbated a teen trend, but it did not initiate it.

Today, the company is distancing itself from the campaign. “It was a mistake,” says Monsees. “I think the biggest mistake was not believing enough that the core product proposition would be the most powerful marketing tool that we would have.” This past April, the company committed $30 million over the next three years to youth prevention efforts. What users—including teenagers—continue to do with the product on social channels, however, is largely out of the company’s hands.

“Who just leaves this?” mutters Juul CEO Kevin Burns shortly after I meet him at the company’s headquarters this past August. He is addressing a jumble of cardboard boxes that have been abandoned in a conference room at the already bursting offices that Juul moved into in March. He bends down in the wide-legged posture of a former football player to break down each box before carrying the stack out of the room. Mess erased, we sit down over orange chicken and noodles to discuss his first months on the job.

“I’ve tried a few cigarettes in my life, but I’ve never been a smoker,” Burns says. “I was an athlete growing up, it just wasn’t the thing.” Before joining Juul last December, Burns was the president and COO of Chobani, where he spent two years scaling the mission-driven yogurt company. He declined Juul’s initial overtures, but says he was eventually drawn in by the size of the market and the technology Juul had developed.

During Juul’s first year, sales were modest at best, despite enthusiastic prelaunch feedback from focus groups. They began to creep upward in mid-2016, and by late 2017, Juul was on a tear, with demand regularly outpacing the company’s erratic supply. The board tapped Burns to manage Juul’s explosive growth, along with the mounting backlash. “I didn’t know what a rocket ship we’d be on,” he says.

Burns has moved quickly to demonstrate Juul’s good intentions in the U.S. while gearing up for overseas expansion. He began by positioning the company more overtly as a tool to help smokers quit. Under Burns, the company renamed two of its flavors, dropping the “cool” before cucumber and the “brûlée” from crème, to make them less appetizing to teens. The VP of marketing he recruited from Nike, Ann Hoey, has overseen a complete overhaul of Juul’s online presence. Earlier this year, the company scrubbed its social media accounts of models, product shots, and flirty hashtags—anything associated with its initial marketing efforts. Last week, Juul went even further and shut down both its Facebook and Instagram accounts entirely. It now uses Twitter simply for “non-promotional” communications and YouTube to post first-person testimonials from former smokers who have quit with the help of Juul.

Burns also preempted the FDA’s ruling on flavors last week by announcing a few days earlier that he was pulling Mango, Fruit, Creme, and Cucumber flavor pods from all 90,000-plus U.S. retailers that currently sell Juul—including traditional stores and specialty vape shops. (The company says it will move these products back into FDA-permitted stores only if the retailer adopts a system to restrict sales to people under 21 years old.) The move is significant: After addressing the supply-chain issues that once delayed its shipments, Juul has nearly quintupled its retail presence from the end of last year to today. Roughly 90% of Juul sales now take place in brick-and-mortar locations, and flavor pods account for some 45% to 55% of them. The company is betting that flavor-pod users will begin shopping online—but there’s no guarantee they’ll make the switch.

Burns says these steps, however difficult in the short-term, are necessary. “[E-cigarettes] is young category that’s frankly gotten out of ahead of itself in terms of growth and some of the practices, and it’s showing up in a bad way in terms of youth usage,” he acknowledges a few days after the FDA announcement. “We need to be part of the solution.” But even with the retail pullback, he remains focused on expansion: “I’m hoping that we’ll really make a dent on this youth uptake issue, so that we’ll get a chance to allow the category to evolve, to have the impact that we want to have, which is around adult smokers switching.” Juul is now available in four countries and more than 8,000 stores internationally, and expects to expand into Russia and three European countries by the end of the year. It has also begun exploring products, such as lower-dose pods, that could open the door to weaning users off of nicotine entirely.

Other smoking cessation tools—gum, the patch, lozenges—release nicotine at a slow and steady rate. The potent nicotine hit that Juul offers makes switching from combustible cigarettes almost seamless, and its flavors appear to keep people engaged. On Reddit, I correspond with a Juul user named John, who has been outspoken on this issue: “I tried pretty much every [smoking cessation] product and trick over the course of the last 10 years (30-year habit),” he writes to me. “Nothing worked. Most never made it past a day. The Juul, and mango [flavor] has stuck for two months now. And while I have cravings, none has been strong enough to [go back to] tobacco.”

