The way that others evaluate you–your photo, résumé, tattoo, or first-date cardigan–follows the same process of placing marbles on a scale as soon as they get any information.

We form impressions of people the same way we form an impression of anything: As soon as our scale of marbles starts tipping one way, we begin to develop a hunch and then start gathering evidence to back that up by selectively picking up the marble that’s easiest to pick up.

Sometimes, when we learn to pair the seemingly benign (the font someone used on a résumé) with something of known value (Bob used that font on his application, and he was the worst), we form an attitude that we adopt in future judgments. Because of our survival-based need to evaluate others quickly, this can even mean picking up marbles from irrelevant sources and mistakenly attributing them to a person.

Our lazy brain makes unfair assessments

Here’s the thing–our brains are lazy and our time is limited. As we get more options, we become more superficial about everything. “Basically, we get around choice overload by ignoring most of the options that have been made available to us,” says the decision-making researcher Peter Todd.

Consider what this decision-making strategy looks like in the context of our professional life. Blindly submitting a grad school application, or emailing our résumé to a hiring manager we don’t know leaves us open to being on the receiving end of this kind of snap judgment. Without realizing how stiff the competition really is, we might mistakenly assume that producers, managers, promoters, or agents will make it to the end of our reel, portfolio, or short story. But if we have a crappy website, they might not even get to the rest of our application.

Related:These 5 unconscious actions impact first impressions at interview 

Why we keep following these haphazard processes

Like tattoos and Olympians, when the “best” is subjective, mere order changes who emerges victorious. As long as the gatekeepers eventually find a worthwhile candidate, it doesn’t matter. Life is not a pure and virtuous luck-free meritocracy because not all merit gets a fair chance.

Think about a hiring manager evaluating a stack of résumés, one of which advertises a candidate’s fluency in French. Does it matter, even if the position is for a web designer? It just might.

“Suppose the judge has a long-dormant interest in learning French to talk to her elderly aunt in Montreal. No doubt the other applicant would feel a warm glow for being offered the job,” writes Warren Thorngate in Judging Merit. “But how would you feel about such a one-step judgment, especially if you spent three days preparing your résumé for the job opening but did not bother to note in your résumé that you, too, speak French?”

I called Thorngate to ask how such haphazard processes manage to continue. “They may have overlooked some very good candidates, but they don’t care,” the judgment and decision-making researcher replied. “It’s not a punishing error for the person who does it.”

Of course, there’s still the interview–but they’re not foolproof either. When our scale starts leaning to one side, it becomes easier to pick up marbles belonging to that side. Getting a hunch about someone makes it easier to notice relevant information about them. Once we start feeling like someone might not be a good “fit,” we act uneasy, which makes that person feel and act awkward. When we like someone, our friendliness allows that person to open up with confidence. People are more confident about their judgments when they have more information about someone before the interview, but that’s because they spend more time picking up one type of marble. Unstructured interviews, the most common form of hiring, are ripe with self-fulfilling prophecies.

“It’s one of those problems where everybody thinks that they’re a good interviewer and they’re a good judge of character,” says the researcher Kristine Kuhn. “But obviously people just are not nearly as good as they think they are. Even [if ] they met someone and judged them as a great employee and hired them, and then they turned out to be bad, that doesn’t shake people’s confidence. They can always explain away that it really didn’t have anything to do with them not being a good judge of character.”

Related:Why it’s so hard to change a bad first impression 

It’s hard for us to confront our flawed judgment

Think about that: Most of the hiring, dating, and luck-granting selection processes in use never offer corrective feedback. When was the last time you got a bad feeling about someone and then genuinely tried to prove your hunch wrong? Improving your decisions requires corrective feedback.

You’d have to concede that you could be completely and utterly wrong, and perhaps take your chance to hire or date someone irrespective of your weird feeling. You then have to try and figure out where that source of feeling comes from, and then work to eliminate those biased sources of information.

That’s a lot of hard work that most of us are frankly not willing to do. It’s easier to discard the application, ignore the message, toss the unpublished novel, cross the street, and move on with our lives, ever so satisfied with ourselves for making yet another sound judgment of character–especially when the brain interprets mistakes as punishments and feeling right feels so damn good. We never even think about proving our intuition wrong. We often say that we’re waiting for something to jump out at us, but we’re the ones jumping and reacting to certain signs–the one-step process says more about the history and quirky preferences of the judge than about the person we’re evaluating.

How we can learn to make better judgments

We’re not going to fix our biases overnight, but we can start by acknowledging (and accepting), that our brains are wired to follow a flawed process.

So next time you find yourself jumping to a judgment (whether it’s meeting someone for the first time, or assessing whether the person you’re interviewing is worth hiring), ask yourself–are you responding to the information in front of you, or to the assumptions you’re making from that information?

You might find that in your first impression, you overlooked a quality that makes them a potentially great friend or hire. After all, luck is what catches you off guard, and that can only happen when you give other people a chance to surprise you.

This article is adapted fromCan You Learn to be Lucky?: Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Othersby Karla Starr. It is republished with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. 

Mid-2018 might seem like a strange time for Bill Gates to review a largely academic book that came out in late 2017. But as Gates writes on his GatesNotes blog about Capitalism Without Capital by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake, the book covers “one of the biggest trends in the global economy that isn’t getting enough attention.”

The Microsoft founder and billionaire is talking about the rise of intangible assets: software (his company’s bread and butter) but also data, insurance, e-books, and movies. The idea is that intangible assets are created, distributed, and often valued differently than traditionally manufactured items. For instance, the assembly line (or lack thereof) for software is radically different than for cars.

As the software versus cars example makes clear, intangible assets may take money and time to develop but can then scale quickly and cheaply (or be “replicated ad infinitum for next to nothing”). “None of these traits are inherently good or bad. They’re just different from the way manufactured goods work,” Gates adds.

As the national political environment is heavily focused on international trade deals and tariffs on physically manufactured objects like cars and jeans, Gates seems to be writing about the book now to try to refocus our economic thinking on this growing sector of the economy. In doing that, Gates joins a growing list of people who are advocating for us to adapt our thinking and policy when it comes to how we govern technology and technology companies.

Of course, while Gates certainly has expertise in the area, he also has some vested interests in the way these conversations turn out. But he ends with a series of open-ended questions, all of which are vital: “Are trademark and patent laws too strict or too generous? Does competition policy need to be updated? How, if at all, should taxation policies change? What is the best way to stimulate an economy in a world where capitalism happens without capital gains?”

To call gambling a “game of chance” evokes fun, random luck and a sense of collective engagement. These playful connotations may be part of why almost 80% of American adults gamble at some point in their lifetime. When I ask my psychology students why they think people gamble, the most frequent suggestions are for pleasure, money or the thrill.

While these might be reasons why people gamble initially, psychologists don’t definitely know why, for some, gambling stops being an enjoyable diversion and becomes compulsive. What keeps people playing even when it stops being fun? Why stick with games people know are designed for them to lose? Are some people just more unlucky than the rest of us, or simply worse at calculating the odds?

As an addiction researcher for the past 15 years, I look to the brain to understand the hooks that make gambling so compelling. I’ve found that many are intentionally hidden in how the games are designed. And these hooks work on casual casino-goers just as well as they do on problem gamblers.

Uncertainty as its own reward in the brain

One of the hallmarks of gambling is its uncertainty–whether it’s the size of a jackpot or the probability of winning at all. And reward uncertainty plays a crucial role in gambling’s attraction.

