Current AI systems need a lot of data to learn on. That’s fine when you want an algorithm to recognize cats in videos—thank you, YouTube—but not all data is as easy to get. For researchers trying to train AI to spot medical conditions, privacy issues, financial concerns, and rare diseases with few examples all impede their efforts. But more AI could be the solution, with generative adversarial networks (GANs) creating realistic-enough medical images for AI to learn on.

In a new paper by chipmaker NVIDIA, MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science and the Mayo Clinic, researchers showed how they used GANs–algorithms that iterate and improve by competing against each other–to create synthetic brain MRI images with tumors. The work was presented at the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention MICCAI conference in Spain last week.

“That’s very encouraging results,” said Hoo-Chang Shin, an NVIDIA researcher and coauthor of the paper.

There are limitations. GANs can’t create types of images with details it has never seen before, and could make the often unnoticed imbalances in data sets worse. And since the biology of tumors isn’t totally understood, creating images from scratch isn’t an option. Still, GANs can produce pictures with tumors that are larger or smaller, or move them to the other side of the brain, and in realistic ways.

GANs are better known as the tech that makes realistic fake media like deepfakes possible. But the medical field is getting in on the action. Another paper released this month shows how GANs can make realistic images of skin lesions that dermatologists have a hard time telling apart from real photos. Other recent research looks at GANs to create examples of liver lesions.

Read more: An adult film company wants to put users into deepfake porn

Michael Abramoff, a University of Iowa professor in ophthalmology and the president of IDx, the company behind an FDA-approved AI system for diagnosing an eye disease caused by diabetes, said that GANs has a lot of potential in medical research. still, IDx did not use any synthetic images to train the tool, IDx-DR, before it went to market. The technology needs to be developed further and tested with research before it is introduced in a clinical setting.

“We aren’t ready to move out of the sandbox yet,” he said. Good fakes take time, especially when they’re fakes for good.

Amid the decline of the coal economy in West Virginia, the city of Williamson has not fared well. Nestled in the heart of coal country in Mingo County, Williamson has lost more than 2,000 jobs–25% of its workforce–in the last four years. The city also struggles with some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and opioid addiction in the U.S.

With jobs on the decline, fewer and fewer residents could afford treatment for their health conditions. So in 2011, a local doctor, Donovan Beckett, set up a free clinic to serve residents. Demand grew quickly, and by 2012, Beckett had formally established the Williamson Health and Wellness Center, which, as a Federally Qualified Health Center, receives federal funding for the services it provides in the traditionally underserved Williamson community.

But Beckett has always seen medical treatment as just one facet of the Health and Wellness Center’s potential in Williamson. “We take the approach of working to try to improve the social determinants of heath, and general health overall,” he says. That means introducing initiatives to boost access to healthy food, supporting active lifestyles among residents, and working to bolster the local economy, which in turn has a bearing on the health of residents.

Scaling the Center’s reach in this way, though, requires investment beyond the government funding it already receives. That’s what caught the attention of Jenna Nicholas, an impact investor by training who founded the organization Impact Experience to more directly connect potential investors and collaborators with projects with potential, like the Health and Wellness Center. To date, Impact Experience has worked with the community in Williamson, but also in Houston following last year’s hurricanes, in its home city of Oakland, California, and elsewhere.

Addressing that disconnect, she says, became the inspiration for launching Impact Experience. Through her organization, Nicholas identifies projects and communities in need of outside investment, and coordinates with potential funders, thought leaders, and creatives would could deliver support in a meaningful way. The key to the whole organization, though, is the “experience,” in which Nicholas’s team actually brings potential investors to a community–usually around three days–so they can learn more about its needs, and build a stronger connection with the project they’ll potentially be supporting. “I really started thinking about how to build bridges between investors, foundations, companies, thought leaders, and marginalized communities in need of investment, so they could co-create solutions together,” she says.

In 2016, Nicholas and her team hosted the first Impact Experience in Williamson. Around 30 people, both from Williamson and West Virginia and from elsewhere, gathered for five days to hear from Beckett about his vision for the Health and Wellness Center, and how he wanted to use its roots in the community to create a new economy for the city.

Over the course of the convening, the group laid out some projects that they could build out and fund. An investor from Double Bottom Line Partners who participated in the Impact Experience committed several million dollars to a program to retrain laid-off coal miners in new industries, particularly solar energy and environmentally regenerating land decimated by coal mining. An executive from SolarCity, who expressed interest in helping the solar buildout, had never met a coal miner before, and she learned from a former miner who was there about the complexities–of both personal and regional identity–embedded in making a transition away from coal and toward renewable energy. Brandon Dennison, a West Virginia native and social entrepreneur who founded Coalfield Development Corporation, an enterprise that is actively retraining former miners in five new and regenerative industries, also participated in the event to share his experience working to shepherd that transition.

Nicholas, in building out Impact Experience, is adamant that the role of impact investors should be to help bolster solutions and projects that ultimately originate from the communities themselves. Understandably, among communities that have been marginalized or exploited in the larger economy–and arguably, coal country has been among the most victimized in the economic and industrial transitions of the last several years–there’s a sense of mistrust toward outsiders, and a concern that the solutions they choose to fund will not actually reflect the real needs of the people on the receiving end.

Impact Experience aims to close the gaps that give rise to those concerns. Much of the first day is spent sharing experiences and building trust among the disparate participants, like the former miner and the SolarCity executive. “It’s not like a parachute approach, where these people from San Francisco parachuted in and now they’re going to get out,” Dennison said in a video about the experience. “They’re coming to really learn what’s going on here, and then hitch wagons with what’s already happening and make it happen bigger and better.”