The company’s growth, Burns says, is predicated on a global captive audience of hundreds of millions of smokers who are interested in quitting combustible cigarettes, and willing to buy Juul pods on a regular basis. According to the company’s internal research, 1 million smokers have already switched to Juul. “There’s no need to grow the nicotine usage market,” Burns says. “Our business is all about penetrating an existing market”—one worth more than $700 billion globally, according to Euromonitor.

Cigarettes Are A Public Heath Nightmare. E-cigarettes Are An Imperfect Solution

Juul’s newest investors see this market potential and have big expectations. In July, Burns effectively bypassed the VCs of Sand Hill Road, which are commonly constrained by clauses that prohibit them from investing in “vice,” to raise $1.25 billion from hedge funds and asset managers, including Tiger Global Management and Fidelity Investments. (In its early rounds, the company relied on wealthy individuals for cash, including billionaire Nicholas Pritzker, the former CEO of Hyatt.)

Burns says he’d welcome a strategic investment partner like the Gates Foundation, which would highlight Juul’s public benefit potential. “What I love about [Gates] is they’re not talking about policy, they’re handing out vaccinations for deadly diseases that they’re trying to eradicate off the face of the earth in a very pragmatic way,” he says. “That’s exactly what we need to do. We need to get the product in adult smokers’ hands.” (If Juul is seriously committed to smoking cessation, though, it may have to reconsider its premium-pricing model, given the higher rates of smoking among people of lower-income levels both here and abroad.)

Meanwhile, Juul is racing to figure out how to get its products out of teens’ hands. One afternoon in August, I join Juul’s small “brand protection” group for its regular check-in with chief administrative officer Ashley Gould, who oversees compliance and legal affairs. The team spends its days in a game of whack-a-mole with social media platforms and marketplaces, trying to identify illegal sellers (Juul.com is the only authorized seller online), posts by underage users, and violations of Juul’s intellectual property. Earlier in the year, Juul succeeded in persuading Instagram to remove the accounts of DoItForJuul, JuulNation, and JuulCentral, each of which had boasted hundreds of thousands of followers (many more than the 70,000 following that Juul’s own Instagram handle had before shutting down). New accounts are rising up, though their follower counts are still low. “They need to build from grassroots again,” a brand protection manager explains.

“So we just keep chopping them down,” Gould says with a nod of approval.

But it’s an unending battle. After the meeting, I go on eBay, search for “juul,” and within a few minutes am able to buy a product advertised as “JUUL100% AUTHENTIC KITS & PODS ALL FLAVORS FREE SHIP!” for $42.99. I check out as a guest, and I am never asked my age. A Juul starter kit—not a counterfeit—shows up at my door less than a week later.

One morning in early September, Juul senior sales manager Jonathan Granoff drives around Manhattan to check in on a few vape shops. The back of his Jeep Cherokee is packed with Juul signage, including switch & save window and counter displays featuring the latest promotion: $20 off the Juul starter kit, which typically retails for around $50. Despite Juul’s strong digital footprint, more than 90% of sales take place in physical stores. We inch forward in Manhattan traffic on our way to Cloud99, in the East Village.

In the early days, Granoff says, it was challenging to persuade vape-shop owners to get behind the product, because the margins on Juul pods are not as attractive as those on e-liquids that work with open-system vaporizers. (Despite the rise of Juul-compatible pods and Juul copycats, many of which the company is suing for trademark infringement, Juul’s device was officially designed to work only with its own pods.) Granoff’s pitch: “Do you want these [open system] juices to collect dust, or do you want to sell the hottest product in the country?”

Juul is a far easier sell today. At the Smoking Shop on Sheridan Square, A-list celebrities are known to stop by asking for Juul. At Cloud99, Juul comprises 30% to 40% of all sales. “Half our calls during the day are: Do you have mango in stock? Cucumber in stock?” the store’s co-owner says.