Dopamine, the neurotransmitter the brain releases during enjoyable activities such as eating, sex and drugs, is also released during situations where the reward is uncertain. In fact dopamine release increases particularly during the moments leading up to a potential reward. This anticipation effect might explain why dopamine release parallels an individual’s levels of gambling “high” and the severity of his or her gambling addiction. It likely also plays a role in reinforcing the risk-taking behavior seen in gambling.

Studies have shown that the release of dopamine during gambling occurs in brain areas similar to those activated by taking drugs of abuse. In fact, similar to drugs, repeated exposure to gambling and uncertainty produces lasting changes in the human brain. These reward pathways, similar to those seen in individuals suffering from drug addiction, become hypersensitive. Animal studies suggest that these brain changes due to uncertainty can even enhance gamblers’ cravings and desire for addictive drugs.

Repeated exposure to gambling and uncertainty can even change how you respond to losing. Counterintuitively, in individuals with a gambling problem, losing money comes to trigger the rewarding release of dopamine almost to the same degree that winning does. As a result, in problem gamblers, losing sets off the urge to keep playing, rather than the disappointment that might prompt you to walk away, a phenomenon known as chasing losses.

Lights and sounds egg you on

But gambling is more than just winning and losing. It can be a whole immersive environment with an array of flashing lights and sounds. This is particularly true in a busy casino, but even a game or gambling app on a smartphone includes plenty of audio and visual frills to capture your attention.

But are they just frills? Studies suggest that these lights and sounds become more attractive and capable of triggering urges to play when they are paired with reward uncertainty. In particular, win-associated cues–such as jingles that vary in length and size as a function of jackpot size–both increase excitement and lead gamblers to overestimate how often they are winning. Crucially, they can also keep you gambling longer and encourage you to play faster.

Feeling like a winner while you’re losing

Since games of chance are set up so the house always has an advantage, a gambler wins infrequently at best. You might only rarely experience the lights and sounds that come along with hitting a true jackpot. However, the gaming industry may have devised a way to overcome that issue.

Over the last few decades, casinos and game manufacturers significantly upgraded slot machines, retiring the old mechanical arms and reels in favor of electronic versions known as electronic gaming machines. These new computerized games and online slots come with more attractive colorful lights and a variety of sounds. They also possess more reels, ushering in a new era of multi-line video slot machines.

Having multiple lines enables players to place a bunch of bets per spin, often up to 20 or more. Although each individual bet can be small, many players place the maximum number of bets on each spin. This strategy means a player can win on some lines while losing on others, netting less than the original wager. Even when you “win,” you don’t come out ahead, a phenomenon known as “losses disguised as wins.” Yet each win, even when it is a loss disguised as a win, comes with the lights and sounds of victory.

The result is that these multi-line slot machines produce more enjoyment and are highly preferred by players. Crucially, they tend to make gamblers overestimate how often they’re truly winning. The dramatic increase in the frequency of wins, whether real or fabricated, produces more arousal and activation of reward pathways in the brain, possibly accelerating the rate at which brain changes occur. Multi-line slots also seem to promote the development of “dark flow,” a trance-like state in which players get wholly absorbed in the game, sometimes for hours on end.

Almost: Near-miss effect and chasing your losses

The rise of electronic gambling machines also means that rather than being constrained by the physical arrangement of different possible outcomes on each reel, possible outcomes are programmed onto a set of virtual reels. Gaming designers can, therefore, stack the deck to make certain events occur more frequently than others.

This includes near-misses, where one of the reels stops just short of lining up for a jackpot. These near-miss almost-wins recruit areas of the brain that usually respond to wins, and increase one’s desire to play more, especially in problem gamblers.

This phenomenon is not confined to slot machines and casinos. Near-misses play an integral part in the addictive potential of smartphone games like the very popular “Candy Crush.”

Near-misses are more arousing than losses–despite being more frustrating and significantly less pleasant than missing by a longshot. But crucially, almost winning triggers a more substantial urge to play than even winning itself. Near-misses seem to be highly motivating and increase player commitment to a game, resulting in individuals playing longer than they intended. The size of the dopamine response to a near-miss in fact correlates with the severity of an individual’s gambling addiction.

Gambling and its games

When you engage in recreational gambling, you are not simply playing against the odds, but also battling an enemy trained in the art of deceit and subterfuge. Games of chance have a vested interest in hooking players for longer and letting them eventually walk away with the impression they did better than chance, fostering a false impression of skill.

For many people, these carefully designed outcomes enhance the satisfaction they get from gambling. It may remain easy for them to simply walk away when the chips run out.

But gambling isn’t only a lighthearted promise of a good time and a possible jackpot. Up to 2% of the U.S. population are problem gamblers, suffering from what’s recently been reclassified as gambling disorder.

It stands out as one of the few addictions that doesn’t involve consumption of a substance, such as a drug. Like other forms of addiction, gambling disorder is a solitary and isolating experience. It’s tied to growing anxiety, and problem gamblers are at greater risk of suicide.

For these more susceptible individuals, the game designers’ hooks start to seem more sinister. A solution to life’s problems always feels just one spin away.

Mike Robinson is an assistant professor of psychology, Wesleyan University. This article was republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original here. 

We’re in the dog days of summer when there’s nothing better than a chilled glass of pink-ish wine. And for the last few years, rosé has been the go-to summer drink for many an alcohol imbiber. However, the choices offered by many popular restaurants are just plain bad, and it turns out the reason you’re drinking them is because of the wine industry’s dark, deep-pocketed underblly.

A spicy–dare I say tannic–article in Bon Appetit, written by the beverage director of a popular New York restaurant, describes the dirty world of bad rosé racketeering. In short, suppliers of mass-produced vaguely light-red-colored wines are paying restaurants and bars to feature their products. It’s wine payola–and it’s been duping us all.

BA writes that these “bulk wine” distributors are on the lookout for any hot restaurant that may be interested in featuring their bottles. These bad beverages feature cheap grapes grown en masse, with little personality, which use yeasts and chemicals to make them taste at all palatable.

The distributors pimping these vintages are supposedly going to great lengths to get their products in thousands of glasses. The article explains:

“They might stop by, drop off a business card, send an email, and hint that they’d make it worth your while to add their wine to the list. A lot of these deals span the gray area of ethics, from direct cash incentives to trips, dinners, sporting game tickets, complimentary product, etc. Anything to get an edge.”

Another tactic these producers employ is offering to print menus for restaurants in exchange for them featuring their wine. Others offer paid for DJs to drop in to the spots that are, of course, also featuring the swill du jour. In short, there’s an underground economy of beverage directors and sommeliers giving up their palate and dignity to promote sour grape juice–all in the name of a few extra bucks.

You can read the full Bon Appetitstory here.

Regulation is causing trouble for Airbnb hosts in Chicago. Some 1,200 hosts have received letters from the city threatening to reject their short-term rental licenses if they don’t update their listings to the city’s specifications.

Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection began issuing registration numbers last year, about a year after Chicago passed a rule requiring people who rent out rooms for less than 30 days to register with the city or risk $1,500 a day fees. So far, the city has licensed 6,000 hosts. Unfortunately, some applications were not up to the city’s standards. Last week the agency started sending out notices asking Airbnb hosts whose registration was still pending to update their listings with additional details or face rejection, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Airbnb, in turn, sent its hosts an email, asking them to get in touch with Airbnb customer service if they need help updating their profiles. The company also released the following statement to the press:

“We are working with the city to address this issue and continue to support our Chicago host community. As one of only two licensed home sharing platforms in Chicago, Airbnb appreciates its ongoing partnership with the city and looks forward to a swift resolution of this matter.”