And Impact Experience is not built around a one-time event, but rather a model of continuous engagement. Since the first Impact Experience event in West Virginia in 2016, the group has stayed in close communication. Double Bottom Line Partners, in addition to funding the miner retraining efforts, has also set up a partnership with Revolution Foods, an organization that brings healthier lunches to kids in schools. Another group of investors and leaders returned to Williamson this year to assess progress and set new goals; by bringing a new cohort in for each gathering, Impact Experience ensures that there’s a constant stream of new energy into the community, while continuing to build on past commitments. One new idea that emerged from the more recent trip revolves around the development of a new tourism platform for coal country that emphasizes the natural beauty of the region to encourage new bed and breakfast development, local craftsmanship, and use of its trails for hiking and cycling.

In total, Nicholas says, the program has brought around $25 million in new investments to Williamson, and its engaged in projects in numerous other communities in the U.S.; Nicholas says the organization hosts an experience once every six weeks, on average. “Every experience builds on previous work in the community,” she says. Impact Experience is planning another event in West Virginia for early next year, and in the meantime, the organization is also working to train investors in its methodology of listening to and working in collaboration with communities. “There’s a lot of power in what can be created when that kind of foundation is built,” Nicholas says.

In an attempt to rebrand itself away from what you might consider your mother’s diet program, Weight Watchers has officially changed its name to WW. The abbreviation pays homage to the brand’s history, without focusing solely on the scale; instead, the revamped company preaches wellness and healthy living.

The stacked WW, in a blue coin logo, is identifiable without alienating the consumer. As Fast Company previously reported, the new logo was first introduced in 2012, but it’s become more prominently used in branded materials since the introduction of the Beyond The Scale program—which extended its “livable” philosophy to two more sectors: fitness and mind-set.

Since 2015, Weight Watchers has continuously shed its old-fashioned image while reimagining itself as a lifestyle brand. In this new era of body image acceptance and feel-good wellness communities, Weight Watchers learned that the term “diet” was rife with negative connotations. What once worked with generations past now felt restrictive and reactive.

“It’s not just about weight anymore,” Mindy Grossman, president and CEO of WW International, told Fast Company last year.“Today’s generation is more preventative; they want to live healthily. They want to educate themselves.”

Mindfulness will play a big part in the company’s offerings. As part of its expansion into different sectors, WW is partnering with meditation app Headspace for customized content.

Beloved services are also getting an update: The company is beefing up Connect, a digital community where, for $19.95, members swap healthy living tips, recipes, and nudge one another to keep at it. Starting in December, the service will roll out “Groups,” where like-minded individuals can discuss their interests, be it hobbies, activities, or gluten-free diets. Currently, Connect boasts an average 1.8 million unique users each month.

“We are becoming the world’s partner in wellness,” said Grossman in a press statement. “No matter what your goal is–to lose weight, eat healthier, move more, develop a positive mind-set, or all of the above–we will deliver science-based solutions that fit into people’s lives. This is just the beginning of our journey to become the world’s partner in wellness, and I am inspired by the potential for our impact.”

Over the last week, two women–Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez–have gone public with stories about alleged sexual misconduct from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Instead of withdrawing the nomination, Kavanaugh and the Republican party as a whole have dug in their heels, claiming that both these women are part of a larger smear campaign.

This afternoon, thousands of people responded. All around the country, women and men stopped what they were doing to show public support for Ford and Ramirez–along with all other survivors who both experienced these traumas and were told they were lying.

This walkout was part of the nationwide #BelieveSurvivors protest, which was recently announced. It’s been only an hour since the event began, and already thousands of people–including dozens of celebrities–have taken to social media to show their support and local images. Some are even performing acts of civil disobedience and getting arrested in protest of Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Here’s a roundup of some of the #BelieveSurvivors protests happening around the country:

Our staff is walking out in solidarity with #MeToomvmt. #BelieveSurvivorspic.twitter.com/8O8FQlZfil

— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) September 24, 2018

As women, femmes, and allies stage walkouts across the nation, we’re kicking off our #BelieveSurvivors#CancelKavanaugh rally on the steps of the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/FsRga8RLa9

— Women’s March (@womensmarch) September 24, 2018

NOW: The walkout begins in the Hart Senate Office Building. #BelieveSurvivorspic.twitter.com/QqdyOV4DUW

— NWLC (@nwlc) September 24, 2018

Dozens getting arrested outside @SenatorCollins office — over 30 of her Maine constituents came down to #StopKavanaugh. #BelieveSurvivorspic.twitter.com/DaLAd80UU6

— Monica Klein (@MonicaCKlein) September 24, 2018

My friend @SherrodBrown and I walked out in Cleveland with a few of our friends. Too many of us here know what survivors face when they come forward and we are coming together to demand justice. #believesurvivors#stopkavanaughpic.twitter.com/e1nJVFnbAP

— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) September 24, 2018

Heroic students from @BowdoinCollege and activists from @mfalpac putting their bodies on the line outside of @SenatorCollins office. We are so grateful for their fight. #StopKavanaugh#BelieveSurvivors#BeAHeropic.twitter.com/LkxDkqNLoG

— Be A Hero (@BeAHeroTeam) September 24, 2018

We walked out of the writers room and off our show because we #BelieveSurvivors. pic.twitter.com/NiV47tSq96

— Rachel Bloom (@Racheldoesstuff) September 24, 2018

Dupont circle #BelieveSurvivors#ibelieveherpic.twitter.com/LLyKDnQSVz

— Andrea Purse (@drepurse) September 24, 2018

These are just a few images from the nationwide protest. Hopefully, it will send a message to lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

“To put it bluntly, decades of stunning progress in the fight against poverty and disease may be on the verge of stalling.” That’s the somber verdict from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual “Goalkeepers” report, which tracks the world’s overall efforts against global inequity and toward the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Simply put, that’s because “the poorest parts of the world are growing faster than everywhere else,” the report notes. Younger generations are stuck trying to thrive in areas that are already particularly desolate and unhealthy.

To highlight this problem–and inspire a few solutions–the Gates Foundation created an interactive quiz for readers to test their knowledge by drawing their own approximate trend charts or answering multiple choice questions. Each query is designed to help you view the world in a new way once the truth is revealed. But people learn in different ways. Because the ultimate goal to share what’s working, and to speed up progress, Fast Company took the quiz and made a cheat sheet.