Those inquiries will likely come to a halt thanks to the FDA’s new restrictions on flavored e-cigarette pods. What happens online may be more difficult to police: Despite the FDA’s 2016 moratorium on new e-cigarette models, Juul knock-offs and “stealth” vaporizers, in shapes like car key fobs and asthma inhalers, are readily available on the internet. Juul reports that in 2018, it worked with sites such as eBay, Alibaba, and Amazon to remove more than 23,000 third-party listings of both its products and counterfeits.

Fortunately for Juul, FDA hasn’t yet followed the lead of countries like Israel, which has banned e-liquids with high nicotine concentrations. There, as in the U.K., Juul sells only 1.7% nicotine pods, rather than the 5% pods featured in its U.S. starter kit. The company feels that restricting nicotine this way would be a mistake. Grant Winterton, who oversees Juul’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, says Bowen and Monsees “engineered [the 5%] product to help smokers quit right from the beginning. We have yet to do the tests, but we believe that 20 milligrams [or 1.7% pods] will switch a lower number of smokers.”

Winterton’s comments are a nod to one of Juul’s greatest innovations and also its Achilles’ heel: a nicotine delivery system so effective that users can find themselves consuming more than they expected or want. Matthew Pedecine, 27, is one of the plaintiffs in a class action complaint filed against the company in August alleging that it misled users about the addictiveness of its products. Two years ago, Pedecine says, he was smoking approximately four or five cigarettes a day. He saw someone using Juul at a deep house concert in New York, and gave it a try. “Even though I did manage to use it to quit smoking cigarettes, my daily nicotine consumption has nearly quadrupled,” he says. “I knew [Juul] had nicotine, but I didn’t realize the level of nicotine it was going to have.”

This is a problem that Juul can innovate its way out of, the cofounders say. “[Juul] is a smart product that has a microprocessor in it, firmware, sensors, and all this advanced technology,” says Bowen. Why not take advantage of those features and give users greater control? Monsees envisions a device that allows people to visualize and track their usage, and adjust it down or up as they wish. Next year, the company plans to launch a Bluetooth-enabled version of Juul that will connect to a Juul app, laying the foundation for such capabilities. It will also include an optional youth-prevention feature, which will pair an adult user’s smartphone with his or her device, effectively locking it. (Until the FDA lifts its ban on new e-cigarette models, the Bluetooth version will only be available outside the U.S.)

“As we build in more of these technologies, what we see is a potential place where all underage consumption can be eliminated at a product level,” Monsees says. In other words, Juul has technology know-how and a game plan—just give the company the time to see it through. “Not only do we have good intentions, we have incentive alignment. These are issues we want to end.”

Yet the fact remains: Juul is making money from getting teens hooked on nicotine and turning combustible-cigarette smokers into pod addicts. “They’re profiting from it fabulously. To say, ‘We didn’t mean it,’ and then still cash the checks, in this environment doesn’t work,” says Barie Carmichael, coauthor of Reset: Business and Society in the New Social Landscape. “Here you have a company that has this noble purpose to wean adults from smoking. But in their business model, they have elements that can lead to unintended consequences.”

I pose this conundrum to Bowen and Monsees’s thesis adviser, Michael Barry. Is there a way to better predict what innovation might unleash? Or do we simply have to learn to deal with innovation’s negative side effects, when they arise?

“You’re asking the $64,000 question for the future of the Valley,” he says. “We have gotten amazingly good at satisfying needs and scaling. We are really good. And I think we’re beginning to see that this absolute focus on scale at all costs can be really problematic.”

Recently, the product design program that Bowen and Monsees attended celebrated its 50th anniversary. Founding faculty member Bob McKim was there, and he had a question for Barry: Do you teach the students what needs not to satisfy? “My answer was ‘no,'” Barry recalls. “He said, ‘Well maybe you should think about that.’ And he was absolutely right. Before, if I created a product that affected 100,000 people, I thought I was king of the world. Now students do that on a Kickstarter in a week. They’re affecting millions of people at a push of the button.”

Or in the case of Juul, at the first deep inhale.