Chicago has one of the more manageable policies concerning Airbnb and short-term rentals. The city allows Airbnb to pass along information from consenting hosts. In some cities, like Paris, Airbnb hosts are supposed to register directly with the city.

Paris has taken a more aggressive stance against rental platforms. In April, the city decided to sue Airbnb for failing to take down listings that were not registered with the city. The city said it would start fining the platform €1,000-5,000 per day for each unregistered listing. The new law went into effect in December 2017.

Up until now, Chicago has had a more lax approach to registering hosts, and those with pending applications are still allowed to rent their homes. But even officials in cities with more lenient registration processes have limits on how long they’ll wait for platforms and their users to comply.

Regulation has had a mixed impact on the home-sharing platform. Laws around short-term rentals have lowered the number of listings in areas where they’re enforced. But sometimes Airbnb benefits from such rules, at least from a competition perspective. By the beginning of this year, Airbnb had lost half of its listings in San Francisco thanks to a city crackdown on short-term rentals. While it lost a significant percent of listings, its competitors lost even more. FlipKey dropped more than three-quarters of its listings, while HomeAway listings more than halved.

As has been widely reported in recent days, Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the Apprentice star turned White House official turned Trump critic, spares no details when it comes to skewering her enemies and criticizing the administration in her new book, “Unhinged.” One of her biggest nemeses was Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who Manigault-Newman paints as relentlessly out-of-touch and uncaring when it comes to education policy for poor and minority communities.

When DeVos gave the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman, a historically black university, in May 2017, outraged students turned their backs on her and booed her. It was an embarrassing moment for the administration and the video went viral, but DeVos told Manigault-Newman, “I did great!” and tried to explain the students’ negative reaction by disparaging their intellect, according to the book. “They don’t get it. They don’t have the capacity to understand what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Marigault-Newman fired back: “They get it, and they aren’t happy about you or your goals.”

When DeVos later issued a statement saying that HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) were a form of school choice, Manigault-Newman educated her: “No, Secretary DeVos, it was not always a choice to go to black colleges. Black students had to attend black colleges because most PWI [predominantly white institutions] did not accept black students as recently as the 1960s.”

When Manigault-Newman returned to the White House and complained about DeVos to Trump, she claims the president shook his head in disgust and implied he’d fire her soon: “She is Ditzy Devos, what do you expect? In a very short period of time, I will get rid of her. Believe me, believe me.”

Manigault-Newman, who also claims that DeVos canceled an annual HBCU summit meeting at a hotel, resulting in $75,000 in cancellation fees, is withering in her opinion of the education secretary.

“She is still serving and destroying the education system, in this country. The depth and breadth of her ignorance is a travesty for children.” Later, she adds that DeVos is “woefully inadequate” and “as horrible as you suspect she is.”

A spokesperson for DeVos hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

Today marks the anniversary of not only the Great Northeast Blackout, but of one of the greatest fake photos in internet history—one that is still claiming victims today.

In 2003, a series of unfortunate events turned out the lights for some 50 million people across the Northeast, including Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, and New York City. The darkness lasted for days and produced some stunning photos—and a notoriously fake one. The image, seen here, shows the northeast corner of North America plunged into darkness, a gaping black hole in the otherwise illuminated continent. It’s a stunning image that happens to be almost completely fake.

Despite Snopes exposé, the photo lives on. Just this morning NY1 Weather, in a since-deleted tweet, sent out the photo. They found out it was a fake pic thanks to one of their followers and quickly replaced it with a real photo of the blackout and an apology for falling for one of Photoshop’s greatest hits.

Turns out that satellite photo of the blackout is not real. It’s a long running internet hoax. pic.twitter.com/0mb2Cz7aen

— NY1 Weather (@NY1weather) August 14, 2018

Women who love buying luxury heels–the kind of sparkly, expensive, Italian-made shoes worn to red carpet events and black tie galas–have, until now, had to accept a few harsh realities.

First, the brands that specialize in this kind of footwear almost always bear the name of a man. (Think: Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, and Manolo Blahnik.) And second, the shoes are designed to be beautiful, rather than serve the purpose of, you know, walking. They have been known to cause blisters, chronic pain, and stumbles. Just ask Jennifer Lawrence, who has fallen at least three times at awards ceremonies.

Marion Parke, a former podiatric surgeon, doesn’t believe women should have to suffer for their heels. Two years ago, she launched a shoe startup that makes the kind of fabulous $650 heels that are meant to be worn with ball gowns and cocktail dresses. And importantly, she took a page from male shoe designers and named the new brand after herself. She’s part of a small but growing trend in the startup world of female-led luxury shoe brands. In 2016, Tamara Mellon, Jimmy Choo’s co-founder, launched an eponymous luxury shoe brand, and in 2014, Maria Gangemi founded an Italian-made shoe company called M.Gemi, an abbreviated version of her name.

Related: High heels, invented for the male gaze, get a feminist makeover

On the surface, Marion Parke shoes are the stuff of fashion dreams. Parke has designed $650 3-inch rainbow glitter sandals, $665 open-toed booties with satin bows and mink trim, and $595 gold stilettos made from buttery nappa leather. But what you don’t see at first glance is that Parke has completely re-engineered the shoes from the ground up, to make them more comfortable and walkable.

Before launching her first collection in Spring 2016, Parke spent a decade training and working in reconstructive foot and ankle surgery. But over the years, women who came into her office often brought up the topic of shoes, and Parke was happy to oblige them. “I love shoes,” she says. “They make me happy. A beautiful heel can make a woman feel taller and more confident.”

But the problem, of course, is that heels cause pain. According to the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) 87% of women have suffered due to uncomfortable shoes, as opposed to only 68% of men. Women also report blisters and heel pain in greater numbers than their male counterparts. Nearly half of all women wear high heels but 71% of these heel wearers report feeling pain from their shoes. In fact, some doctors recommend avoiding high heels altogether.

As Parke spoke with her patients, it became clear to her that there were tweaks she could make to the fundamental design of the high heel to make them more comfortable and walkable. The insoles of heels, for instance, did not keep the foot in place, which created instability with every step, causing stress to the ankle. Heels often weren’t contoured to follow the shape of the bottom of the foot, which meant that they rarely provided arch support. And finally, it was possible to provide more padding throughout the shoe for comfort and to absorb impact, but in her market research, Parke noticed that most shoe brands did not do this.

In her spare time, Parke began sketching out designs for shoes that were both beautiful and comfortable. She was spurred on by her mother, who happens to be an artist, and had encouraged her throughout her childhood to pursue her creative passions. “You’d be surprised,” Parke says. “Surgeons tend to be very good with their hands, so many of us enjoy doing art when we’re not working.” AW!!

By 2015, Parke was ready to turn these shoe designs into reality. That year, she drove around Tuscany, Italy, with her sister to visit the factories where luxury shoe brands made their products. She visited workshops that make shoes for well-known brands like Gucci and Jimmy Choo. But observing the shoe manufacturing process closely made her realize how little attention many brands pay to making the shoes comfortable. “I was shocked,” Parker says. “The insole of heels is literally just a piece of cardboard that has been covered in a thin layer of leather.”