Here’s a look at the some of the most surprising questions and answers:

How did the global extreme poverty rate change between 1990 and 2017?

How did the population of sub-Saharan Africa change between 1990 and 2017?

Worldwide, what percentage of girls are enrolled in primary school?

How has the number of HIV infections changed between 1990 and 2017?

The world’s first autonomous tram went on its first ride in Potsdam, Germany, last week. The AI-powered train quietly rolled along a 3.7-mile section of test track through the city in real traffic, even slowing down for teenagers who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street. The only difference between your average inner-city tram and this one was that the conductor wasn’t touching the controls, but was just along for the ride, according to the Guardian.

The self-driving tram was developed by a team of 50 computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and physicists at the German engineering company Siemens. The tram’s trip down the tracks was part of an initial demonstration that showcased its AI-powered driving capabilities as part of InnoTrans 2018, an international transport exhibition.

Like most autonomous vehicles, the tram was fitted with radar, lidar, and camera sensors that help the AI-algorithms monitor its surroundings, react to signals, and reportedly respond to hazards faster than a human, even braking suddenly when a baby carriage (an empty one) was pushed in front of the tram as a test. When the emergency passed, the human conductor restarted the automated driving system and the tram started running again.

Despite the successful test, Siemens says the autonomous tram isn’t commercially viable—yet. Now that their test drive is done, they are working with computer scientists at the University of Karlsruhe to further develop the system and hopefully put the tram to work in a city near you.

Two things are said on nearly every video conference meeting: “Can you see my screen?” and “Can you move closer to the microphone?”

Tele-meetings–especially ones with more than five people–are clunky at best and headache-inducing at worst. In a typical scenario, 10 people are gathered in a room in the home office and seven or eight souls traveling or working at home have to call in, or Skype in from their laptops. Some of them keep the mic on mute and shut off the camera, making them a purely passive participant. Since the remote people often can’t see the faces of the other participants, they have no idea when it might be their turn to speak. When they break in to the discussion, it sounds like this: “Hi hey hi hey hello? Hello? It’s Ed in Phoenix, can you hear me?” And they can’t see the body language of the people on the other end, so they have no idea if their comments are eliciting nods, shrugs, or blank stares.

It’s a miserable experience, one that many companies have tried to solve over the years to no avail. Now, Microsoft thinks it may have the answer—with a new technology that enhances collaboration, rather than put up barriers to it.

Some of the technology I saw is now generally available, some of it will be released later this year, and some of it is still very much in the experimental stage. The meeting technology pulls in the work of many of Microsoft’s groups, including Office 365, Teams, Bing, Cognitive Services (AI), and even HoloLens.

Before the meeting

Good meetings get the right people talking about the right things at the right times. Microsoft believes that process begins long before the meeting itself.

Microsoft’s idea is that every meeting should be represented by a place in the cloud where all relevant information about both the subject of the meeting and the people involved can be assembled. It’s a more advanced and resource-rich version of the old calendar event. This “meeting object” is used for communication and collaboration before, during, and after the meeting, Microsoft CVP Brian MacDonald told me. Before the meeting, the Microsoft AI might add or suggest logistical information, information about the participants, and relevant files and background information. New files might be added during the meeting, like collaboration notes and a real-time transcript of the discussion. Post-meeting notes like action items can be added, along with follow-up notes and communications.

Microsoft’s MacDonald, who originally proposed the Teams idea to CEO Satya Nadella and now leads the Teams group, told me to think of Teams as the center hub of all the apps and services within Microsoft 365 (which includes all desktop and cloud-based versions of Word, Excel, Edge, and many others).

“Anytime we talk about meetings, most of that will show up on Teams,” MacDonald said.

That message wasn’t lost on people who watched the presentation at the Ignite conference. “Microsoft’s latest announcements at Ignite highlight the ongoing efforts to make Teams the hub for communications, collaborative working and getting work done . . .” said CCS Insight analysis Angela Ashenden in a statement. “Microsoft Teams is increasingly becoming the focal point for employees within Office 365.”

Teams

Meetings can originate from Teams in a couple of different ways. If a few people are discussing an issue in a Teams channel, there’s always a button nearby to escalate the conversation to a live video chat. There’s another button in the chat window that initiates a formal meeting and starts a meeting object that begins attracting data relevant to the meeting.

In the center of the demo’s mocked-up conference room is a mysterious cone-shaped object with a fish-eye lens at its tip. Actually, this is a prototype device that isn’t on the market yet. But its job is to watch and listen to the people sitting around the table. At the start of the demo, you see a screen on the large monitor at the front of the room with a strip at the top showing the 360-degree view from the fish-eye lens, with name labels next to all four people at the table.

Below that, in a left pane you see the transcript of the meeting being formed in real time by the camera and some natural language AI. The cone-shaped device uses both sight and sound to identify the faces and voices of the people sitting around the table, so it knows who’s talking at any time (even when people are talking at the same time). The system could also translate the words it heard into another language. In the right pane on the screen was a space reserved for “insights and notes” that could be created by anybody in the meeting.

The screen was used to display lots of things. Anybody in the meeting could project the screen of their laptop (Surfaces all around) onto the display. At one point a Cortana assistant bot was called up to help arrange a future meeting.

That stuff was mostly to express Microsoft’s vision for meetings. It’s not stuff you can buy for your company today. But the demo also showed some things that are ready for prime time.

Search everywhere

To get the right people talking about the right things during meetings, search is pretty important. You need to be able to grab details about invitees, logistical information, relevant documents, and contextual information like previous discussions that have taken place on the subject of the meeting. This information usually comes from places on the open web, and from digital assets behind the company’s firewall.

So Microsoft has been working to extend the reach of its search engine to the web for more general and public information (via Bing), into LinkedIn for professional information about people inside and outside the company, and into private company information.

A meeting attendee, if logged in with a Office 365 account, might look up someone who will also be present, to understand who they’ll be talking to. A search within Microsoft 365 can find the person’s office location, an org chart, files the person has shared publicly, or a LinkedIn post they wrote. A Conversations view shows the discussions the person has been having in Microsoft’s Yammer chat app and in Teams.

At one point in the demo, one of the attendees suddenly wondered if he could take the wife and kids with him on the annual sales getaway. He typed, “Can I take my wife and kids along with me on this business vacation?” into a search box at the top of the Powerpoint screen he happened to be working in (Microsoft has now put the search box at the top of all its productivity apps). The man got back a mix of links to work-related and non-work-related content. Across the the top of the screen he saw four cards include bookmarks (to company docs), groups (workgroups), files, and relevant company intranet sites. Those links took care of the company policy part of the query. Below them, Bing returned links to relevant supplemental information from the open web–such as information on locations, flights, and hotels, for example.

“Using AI from the Bing consumer search engine, we can deliver search results that are more personalized, relevant, and consumerized,” said Naomi Moneypenny, director of product management for Teamwork and Search.

Building the company brain

The AI underneath Microsoft 365 is always learning from the “signals” it receives from the apps that a client uses. All those signals–which could mean the way a company plans meetings, shares documents, or secures strategy documents–go into a graph, which can be thought of as the company’s brain, Microsoft says. The AI (borrowed from Bing) constantly draws upon information from the graph to learn, analyze, and make recommendations based on the work habits of the company. When a user is organizing a meeting, she might see search results that are informed, in part, by meeting organization habits detected in the past. If, for example, a meeting of a certain set of people usually has taken place in a certain conference room, the AI might suggest that location for future meetings of the same people.

“Microsoft Graph is really the way we learn about the way organizations are using content, and how they meet, and how the collaborate,” Moneypenny said. “We can learn their everyday work patterns.”

Microsoft says it’ll be rolling out the expanded search to Microsoft 365 apps, Bing.com, Office.com, and the SharePoint mobile app. And it will start showing up in Microsoft Edge, Windows, and Office in the future.

Video meetings get smart

Microsoft has added a new feature to video meetings that allows participants to blur out the background of their location. This can be used to make sure other participants can’t see that the user is linking in from a Starbucks or that a cat or baby is in the room. An unbusinesslike or unpredictable background can be a deterrent for people to keep their camera on during a meeting, which can shut the user off somewhat from full participation in the discussion.

Blurring a background is pretty easy for a still image. Background blur involves some fairly serious artificial intelligence, points out Lori Wright, general manager of Microsoft 365 teamwork and collaboration tools. “AI is letting us know what’s your face and what isn’t,” Wright explains. “And the AI has to do it every time you move.”

“This is my Netflix binging of my work life,” says Raanah Amjadi, product marketing manager for Teams and Skype.

Later this year, Microsoft 365 users will be able to prepare and launch live streaming events from within Teams, Microsoft Stream, or the Yammer chat app. This is a great way for management and others to reach out to far-flung workforces. People in different time zones can use the Stream mobile app (iOS and Android) to replay the event, even when offline.

A new Surface Hub

At one point in the demo, two of the team members switched over to the new Surface Hub 2 digital whiteboard to work on a project together. The two were able to log into the device by touching a fingerprint reader on the bottom edge of the screen. Since the Hub then had both user’s account credentials, they were both able to bring up one of their own documents on the same screen. They were also able to move content back and forth from one user’s document to another. So, for example, User B might pull a statistic into their Powerpoint presentation from User A’s Word or Excel doc. Microsoft says it’ll release the Surface Hub 2 in the second quarter of 2019.

The beginnings of HoloMeetings

The coolest part of the demo was when two of the participants–one of them in another city–examined and discussed a 3D virtual object using HoloLens. In the demo scenario, the remote person was the manager of a smart building who could see from the sensor data that seven of his building’s conference rooms weren’t being used very much. The fictional company in the demo wanted to help the man (their client) find out why. So the building manager and one of the fictional company’s engineers strapped on their HoloLens headsets to look at a 3D virtual model of the building together. They were both able to pinch and drag the model to view it in different ways.

The other people in the meeting couldn’t control the 3D building image, but they could see it on a monitor in the room. To do this they used a third-party camera software that oriented the people and digital objects from HoloLens into the meeting setting (seen by a camera up in the corner of the room). In the view on the monitor, the building manager’s image sat at the head of the table in front of the building model. His image has far from sharp; he was heavily pixelated, but it was good enough to act as an avatar.

By looking at the 3D model the fictional engineer and the fictional building manager discovered that all seven of the unpopular rooms were exposed to bright sunlight every day. A theory was floated that those rooms were too hot, a problem easily fixed with window coverings and AC. Had the people merely been looking at the problem represented as numbers in a spreadsheet they may have seen the what but not the why. Some problems are like that.

The HoloLens experience shown in the demo isn’t available today. It’s still a little clunky and Microsoft is working on it. For now HoloLens is meant for front line workers who need to access information without moving their hands, or gaze, from the thing they’re working on. Remote workers may one day attend meetings using virtual reality or augmented reality.

The life cycle of a meeting

Some of us dread meetings because they eat up time during the day. But they’re still important; they’re where decisions get made. They’re where action items get created and assigned, and where people are motivated to carry them out.

Most good meetings come down to the organizer preparing well for the meeting, says Moneypenny. “If I’m a great meeting organizer, and I take the time to schedule the right attendees, and if I’ve gotten all prior meeting notes, and I’ve made sure everyone has the right information, those are all good things.”

During the meeting, Moneypenny says, the organizer has to make sure everyone can hear, that there are no translation or communication barriers, and that the right action items are being captured. After the meeting they have to make sure the action items get distributed.

“Those are all things we require humans to do today, so there’s a lot of variation in how things are done,” Moneypenny said, “because I’m depending on how and when a human does it.” Microsoft wants to eventually have intelligent bots take over much of the work of meeting planning. “Artificial intelligence can come in and remove that variation and do those tasks for us,” she says.