It’s typically difficult for a startup to break into the expert Italian shoe factories that make shoes for top brands because these are small, family-run businesses that don’t want to risk taking on new production unless it is for an established brand. But Parke brought her sketches and ideas for redesigning the interior of the high heel, and several factory owners were excited about the prospect of bringing innovation to a product that had been made the same way for decades.

Parke worked with the factory to create a patent-pending heel design that is shaped to follow the natural contour of a woman’s foot and supports the arch. There is cup under the heel that stabilizes the foot and ankle. And throughout the interior, there is padding both keep the foot in place and provide shock absorption. When you first see one of her heels, it looks virtually identical to any other pair you have in your closet. But upon closer inspection, each of the adjustment Parke has made becomes more obvious: The insole seems tailored to the shape of the human foot. Still, for all these comfortable features, Parke still encourages women to use common sense when wearing high heels. “I would recommend that women don’t wear heels for two days in a row,” she says. “You want to take pressure off your feet.”

Over the last two years, Parke’s business has grown significantly. Until now, Parke has bootstrapped the brand, growing the company organically to demonstrate her proof of concept. But this year, she’s received an angel investment of an undisclosed amount from David and Jennifer Miller, who run the 72-year-old family-owned shoe company Minnetonka Moccasin. The Millers will also come on as advisors, sharing their extensive experience with scaling a footwear business, from the production to the distribution process.

Before taking on this partnership, Jennifer Miller bought three pairs of Marion Parke shoes and pounded the pavement in them on a trip to Los Angeles. During this wear test, Miller noticed two things. First, people kept stopping her to ask her where she got her gorgeous shoes. And second, she didn’t end the day with painful, throbbing feet. And while Minnetonka Moccasin is a casual, affordable shoe brand, the Millers decided it was worth pouring some money into this innovative luxury heel brand, because it had the potential to yield major financial returns down the line–especially if they could provide guidance about how to turn Marion Parke into a household name. 

Parke’s shoes are sold through her website, a network of high-end shoe boutiques, and larger retailers like Bloomingdale’s, goop, Moda Operandi, Farfetch, and Orchard Mile. While many of her counterparts, like Tamara Mellon and M.Gemi, have opted for a direct to consumer model to keep the price of the shoes lower, Parke believes that giving women the opportunity to try shoes on in person is crucial to helping her brand scale. “There are well-trained sales associates in these stores who can help women find the right size, which is crucial to the shoe fitting comfortably,” she says. “And I know that my customer enjoys buying luxury products and appreciates personalized service.”

But, in the end, Parke isn’t just trying to be another high-end shoe brand; she’s hoping to rewrite the rules of the luxury shoe industry. After all, the ultimate luxury is being able to walk without pain.

Vermont has made history by electing Christine Hallquist, a transgender woman, to be the Democratic nominee for governor. This is the first time in the United States that an openly transgender person has been a major party nominee for governor. Hallquist is used to making waves, though, as she also lays claim to the title of being the first CEO in the country to transition while in office.

“It’s always been important to me to live openly and honestly,” she said when announcing her candidacy earlier this year. “I chose to transition in a very public way because I felt I owed it to those at Vermont Electric Cooperative who put their trust in me.”

While Democrat Danica Roem made history with her election to the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming its first transgender member, Hallquist’s nomination by the Democratic Party for this key leadership role is an important step for trans inclusion in the political process. She will face popular incumbent Republican Governor Phil Scott in November.

Here are six things to know about Hallquist:

• An engineering expert, she started working for Vermont Electric Coop in 1998 and became its CEO in 2005. She helped the energy company grow onto a financially stable national leader on renewable energy and a proponent of combatting climate change.
• A Vermont resident since 1976, she has been active in local politics for years. She served as Hyde Park Town Meeting Day moderator for the past five years, spent 12 years on the Lamoille Economic Development Corporation Board, chaired the Sterling Area Services Mental Health Board, and served on the Hyde Park School Board. She is a member of United Community Church in Morrisville.
• A parent, she has three children and two grandchildren.
• Her son directed a documentary about her, Denial, which encouraged her to transition. She told CNN in June, it was the public response to her transition that gave her the confidence to run for office.
• She is backed by the Justice Democrats, the same group that helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign in New York
• Hallquist is one of more than 400 LGBTQ candidates running in this election cycle, a record according to political training group the Victory Institute.

Sustainable, meaningful, purpose-led.  However framed, when applied to organizations, these terms indicate to wider society that a company is committed to making a difference.  Evidence proves that purpose-led organizations are no longer a buzz word; they are fast becoming the norm because they can prove that they add real value to employees, shareholders and customers.  And it’s nothing new.  In a five-year old-study, “In 2013, meaningful brands connected to human well-being outperformed the stock market by 120%” while additional research showed that “purpose driven companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 10 times between 1996 and 2011.” The growing workforce of millennials–and Generation Z following fast on their heels–want to work for companies that share their values around responsibility to mankind and the planet.  Companies, therefore, have to fight for the best talent by transforming to a purpose-led business or risk losing the skills they need; “employees with a strong sense of purpose are at least four times more likely to be engaged in their jobs as other employees.”

Larry Fink, CEO of Black Rock, one of the biggest asset managers in the world, recently wrote a letter to global CEOs stating that “Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential; it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.” He goes on to state that companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce…?” and so on. As others in the financial world follow, all sizes of business across the world will have no choice but to understand the value of being purpose-led deciding and then designing their own meaningful path.

Where does this leave charities?  Does it make them redundant?  No. In the words of John Low, Chief Executive of Charities Aid Foundation, “Almost everyone… benefits from the work of a charity and the demand for their services and support shows no sign of abating.”

A critical partner for advocacy and delivery

We can only create the world we want for the future through collaboration with others. Where civil society, governments, companies and charities all come together, we make the most progress. We only have to look to the current plastics movement to see that. Something kick-started by the BBC’s Blue Planet series’ capture of the hearts and minds of the public is resulting in huge change; from the BBC immediately banning plastic cups and utensils before moving on to plastic containers in 2019 to the Queen giving up plastic all together. Changes in society’s appetite for plastics, driven by charities such as WRAP, WWW, and Greenpeace, are resulting in innovation in the field of plastic pollution and importantly, global giants changing their policies and approach to plastic.

Charities are often the delivery partner for much of the good work that companies (and/or governments) want to do because they have the right skills, access and understanding of what works. For example, Virgin Group’s purpose is “changing business for good.” Virgin media aims to prove that digital makes good things happen–for people, businesses and communities across the UK and Ireland. As a digital infrastructure provider, they are enabling Scope’s new digital employment support service, with an ambition to reach one million disabled people with employment information and support by the end of 2020. This will help them get into work, stay in work and realize their career ambitions. The long term benefits of this activity are many; improving economic productivity, stigma busting, and fostering richer perspectives in the workplace.

A teacher of new skills

As companies look to find their purpose, there are new skills they need to learn:

Empathy: Companies, and many people within them, understand empathy, but it hasn’t necessarily been at the forefront of driving business success. Consumer-focused companies are always striving to understand what the customers want or need, how they think, what behaviors they demonstrate. This drives successful products. But empathy is also about sharing the feelings of another. What world (beyond your product) does the consumer want to see? How do they expect you as a company to act in order to create that world because you’re well placed to? Companies need to understand the issues facing society and the grass roots individuals blocked from achieving their potential by adversity every day, in order to truly understand what is needed to make change happen. They need to listen and empathize and empower those who know. The charity sector can teach companies to do non-commercial, non-judgemental listening.