Some of the meeting-related pain points Microsoft addressing seem pretty basic. But the company is interested in moving past addressing pain points and toward creating tools that make meetings more productive than most people have seen before. This may mean a situation where you put on a headset, and suddenly you’re dropped into a meeting that looks so real that you forget you’re in a virtual space.

That may be a far-away goal, but it shows how much better meetings can get. And because of its stronghold in the workplace, Microsoft is well-positioned to pursue it.

A new Pew study tells us something we already know here at Fast Company: Women make good leaders! In fact, they actually rank higher than men do for a number of leadership traits, according to the study—though you wouldn’t know it from their paltry representation in leadership roles.

In politics, 61% of respondents thought women leaders were more compassionate and empathetic, and nearly one-third felt women were more ethical. A significant number of people (43%) claimed men and women in business and politics did not have particularly different leadership styles. Of the people (57%) who did think their styles varied, about 62% felt neither approach is necessarily “better.”

The two qualities men ranked higher on were “being willing to take risks” and “negotiating profitable deals,” in terms of politics and business, respectively.

Of course, men still dominate the leadership ranks of business and politics. Though this year has seen a record number of women running for seats in the U.S. House and Senate, women currently account for just 20% of Congress. In the business world, those numbers are even more skewed, with only 25 women at the helm of Fortune 500 companies.

The reasons for this are not surprising. Nearly two-thirds of adults surveyed by Pew pointed to the fact that women have to work harder to “prove themselves,” and half cited the gender discrimination faced by women. About 45% felt Americans weren’t ready to elect or hire women leaders, while 38% thought sexual harassment was a major impediment for women.

All of which means that people continue to view male and female leaders differently—and that still hurts women, regardless of what the numbers may tell us.

Uber has for a long time maintained that it is a platform not intended for full-time work. But for the duration of Uber’s existence, a determined minority of drivers have used the platform for full-time work.

Now a new survey from JPMorgan Chase indicates that working full-time as a driver is becoming financially untenable. In 2017, ride-hail drivers earned half what they earned in 2012 and 2013, according to the report. In practice, that means drivers earned a monthly average of $1,469 in 2012. By 2015, monthly earnings average dropped to $783.

Over the last few years, drivers have consistently complained about declines in rates of pay.

Uber was quick to contend that “monthly earnings” are not the same as “hourly earnings,” which the report did not comment on. In a Medium post, Uber senior economist Libby Mishkin contended that earnings may be decreasing because more people are driving for Uber. In 2014, she says, 160,000 Americans were working for Uber; today, that figure is over 900,000. “If the share of our partners who drive only occasionally has increased over time, as it has, it stands to reason that the average of every driver’s monthly (or, for that matter, weekly or yearly) earnings would decrease.”

JP Morgan’s report acknowledges a 2018 study, which Uber participated in, that says falling hourly wages between 2014 and 2016 were stabilized by an increase in trips per hour on Uber’s platform. The report also says the decrease in earnings could be related to fewer hours worked on average, but it adds that the reason for decrease is less important than the decrease itself: “Regardless of whether the drop in earnings was caused by a fall in wages or hours or both, it indicates that driving has become less and less likely to replace a full-time job over the past five years, as more drivers have joined the market.”

It is essentially becoming unrealistic for drivers to rely on platforms like Lyft or Uber for full-time work. By Uber’s own account, over half of drivers work fewer than 10 hours per week.

Some workers who work more than 40 hours a week have argued in lawsuits that Uber and Lyft misclassify them as contractors—and won. But as the number of workers pulling full-time hours dwindles and schedules look more flexible, Uber’s position—that its workers independently choose their own their own hours—becomes stronger.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram’s CEO and CTO, respectively, have announced they will step down from the company in the near future, reports Bloomberg. The duo founded the photo-sharing app before selling it to Facebook in 2012 for $715 million. At the time of the sale Instagram had only 30 million users, but since Facebook’s acquisition of the service, its user base has exploded to over 1 billion.

But it may be that it was Facebook’s acquisition of the app that ultimately led to the cofounders of Instagram stepping down. Bloomberg is reporting that Systrom and Krieger decided to resign after “growing tensions” with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has become more involved in the day-to-day running of the service. However, in a statement from Systrom, he said he and Krieger were stepping down to “explore our curiosity and creativity again”:

Mike and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team. We’ve grown from 13 people to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We’re now ready for our next chapter.

We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.

We remain excited for the future of Instagram and Facebook in the coming years as we transition from leaders to two users in a billion. We look forward to watching what these innovative and extraordinary companies do next.

After the news broke, Zuckerberg issued a statement saying, “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents. I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it. I wish them all the best and I’m looking forward to seeing what they build next.”

China approached Peru and Brazil with an extraordinarily ambitious proposition several years ago. It would build a 3,000-mile railroad from the western coast of Peru to the eastern coast of Brazil to handle commerce and trade from the interior of South America to China.

If successful, the massive infrastructure project would expand Peru’s trade options and give Brazil’s soybean farmers a cheaper, more direct route to China than the increasingly expensive shipping through the Panama Canal.

The benefits for China? China certainly doesn’t talk about the connections between a railroad that snakes its way across South America and looming problems in northern China that could cause immense, near-term harm not only to its own population but to neighbors and world superpowers like the U.S.

But the connections are there–in economic forecasts about the trade-offs China must now make over the types of food it grows inside its own borders and those it must import, or in business sector reports about agricultural and food companies it’s buying to ensure a countrywide famine doesn’t disrupt the tight political, financial leadership that controls China’s position in the global community.

Though authorities in both countries finally signed off on plans, the Amazon railroad is still in the planning stages. Will it ever be built? No one should doubt China’s ability to succeed where other countries might fail. They’ve shown considerable resolve in bringing massive infrastructure projects to fruition. But, for now, soybean producers in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay continue to ship via existing shipping and rail routes.

The much bigger question is why China was willing to go to such extraordinary lengths. Yes, such a railroad through the heart of the Amazon would shorten times for soybean shipping between Brazil and mainland China, and bypassing the Panama Canal to ship across South America and then from a Peruvian port would likely save the Chinese money. But why the pressing need? Are soybeans a genuinely strategic resource, requiring China to secure their continued supply?