Movement/global campaigns: The nonprofit sector has traditionally been the heart of social change, giving voice to the voiceless and rights to those without. Companies have a history of successful campaigning and lobbying, often around economic agendas, but much less on driving the social agenda. Charities have long understood the need to collaborate and share a vision of a better world, how to work together and bring the necessary skills sets to the table. Advocacy and policy change for a better society are often their purpose. They are the experts.

Helping the workforce to find meaning in work: It’s typically values based decisions that lead people to work in the charity sector. It’s hard work, but meaningful and where people get to live their own sense of purpose. Charities and those who work in the sector understand that. They suffer the low pay and unglamorous offices, take on the emotional burden of their work and continuously go the extra mile because it fulfills what drives them and moves one step closer to creating the world they want to see. Corporates want to unlock that purpose, discretionary effort, understanding of the right thing to do and the charity model can help them understand how to do that. For instance, telling stories about the “need,” closing the gap between employees and the people whose lives they aim to improve and understanding that the best workforces are also made up of the people in society that we want to enable.

A change of mindset

However, for charities to operate successfully in the new purpose-led landscape, it will involve a change in mind-set with a focus on sharing long-term goals alongside corporate partners. This is the biggest opportunity; to see the corporate world not just as a funder or gift in kind provider, but as a genuine partner. Currently, many businesses look for “charity partner of the year” opportunities, which involves a beauty parade and staff vote with the most popular winning. These can be lucrative and help fundraising director breathe a massive sigh of relief about their targets. They raise awareness too, providing a critical route to marketing dollars that charities can’t afford. Charities also look for pro bono support to help them deliver infrastructure–it’s how the partnership between TV network BT and Comic Relief relationship started with the 1980’s the telethon. FTSE 100 businesses give around 2 billion pounds worth of money, time, gifts in kind and management services a year to charity.

Many of the partnerships are driven by short term need. Charities struggle to imagine the long term; too often it’s an utter luxury given the firefighting every month. Pressures on funding as more and more income is restricted and state funding is drying up, are driving the exact opposite of what impact we want in society. It’s driving short-termism. The exact same disease that Larry Fink and others are trying to get the business world to move away from.

So the opportunity for charities is to look for long term goals for society and work out who is best positioned to help achieve them. Share the vision with the business world–or even better create it with them. A world that works for us all needs all of us to sculpt it. Charities should ensure they have a seat at the table for those conversations and where they don’t, they should demand the seat or start a new table. Be brave and visionary and constructive enough to bite the hand that feeds you. The responsible business world should be asking you how to be more responsible.

There is no first and second place for profit and purpose, the future demands that we drive for both, regardless of the sector. Perhaps we won’t even see the future in sectors: we’ll all be socially responsible enterprises. We need “more worthy” profit making entities and we need more long term, commercially thinking charities. We all have a role to play in building a sustainable society and the more we collaborate with each other, the greater the sense of purpose we can build throughout the entire world of work, unlocking individuals and organizations alike to build the society we want.

Black Rock City, the temporary town that hosts Burning Man’s annual clusterf*ck of art, food, and parties, doesn’t just magically appear in the middle of the Nevada desert every year. Its planning and construction is a lot more mundane–and a lot more fun, according to a new mini-doc.

In a new video, the San Francisco-based photographer and vlogger Shalaco follows the surveyors and builders who plan the city’s distinctive half-moon street grid.

Everything starts with a quasi-magical-sounding element called the “Golden Spike,” which is hammered into the ground by the construction crew. That single point forms the basis for surveyors and workers who will lay out the radial grids of alleys that dictate where camps will be located.

“You start your day on the Survey crew well before dawn, because when the heat of the day arrives, it becomes impossible to measure distances accurately because of the shimmering heat waves that emanate from the desert floor,” writes John Curley on the Burning Man Journal, where he’s documenting the survey process before Burning Man kicks off on August 26.

Shalaco’s video, as well as Curley’s stories about this process, give a sense for an experience that’s nothing like the crowded, raucous event itself. Though the work is intense and the landscape is extreme, I kind of want to be there–building stuff, drinking beer under the sun, and sleeping under the stars. It seems a lot more fun than the actual festival.

Massey Morris: In the early stages of your career, you worked on a SWAT team. How did this experience build a foundation for your understanding of effective teams?

Matt Sakaguchi: I was on an entry team, which meant that I relied heavily on the person in front of me, and the person behind me relied heavily on me. Our physical safety depended on each other and if we didn’t believe the other person could do their job, the whole thing would break down. We also had a unique leadership structure. For example, when our sergeant would come up with a plan he would always tell us by saying, “Here’s what I came up with, tell me what I missed.” That blew me away because instead of being told what to do, we were asked. So while physical danger had something to do with us being a tight-knit group, a lot of it had to do with the leadership.

MM: You then transitioned your career into the tech industry. When you oversaw your first team at Google, how did you realize the team was not collaborating well?

MS: I noticed that in meetings, some people would talk a lot and others wouldn’t talk at all. I knew it wasn’t just a personality thing because in one-on-one meetings they would talk and offer their ideas. I realized that when it came to peer groups, these individuals did not feel comfortable sharing. There was a lot of negativity around voicing ideas. Usually, if someone would present an idea, people on the team would comment on everything that was wrong with it and why it wouldn’t work. That also led to the theory that people didn’t want to speak up because they didn’t want to feel like their idea would be shut down.

Related:These are the only meetings you should have for the next month

MM: We’ve heard you mention that a team of all-stars doesn’t always lead to a championship performance. How so?

MS: At Google, as is the case at many companies, you tend to hire the best and the brightest–and you should. But, if you don’t do any work on the team collaboration piece, you end up with a team of all-stars in performance mode. In performance mode, you don’t have the opportunity to learn because you feel like you are always on and can’t be vulnerable. At some point, you’re going to burn yourself out.

With all-star teams, what also ends up happening is you have handpicked, cream of the crop people that don’t work well together. There are other key parts of building a team dynamic that leaders, or anyone on the team, should take note of.

MM: Tell us about the “Project Aristotle” study at Google. What were the key findings of this study?

MS: Everything we do at Google is data-driven. But when we looked at our metrics on teams, we found that they were all based on the experience of an individual. We were missing the teamwork aspect. Google embarked on a research project called “Project Aristotle” to find out what factors separate effective teams from the less effective teams. Over the course of two years Julia Rozovsky, who worked on the study, conducted over 200 interviews with 115 tech teams and about 85 sales pods. The researchers looked at all types of metrics and they found five things that stood out in order of importance.

• Psychological safety. This is the idea that you can take a personal risk, and it won’t be held against you. You can make a mistake and won’t be ridiculed. That you can bring your whole self to work and be accepted.
• Dependability. At Google, we have a very high standard of work. So, if I am collaborating on a project, I need to depend on my teammates to deliver that standard of work. Otherwise, I have to do everything myself. If you feel like you can’t depend on each other, that’s going to be a problem and you will have an undistributed amount of people on work.
• Structure and Clarity. Not necessarily more, but enough. We found that when you add more structure and clarity to ineffective teams, meaning everyone understands their rules and responsibilities, their effectiveness increases. If you already have an effective team, adding more structure and clarity actually hinders effectiveness. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
• Meaning. The job has to be meaningful to the person or to the company. You have to have a personal investment in the work or after a while, there’s no way you’re going to be a top contributor.
• Impact. You want to be able to see the impact of what you’re doing. For example, if you’re on a sales team, you can see that you’re meeting quota. You want to be able to see the fruits of your labor.

MM: After seeing the Project Aristotle research, how did you implement the necessary changes?

MS: First, I gave my team a survey and took them to an offsite to discuss the results. I started with a sharing exercise, asking them to draw their life journey of how they got to where they are today with pictures only. I wanted it to be just like a resume, but more personal. So, I showed them my struggles. I have a huge health struggle of Stage 4 cancer, so I put that in there and explained the whole diagnosis. Each person after me opened up about their own experiences.

My goal with that exercise was to see that once you hear what people have gone through, you can never look at them the same. You start seeing them as people first, not a co-worker who is making your job harder. At this new level of sharing, we were actually able to get some discussions going about how we can work better as a team. After about a month, the dynamics of the team had changed and it became one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with at Google.

Related:These are the most important minutes of any meeting 

MM: Oftentimes, leaders shy away from sharing their mistakes. Why is it important to admit your own fallibility?

MS: As a manager, I model the behavior I want. At Google, we hire geniuses and they are all smarter than me. A lot of people won’t ask questions, but it’s easy for me, since I’m not an engineer, to ask for further explanation. Inevitably, when I ask a question in a larger group meeting, people will come up to me later and thank me for asking the question, because no one else wanted to.

We also go through something I call “epic failures” where we all share failures that we’ve experienced and learned from. It allows people to see that we’re all human, we’re all fallible. There are certain things we’re good at and certain things we’re not–and that’s perfectly okay.

MM: What is one important message you send to your team as a leader?

MS: I will not email my team after working hours on the weekends. And it’s not because I’m not thinking about work, it’s because I don’t ever want to make them think they should be working on a Friday night. As a leader, you have to be cognizant of the little things that can affect your team.

MM: How can leaders better evaluate the effectiveness of their teams?

MS: If you need a mechanism to start the conversation on effectiveness with your team, there is a customizable survey on Google’s re:Work.com to get results similar to the ones I would have received on my team. You want to keep it to teams that work together, between 12 and 15 people, who are working collaboratively on a regular basis. You can customize and run different versions of the survey to see how it resonates with your company and track it over time.

MM: What are two things leaders can do to build a psychologically safe environment?

MS: The first thing is you need to be the one who is always championing being inclusive. The people on my team come from all different backgrounds, and I make sure to understand them and take this into consideration when I lead.

The second thing is I insist that my team has work-life balance because while work is important, life is far more important than work. The time to do the things you love is right now. I will tell you that I would love to be able to ride my bike through Italy again, but I can’t do that anymore. So, I really try to instill in my folks that you’ve got one shot at this thing called life and you have to do those things that fulfill you. And they know I’m not just saying that, they know I really mean it.

This article originally appeared on The Tory Burch Foundation and is reprinted with permission. 

Artificial intelligence isn’t known for its bedside manner, but that could be changing.

In a paper published in Nature Medicine on Monday, Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, UCL, and researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital showed off their new AI system. The researchers used deep learning to create algorithm-driven software that can identify common patterns in data culled from dozens of common eye diseases from 3D scans. The result is an AI that can identify more than 50 diseases with incredible accuracy and can then refer patients to a specialist. Even more important, though, is that the AI can explain why a diagnosis was made, indicating which part of the scan prompted the outcome. It’s an important step in both medicine and in making AIs slightly more human.

AIs typically work in a black box, absorbing data and spitting out an answer without spelling out the reasoning behind a certain outcome. That’s all well and good when an AI helps you cry at a movie or write a Yelp review, but when it comes to diagnosing medical conditions, patients (and doctors) would prefer a little more context.

“Doctors and patients don’t want just a black box answer, they want to know why,” Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at MIT, told Stat. “There is a standard of care, and if the AI technique doesn’t follow that standard of care, people are going to be uncomfortable with it.”

We’re living in the era of VC-backed everything. These days, it can feel like every new startup is raising seven figures, or working toward a seed, A, B, or C round. To make a cheesy analogy, investors are the new black, and everyone is getting in on the million-dollar action and billion-dollar evaluations.

As a business owner, I can tell you that those million-dollar investments aren’t the norm. For most of us (82%, according to a 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Report), that money comes from our family and friends, or out of our own pockets. And while some entrepreneurs might have access to million-dollar funding outside of venture capital, the majority of us don’t fit into that bucket.

I’ve started two self-funded companies–one of which was eventually acquired–and one of the things I realized is that we don’t often get the notoriety of venture-backed companies. As a result, it’s easy to feel alone–even though we’re technically the majority. In my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve learned a few lessons that kept me sane during the uncertain (and lonely) times that come with starting something from scratch.

1) I embraced getting my hands dirty

When you’re a founder of a self-funded business (and your business is running on a not-so-large budget) you need to be an operator–at least at the beginning. It’s usually not wise to hire a large executive team and throw money at every problem. At various points, I’ve been the HR, finance, account manager, the coffee maker, and the deal-closer.

Of course, when my company got to a point when we had the necessary momentum (and I needed to focus on scaling and growing the business rather than on entry-level, time consuming tasks), I started hiring. But I waited until my business saw more money coming in than what it was bleeding out. After all, I didn’t have the luxury of relying on a third-party for cash injection–it was all up to me to bring money to the company.

Related:Your 90-day plan to becoming an entrepreneur 

2) I hired employees who were entrepreneurially minded

I discovered early on just how much of a roller-coaster starting a business can be. This means that you need to have a team around you to lean on. But you can’t have just anyone. You need to identify what kind of roles you need to fill to move your business forward, and be brutally honest about the kind of individuals who can fill those spots. Often, this requires you to look beyond pedigree and resumes.

One of my first hires at my company was a Harvard grad (check), with internships at great companies (check) and a professional network in the Los Angeles area (check, check, check). She turned out to be a slow and methodical worker and a perfectionist. To be clear, these are not bad qualities to have–in fact, in some companies, they would be valuable assets. But at my fast-paced startup, one of our key differentiators was being nimble, quick, and accessible to our clients. At times, it was more critical for us to get something out the door rather than spend additional hours (or days) perfecting it.

My second employee was a state school grad who majored in English. Compared to the Harvard grad, her credentials didn’t look that impressive on paper. But it turned out that her fire, hustle, and eagerness was precisely what I needed, and she quickly became one of my most significant assets, and continued to be for over four years.

When your business is in its early stages, you need to hire employees with an entrepreneurial spirit. Look for someone who is not afraid to wear many hats, who doesn’t believe that any task is beneath them, and who isn’t counting down the hours until 5 p.m. or their next vacation. You will face many struggles–but they’re easier to bear when you have someone who is experiencing them with you.

Related:This Nordic company’s four secrets to hiring (and keeping) great talent 

3) I learned to be comfortable making less than what I made at my previous full-time jobs

Making less money is obviously not fun. But, when you’re trying to get a self-funded company off the ground–you’ll find that all of your blood, sweat, tears (and cold hard cash) will go into making the business work, especially in year one.

When I became an entrepreneur–I had to pay myself significantly less than what I was earning in my corporate jobs. Fortunately, I was able to cover my day-to-day expenses, but I had to put aside life’s little luxuries on hold as I focused on growing my company.