The answer, in a word, is yes. Soybeans have become quite important to China. They are the answer–for now–to a looming crisis building for 20 years that now threatens the fabric of the Chinese economy in the near future.

Virtually all the world’s soybeans–a crop used for food products but mostly as the basis of feed for livestock like pigs–come from the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina. China used to grow its own soybeans–the soybean, in fact, originated in eastern China–but that has changed radically in just the past decade or so. Soybean meal is the world’s largest source of protein feed, consumed indirectly by humans through products like chicken, pork, and beef.

In 1995, China grew their own soybeans for use in food and livestock feed and imported only 18 million bushels. However, today it imports more than 2.7 billion bushels–quite a change from 18 million 20 years ago–making China the world’s largest importer of soybeans.

Sixty percent of all soybeans grown worldwide are now exported to China, with 5% to 8% growth per year and no signs of slowing down. Experts predict this insatiable appetite could outstrip the entire global production of soybeans–including in the U.S. and Brazil–within a decade. This partially explains why China is willing to build a railroad through the Amazon. It needs to buy almost every soybean grown in South America.

The American, Argentine, and Brazilian economies have all benefited from this strong, consistent demand in soybean exports to China. It’s why trade disruptions (like a U.S.-China trade war threatened by President Trump) could cause serious harm to economies at both ends of the trading relationship. About half of U.S. soybean exports go to China, which is roughly one-third of the U.S. soybean crop.

Why is China buying up the global soybean market? They have no choice. The steadily growing demand is largely driven by expanding hog and poultry operations that use soymeal for feed, indirectly feeding China’s surging population. Also, the country’s middle class, which demands meat products to match Western diets, will double within a decade.

But the serious tradeoff China was forced to make in recent years explains the purchase of all the world’s soybeans now. This underlying threat that its political leaders don’t talk about is what actually drives the relentless pursuit of soybean imports.

In northern China, where soybeans were once traditionally grown, water tables are dropping at a rate of up to 10 feet a year. Northern China (and parts of the west) is running out of water. The remaining water in rivers and streams is so polluted that the government has a daunting sanitization task. Add the effects of desertification–drifting sands covering cropland at the rate of 1,400 square miles (that’s like adding a new desert larger than Rhode Island) every year–and it’s nearly impossible to grow soybeans in northern China.

To produce just one ton of soybeans, it takes 1,500 tons of water. China’s ambitious plans to divert rivers from the south to irrigate the north are in trouble now for ecological and political reasons. China is facing a massive agricultural and water challenge in the north right now, and soybeans are at the center of that story. By importing most of the world’s soybeans, which use water from other parts of the planet, China is effectively importing a sixth of its water needs out of necessity.

China now finds itself squarely in the crosshairs of a wicked dilemma driven by the very real, twin threats of Earth’s changing climate and the overuse that has polluted and drained its existing water supplies. For now, the country is solving its food problems exacerbated by extreme water scarcity issues in the north by forging massive trade deals for soybeans and even livestock in places like the U.S. and Brazil.

In 2013 a Chinese firm bought Smithfield Farms in Virginia–the world’s largest pork producer–as a hedge against its food insecurity threats. Such a purchase illustrates the strategic moves China must make as encroaching deserts in the north diminish its ability to feed its own population. Some experts fear the Gobi Desert could swallow up the north and merge with other major desert regions. That, in turn, would put enormous pressure on China’s leaders to seek other ways to obtain fresh water from the Himalayas, causing harm to Tibet and other countries.

Water is now China’s “worst” problem “because of the scarcity, and because of its pollution,” Wang Tao from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing told The Economist. Beijing has the same water scarcity issues that confront Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and others today.

China’s former water minister, Wang Shucheng, once said, “To fight for every drop of water or die: that is the challenge facing China.” Desertification and current rates of water extraction meant many cities in northern China–including Beijing, home to more than 20 million–would run out of water in 15 years, he added.

Shucheng made that prediction in 2005–13 years ago.

Jeff Nesbit is the executive director of Climate Nexus, a nonprofit communications group focused on climate change and clean energy. This is excerpted from his bookThis Is the Way the World Ends.

Adapted from This Is the Way the World Ends, copyright © 2018 by Jeff Nesbit. First hardcover edition published September 25, 2018 by St. Martin’s Press. All rights reserved.   

While unexpected, the purchase of Astro by Slack isn’t as weird as it seems. One of Slack’s goals is to see its messenger channels usurp email as a business communication method of choice. Astro’s popular email client leveraged AI to better manage the flood of emails users received. The company also made the popular Astrobot app for Slack, which allows people to integrate their emails and calendars with Slack and lets users search both without leaving the app.

The popularity of Astrobot obviously made Astro too tempting for the company, so it snapped it up. However, Slack buying an email client company shouldn’t be seen as a sign Slack is about to get into the email client business. Matter of fact, Astro’s email clients will stop working on October 10, Astro’s CEO announced.

As for what Slack is going to do with Astro’s tech, in a blog post announcing the acquisition, the company said:

We all know that email is still a very important tool in business communication. Billions of emails are sent every day, and in those are millions of documents exchanged, contracts negotiated and decisions memorialized. We’ve taken some steps to make it possible to integrate email into Slack, but now we’re in a position to make that interoperability much simpler and much, much more powerful. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to help teams shift conversations to where they would be most productive–in a channel, alongside the relevant context and software tools teams use at work, from ServiceNow and Salesforce to Workday and Box.

To help make this possible, we’ve acquired Astro, a company with deep expertise in email infrastructure and maker of the popular Astrobot for Slack. In Astro, we’re bringing on an incredible team that collectively have built the industry’s best mail and messaging tools like Zimbra, Acompli (acquired by Microsoft, and the foundation for Outlook Mobile), and Mumbo (acquired by LinkedIn). We see this as a natural next step as channel-based collaboration becomes the default way of working.