Related:Why this tech CEO keeps hiring humanities major 

4) I taught myself how to be resilient

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned along the way is that being an entrepreneur of any kind requires resiliency. I learned this the hard way–from losing friends and clients, breaking up with a business partner to fighting for money I was owed (but not paid).

When you’re in charge, these types of situations are inevitable. As a small self-funded business owner–you often need to take the brunt of every issue because you don’t have the luxury of an expensive legal team to back you up. Sometimes, your team will make mistakes–but you’ll end up paying the price. When it’s your business, this is a feeling that you just have to get used to.

Starting a self-funded business–and seeing it grow–has been an exhilarating and rewarding process, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. But as my experience reveals–it’s been far from smooth sailing. If you’re a small, self-funded business owner–just remember that you’re not alone in your journey. These four lessons have helped me through my crazy ride, and they might help with yours too.

Jaclyn Johnson is the CEO and founder of Create & Cultivate, and author of WorkParty

Twenty-five years ago this year, Disney Theatrical Productions launched in advance of its first project, Beauty & the Beast, which debuted on Broadway in 1994. The stage show breathed new life into the Walt Disney Company’s live-entertainment efforts, kicking off a decades-long string of popular musicals from The Lion King and Newsies to the more recent Frozen.

Not all of its shows have gone the distance (Tarzan was a notable, um, swing and miss), but Disney has a pretty good track record of producing crowd-pleasing shows that run for years. The Lion King, which has been on the boards since 1997, has the distinction of being the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time, grossing about $2 million a week.

Filling theater seats is hard. On any given week, Disney’s shows are facing off against the likes of Wicked, Anastasia, or Harry Potter, all of which compete heavily for the attention and dollars of tourists seeking family-friendly fare.

To hedge its bets, Disney Theatrical has been increasingly trying to reach those audiences where they live–on social media and video sites like YouTube. As one example, Disney Theatrical ventured into VR in 2015, producing a 360 video of the Lion King’s legendary opening number. The experiment marked the first time a musical number was captured in VR in a Broadway theater.

For Frozen, the company got even more aggressive, releasing 10 major pieces of related video content in the show’s first nine months–a strategy that attracted more than 30 million views across Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, according to Disney.

Those are impressive numbers, but does any of this actually get people off their phones and into theaters? Andrew Flatt, the Disney Theatrical senior vice president who oversees marketing, says yes. Flatt recently spoke with Fast Company from his office over Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre about how viral videos and social marketing factor into Disney’s efforts to entice theatergoers.

Below is an excerpt from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Fast Company: If you read the Disney earnings reports, as I do almost religiously when they come out every quarter, you don’t see a whole lot about Disney Theatrical. You’ll see how the movies performed, and you’ll get broad numbers. But you guys are kind of like this hidden world.

Andrew Flatt: Some of that is a reflection of the fact that we are a fairly consistent contributor to the overall piece of the studio pie. Once our shows are up and running, it tends to be perceived anyway, as a maintenance type of product. For us, we’re working on it eight shows a week to make sure that our audiences are full, but from the studio or the larger company point of view, there are eight, nine, 10 films a year that premiere, versus something like Frozen, which premiered on Broadway this year and is the first thing that we’ve opened on Broadway in almost five years. So 99% of our business is maintenance.

FC: Getting into the multi-media stuff and some of the videos that you guys have produced, how does that type of media benefit Disney Theatrical, given that it is somewhat self-sustaining? Was there a certain line of thinking that you or someone else came to where you said, ‘This is what we need to be doing more of to attract a certain audience?’

AF: Over the last five or six years, we’ve sort of evolved our thinking in terms of what substantiates the overall marketing mix. As consumers continue to absorb media in lots of different ways, we as marketers are having to come up with interesting and innovative ways to fill those new spaces that are being developed at any given time. I can’t imagine a universe where we will 100% go away from traditional types of media like billboards in the middle of Times Square. Part of what we’ve had to do is figure out where things like video content play a part in the overall marketing storytelling that needs to take place to continue to excite theater goers and inspire them to purchase tickets to see our shows.

FC: So you said about five years ago. What were some of the early projects that you put on video?

AF: I’ll be honest with you. Five years ago, our strategy was a bit more of a develop-a-strategy-as-you-go. As an organization, we needed to catch up with where consumers were already going in terms of self-generating their own content. So some of the early signs that led us to think differently about content strategy were actually videos that came out of cast members of our shows. I’m not sure if you’re familiar will the “Lion King on a plane” video?

FC: No, I’ll have to look that up. Sounds awesome.

AF: Our company of actors of the Lion King in Australia were moving from one city to another … and spontaneously, as they were sitting on an airplane, they all started singing “Circle of Life,” and one of those company members had the very, very smart forethought to start filming it. This was completely spontaneous, and it was not planned. That cast member, in turn, posted the video and it became a huge viral sensation. At this point … there’s 41 million views of that video, which is remarkable. So that was an early one.

FC: Did your video strategy take any convincing? Because I’ve talked to old-school people in the business who still resist the idea of putting too much on YouTube or some other platform. You know, you’re not really getting paid for it being on YouTube, and you can’t really show a definitive return in that sense. But the other side of the argument, obviously, is that it’s good publicity, and it gets people thinking about the show and maybe going to see it when they’re in New York or wherever it’s playing.

AF: The very clear answer to that question is, yes, there was some early resistance and some folks who needed reassurance–especially for a company like Disney that, historically, has been so precious about its brand, and about the content, and the IP itself. The ability to be able to go behind the curtain a little bit and reveal a bit was a bit of trial and error on our part. It took a collective effort to become comfortable with the notion of what is acceptable.

FC: So now we fast forward a little to the Lion King video in 2015, the first 360 video. You basically put the whole opening number online.

AF: That was a real strategic conversation about trying to be the first to market with something that we knew would break new ground. At that point in the Lion King’s life, to be able to get in front of new audiences and younger audiences and feel relevant–just the fact that something that’s been around for 20 years would do something in the 360 space, which in turn would open up publicity opportunities in media that would never even have thought of The Lion King as a part of its storytelling. Just the fact that we had intersected this archaic theatrical art form with a very of-the-moment piece of technology became a very appealing part of it for us.

FC: How do you show results for something like this? Is there a way to show that this kind of stuff actually gets people into the theaters?

AF: In the big picture, there’s not a specific means for us to be able to immediately track–someone has to see the video and track that person all the way through the purchase process. We don’t have that. But what we do have is … something that’s evolved over time and we’re really in the thick of at this moment. Upwards of 28 million people have seen our Frozen Tony Awards performance somewhere online. That 28 million has opened up a substantial retargeting pool for us to be able to, in turn, go back and serve advertising that they can then click through to purchase to see the show.

ClassPass is thinking way beyond your next workout or massage.

The membership service announced today that members can soon book mini-vacations and “experiential events” on its wildly popular platform. Dubbed “Getaways,”the new feature relies on ClassPass credits to book day-long wellness experiences that will range from workouts to self-care services, in collaboration with boutique gyms and well-known spas.

There’s certainly money to be made in this sector: Wellness travel, defined as vacationing while enhancing or maintaining one’s physical, mental, or spiritual well-being, is now a $563 billion global industry. The Global Wellness Institute reports that while overall tourism is growing at 6.9%, the wellness tourism sector grew 14% in the last two years and is now one of the fastest-growing tourism markets.

That’s partially because Americans are so stressed and vacation-deprived, they need something more than just a beach and margarita.

“There is no end to work. You’re constantly stressed,” Beth McGroarty, research director at the Global Wellness Institute, previously told Fast Company.“It’s pushing people to want vacations that are restorative and actually make them feel better. They desperately need it.”

While female travelers increasingly use their time off to reignite their health pursuits, many millennials seem to prefer the fitness retreat model. In a survey of nearly 5,000 Well+Good readers: 40% of respondents reported they’d rather go on a fitness retreat with their favorite instructor than attend a five-star resort like the esteemed Miraval in Arizona. (The findings were on par with a recent study conducted by SpaFinder).

“At ClassPass we aim to provide stepping stones toward an active and inspired lifestyle, and ClassPass Getaways will do just that,” said ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia in a statement. “We’re thrilled to give members the opportunity to take a mini-escape from their day-to-day to try new things and explore unfamiliar places. It’s our hope that attendees will leave feeling energized and empowered to continue living life to their absolute fullest.”

Almost a year after Hurricane Maria devastated the island’s already precarious infrastructure, Puerto Rico’s sole provider of electricity says power has been returned to all homes, although the reality may be more complicated.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) has been working since last September to restore power to the 1.5 million residents who lost electricity from Hurricane Maria. PREPA tweeted an image as it returned electricity to the final customer, a family in a rural area in the island’s south. A PREPA engineer told ABC News that bringing power to the rural area took “more than two weeks working to make roads and excavators bringing and raising electrical poles.”

Se completan los trabajos de energización del último cliente; residencia de Charlie, Jazmín e hijos en el Bo Real Anón, Sector Raíces, Ponce; gracias #TeamAEE CC6 pic.twitter.com/gC01EcggPS

— AEE (@AEEONLINE) August 14, 2018

The blackout was one of the largest ever and it cost more than $3 billion to restore power to the island, money PREPA can not afford as the company is bankrupt and about $9 billion in debt. In January, Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced plans to sell the company, which has had five CEOs in the 11 months since Hurricane Maria. The most recent CEO, Rafael Diaz-Granados, and five of seven board members resigned in protest after Rosselló blasted the board for approving a $750,000 a year salary for Diaz-Granados.

While great strides have been made to restore power to the island, some Puerto Ricans say PREPA’s claim that electricity has been restored across the island are not true. Residents in El Yunque National Forest, in the island’s northeast, told CNN that power has yet to be restored due to struggles between the U.S. Forest Service and PREPA.

Did you think Aerosmith would really lose its tour bus forever? Dream on.

Recently, the hosts of the hit History Channel show American Pickerswalked this way to track down the legendary band’s original tour van, which disappeared in New England in the early 1970s. Because they didn’t want to miss a thing, the hosts were thorough, and they ended up coming across the van in a forest in Chesterfield, in Western Massachusetts. While the rusted, 1964 International Harvester Metro may be too decrepit at this point for the band to actually get back in the saddle again, its appearance has solved a long-standing mystery.

The woodland property’s owner, identified only as Phil, told American Pickers hosts Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz that the vehicle was already there, on permanent vacation, when he bought the land. Although the previous owner was affiliated with the band, the Pickers pumped him for information and found he was unable to confirm the van’s authenticity. For a while, it seemed the hosts were livin’ on the edge of getting closure. Finally, a game of phone tag that included Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, reached original Aerosmith member Ray Tabano, who helped the search reach its crazy conclusion. Once on the other side of this mystery, Aerosmith purchased the van from Phil for $25,000.

The band may have once been cryin’ over their lost vehicle, but now it’s safe to say they are feeling sweet emotion. Truly, it’s a wonderful time to be honkin’ on bobo. (Okay, that last one made no sense.)

Listen to the latest episode of Fast Company‘s podcast Creative Conversation featuring filmmaker and director Lauren Greenfield on Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, GooglePlay, or Stitcher.

Photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield has been carefully examining worlds of excess, wealth, and addiction for more than two decades. Her 2006 documentary Thin took a harrowing look at young girls getting treatment at an anorexia and bulimia clinic. Her 2012 breakout hit The Queen of Versailles documented timeshare tycoon David Siegel and his wife Jackie as they were building what would’ve been the largest house in America had the country not slid into an economic free fall in 2008. Greenfield’s latest documentary, Generation Wealth, blends together much of her past photography and film work for a telling portrait of where society is headed–and the future isn’t looking too bright.

“I started to think that maybe the work I had done since the early ’90s told a bigger story about how our culture had changed, and how the American dream had changed,” Greenfield said in the latest episode of Fast Company‘s podcast Creative Conversation. “How we have gone from a dream characterized by hard work and frugality and discipline, to a dream that was more about bling and celebrity and narcissism. And I started going back to the work and trying to connect the dots. What did it mean about us?”

In the process of dissecting this new version of the American Dream, Greenfield turned the camera on herself for the first time in her career, creating what she calls her most personal and ambitious project she’s ever done.

Below are some highlights from the episode:

The empathic power of film

“I started this by doing a book actually with no intention of making a film. And I really wanted to make the film, eventually, for a couple reasons. One was I wanted to be more emotional and empathic. When I’m doing the work, I really love the subjects. I really am affected by their highs and lows, and in this film there are a lot of tragic moments and I wanted the audience to feel that too. There’s something about photography that kind of keeps you on the surface and can be more of voyeuristic and less empathic. And I think for this project, it was really important for me that people can see themselves also in the characters, no matter how extreme they might be.”

Gaining insight by losing objectivity

“I really wanted to show how we’re all complicit in this story, and this isn’t about a bad guy over there. I also really want people to be able to stand in the shoes of the subjects and see that I’m not being judgmental and not pointing the finger. My work has always been about kind of what makes us tick and why people make the decisions they do. And what are the influences that are playing upon them.”

How “wealth” is being redefined

“By the end of it I realized that wealth wasn’t just about money. It was about fake it till you make it–posing as having it in a way that was as important as having it. It was about the currency of beauty, the currency of youth, the currency of sexuality, the currency of fame. And so each character’s story tells a different piece of that.”

Subscribe to Creative Conversation and Fast Company‘s other podcast Secrets of the Most Productive People wherever you get your podcasts.

The Acceptable Ads Committee–the organization started by the parent company of Adblock Plus to determine which ads could be whitelisted–has released a new list of mobile ads it considers acceptable. The organization wrote a blog post two weeks ago, largely unnoticed until today, that detailed the criteria.

Here’s a rundown of what it’s deemed worthy of whitelisting:

• For static ads: Both 6×1 banners and 1×1 tiles without animations can be placed anywhere on a mobile site. The former are small, rectangular banners and the latter are larger square ones.
• For sticky ads: Small ads that are 6×1 or smaller are allowed at the bottom of the screen–meaning any small banner can remain stuck to the bottom of the device. Any other formats, the post says, are “not allowed to stick.” These sticky ads are not allowed to take up more than 15% of the screen height, and must have an “easily-identifiable closing mechanism.”
• For large ads: They can only be placed under the entire content. These are usually the big-tiled ones that feature content link-outs to other websites. The AAC adds that no ad can be taller than 100% of the screen height.
• Ads that are on the “scrollable portion of the website,” that are either inside the main content or before it, cannot take up more than 50% of the page’s view.

For the most part, these seem like pretty reasonable mobile ad standards. The organization has been deliberating over these criteria for a while. Now they’ve finally been decided. The post says that the next step is Adblock Plus beginning to incorporate these standards into its whitelist.

You can read the full post here.