And they’re calling it “The Lounge” (I guess “Hipster Tech Bro Central” was taken). “The Lounge” is a concept coffee shop/AT&T store that will open in Seattle’s historic Capitol Hill neighborhood on September 29. Teaming up with Ada’s Discovery Cafe to open what AT&T calls a “second living room” for residents of the neighborhood, The Lounge features 3,000 square feet of workspace where customers can order coffee from two Kyoto-style bots and a specially made “siphon-bot,” reports GeekWire.

The Lounge also features product tables of tech offered by AT&T and large displays with a custom app that allows customers to order their coffee or buy the latest iPhone. If you do the latter, you are presented with a QR code that allows you to unlock a locker with your purchase inside.

Love it or hate it, these kinds of coffee shop slash “retail experiences” seem to be quickly becoming the new norm as companies seek to find new ways to immerse us in their brands and create places we want to hang out. Other companies trialing similar lounges include Capital One with its Capital One Cafés, Columbia Bank’s NeighborHubs, and Amazon’s Web Services Lofts.

I’m in deep the recesses of Lululemon’s secretive innovation lab, Whitespace, in the basement of its cavernous headquarters in Vancouver.

Everywhere I look, there are fascinating–and occasionally bizarre–scientific experiments at work. There’s a “sensory immersion lab” where human subjects are attached to monitors measuring brain activity, while neuroscientists project changing landscapes on the walls and alter the temperature, humidity, and sounds in the room. In another part of the lab, a computer scientist captures 3D images of a woman walking, tracking in microscopic detail how her movements interact with the fabric. “We’ve created this place to understand how you move, and how you feel when you move,” says Tom Waller, a sports technology PhD who was brought in to launch Whitespace from scratch seven years ago and currently serves as the lab’s SVP.

As for me, I’ve let myself become a guinea pig of sorts. I’m on a treadmill with sensors attached to my neck and chest. Chantelle Murnaghan, a neuromechanics PhD and one of Lululemon’s innovation managers, instructs me to start running at a moderate pace. After a minute’s jog, we sit down together while she shows me a graph of how my body moves. “It turns out that the way that each person moves is entirely unique to them,” Murnaghan says. “It’s like a fingerprint.”

Over the last two years, Lululemon has developed a way to identify and measure each person’s unique pattern of movement. Until now, the entire sportswear industry–Lululemon included–recommended products based on the customer’s size and a specific activity. For instance, the brand would create bras for high-impact sports, like running, and then include more compression in bras for larger-busted women, who experience more breast movement. But when Lululemon carried out its own research, it found that two women with a 36C bra size experienced different breast motion as they moved.

In the chart Murnaghan and I examine, I can see that with every step I take, my muscles and tissue first move up and down, then from side to side. On paper, this takes the shape of a figure eight on its side, or a butterfly. All of this is totally imperceptible to the naked eye, but when attached to these monitors, it’s possible to see each minute motion. And because Lululemon is beginning to collect data about hundreds of other subjects, it’s now clear that each of them have a slightly different chart. One person’s gait may cause their body to move more than another person of similar build. While the scientists at Whitespace are still working to understand why each of us moves in distinct ways, they believe it has to do with our genetic makeup, our physiology, and even the way we learned to walk and run as children.

Lululemon plans to capitalize on its ability to track how each customer’s body moves. The Whitespace team has created a store-ready version of the treadmill I tested in the lab, which will be called the “Signature Movement Experience.” The idea is for customers to learn about their own unique pattern of motion while allowing store representatives to provide highly customized product recommendations. When I went through the experience, an algorithm identified a top bra for me based on the results, plus four other bras that would also provide the support I need. The first of these treadmills went out at the SeaWheeze Sunset Festival–the half marathon and music event in Vancouver that Lululemon sponsored this past weekend–where the company set up a booth where women could go through the process.

Now facing competition from countless activewear startups, Lululemon is eyeing its future in a post-athleisure world, where comfort–not product categories–determines what consumers wear to work as well as the gym. By capitalizing on this individualized, data-based style of customer experience, the brand wants to push the athleisure genre it pioneered in the 2000s forward. “It’s an entirely new paradigm for us,” says Waller.

The brand that launched athleisure

Whitespace’s new technology is just one part of Lululemon’s effort to use science to stay on top of an overcrowded activewear industry. In a landscape where new startups are popping up every day, 20-year-old Lululemon is now an established player. Last year, the company’s annual revenue surpassed $3 billion and it had a network of 450 stores–and counting–in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It has 13,500 employees across the world.

Over the last five years, Lululemon has experienced a growth streak, regularly beating analysts’ expectations, despite the fact that it has gone through three different CEOs. In July, former Sephora executive Calvin McDonald stepped into the role of CEO after his predecessor, Laurent Potdevin, left abruptly because he had an improper relationship with another employee at the company. None of this seems to have any any impact on the company’s bottom line: Lululemon stocks soared by 80% during this period.

Lululemon was founded in 1998 by Chip Wilson, a charismatic and occasionally controversial businessman from Vancouver. An avid yogi, Wilson believed there was space in the market for a company that created high-quality, high-performance gear specifically designed for low-intensity exercise like yoga and Pilates. He engineered $90 leggings that were stretchy, but that didn’t provide the same kind of intense compression necessary for high-impact sports. For several years, Lululemon was just a niche womens wear boutique in Kitsilano, a posh Vancouver shopping district, with Wilson’s office on the second floor.

But by the early 2000s, Lululemon was setting up stores in big U.S. cities and gaining a cult following among women obsessed with the yoga pants. Some raved about how comfortable they were, while others loved how flattering they were, since they flattened the stomach and appeared to lift the butt. Fans createdblogs, where they feverishly discussed and reviewed new products. Buzzfeed has a listicle titled “23 Signs Your Lululemon Addiction Is Out Of Control,” and Business Insiderhas one with the headline, “This Woman Spent $15,000 On Lululemon And She Doesn’t Even Do Yoga.” At a price point that was significantly higher than other activewear brands, Lululemon clothing became a status symbol among well-heeled women in New York and San Francisco.

All of this transformed Lululemon into a household name. The brand expanded its product selection, creating leggings for running or high-impact workouts, a wide range of bras, down jackets, raincoats, bags, and anything else that might go along with an aspirational lifestyle centered on wellness. (It has since expanded into menswear and girls’ clothing.) By 2007, the company had filed for a $240 million IPO, had 52 stores, and was raking in $149 million in annual revenue.

Lululemon has benefited from other cultural shifts. First, consumers are more interested than ever in their health, spending more money on gym memberships and healthy food. And secondly, Americans have become increasingly more casual in their dress. This was driven, in part, by Silicon Valley tech companies that encouraged employees to ditch formal clothes for whatever made them comfortable. Over the last decade, it’s become acceptable to wear yoga pants out of the studio and into other aspects of life, from brunch to the office. Many attribute this trend, which is now called “athleisure,” back to Wilson himself.

These days, Wilson is no longer officially affiliated with Lululemon. In 2012, he stepped down from his position as chief innovation and branding officer to take a sabbatical in Australia. He was then ousted as chairman of the board in 2013 when, after customers complained that some yoga pants were see-through, Wilson blamed the fact that some women’s legs were so large that it created friction in the thigh area. Nonetheless, the trend Wilson helped create has now effectively overtaken the entire fashion industry. Between 2008 and 2015, worldwide activewear sales increased by 42% to $270 billion. In fact, analysts believe that yoga pants and running tights kept the clothing sector afloat during the economic crisis.

The challenge facing Lululemon today is that it’s now just one athleisure brand in an ocean of brands competing for the same consumer.

But How Does The Customer Feel?

That brings us back to Whitespace. Many of Lululemon’s competitors–including other mega-brands like Nike and Adidas–talk about high-performance clothing in purely objective terms, emphasizing things like compression, moisture-wicking properties, and breathability. But through their research in the lab, Waller and Murnaghan firmly believe these are the wrong metrics to be tracking. “It’s clear to us that people experience the exact same conditions very differently,” Waller says. “It’s not just that our bodies move and respond to the world differently: We also have very different perceptions of the world.”

This seems obvious, but the value of this insight begins to make sense when you think about your personal wardrobe preferences. For instance, I really hate feeling constricted when I exercise, even in a high-impact workout. I also prefer fabrics that feel warm and soft against my skin. But this is not true for everyone. Murgnahan explains that other women feel unsupported when their clothes don’t provide a lot of compression, and they want materials that feel cool and slick on their skin. “If you feel uncomfortable in a restrictive bra, you’re not going to perform at your best,” says Murnaghan. “But the way you feel in a bra could be totally different from the way that someone else feels in that same bra. We’re trying to rethink performance to consider how a customer feels.”

Incorporating subjectivity into the brand’s design is complex endeavor, but Waller and Murnaghan believe it could be a boon for Lululemon’s bottom line. In practice, it means creating a wide range of different materials and styles to offer customers products tailored to their movement patterns and personal preferences.

It is already working toward creating a comprehensive range of bras. It currently makes 33 different options designed to provide a variety of compression and textures against the skin thanks to the brand’s large catalog of proprietary fabrics. (Only Adidas and Nike can compete with Lululemon’s range, and they are 7 and 10 times the size of Lululemon, respectively.) One bra, the Enlite, has multiple straps on the back to provide a lot of support, and is made of Ultralu fabric that feels cool and smooth against the skin. The Flow Y bra, on the other hand, is a racerback, which provides a looser fit, and it is made from Nulu, which is buttery-soft.

The Whitespace team is also working on a new way to collect information from customers that goes beyond asking for their size and measurements, including questions that are more subjective. Lululemon has created a new kind of digital profile that customers can fill out online or on tablets in store that gathers data focused on how they like to feel in their clothing. For instance, it will ask whether you prefer feeling your body move freely when you run, or whether you prefer feeling more tightly supported by your clothes.

This data, combined with the insights about each customer’s unique movement pattern, will allow Lululemon to provide customized product recommendations. The company will not share this data with any third parties, but it will anonymize and aggregate it to better understand whether the products within its collections are actually meeting customers’ needs. It is Lululemon’s own twist on gathering insights from customer feedback–something many brands do.

A bra four years in the making

Lululemon is particularly interested in how materials feel against the skin. The company creates all of its fabrics from scratch, rather than using generic performance fabrics on the market, which many brands do. One of the brand’s most popular products, the Align Pant, feels velvety to the touch and was originally designed to reduce distractions during yoga practice. But many women don’t use it for yoga at all. Some wear it on long plane rides or for sleeping. Others wear it to work. One woman wore it with a button-down shirt and heels into a board meeting.

Lululemon wants to apply the findings coming out of Whitespace to create new products that have the same widespread appeal to customers who want to be comfortable–regardless of whether they’re at the gym or not.

Take the brand’s new Like Nothing bra, which hits stores today. The Whitespace team discovered that female consumers were searching for a bra that felt like being naked, but that still provided support during exercise. There was nothing within its current line that was specifically designed to create this sensation. So they spent four years building a product that allowed the breast to move naturally using a proprietary fabric called Light Ultralu that conforms to the body’s shape, providing light, even compression throughout the entire bra rather than tightening around the widest part of the chest. The company developed a three-dimensional cup that adapts to the shape of the breast, and subtly changed the construction for every size within the range, since women with different cup and band sizes require support at different places. The edges are not hemmed, but rather cut by a laser to reduce friction.

“When you combine our research about how we move with the insights we’re gathering about how women want to feel, you end up with interesting products,” says Sun Choe, Lululemon’s chief product officer. “But in many ways, a bra like this makes so much sense for how we live now: Women want to be able to bike to the office or take a Pilates class after work, without having to change bras.” In many ways, Like Nothing is the ultimate bra for the post-athleisure world. It’s the bra equivalent of Lululemon’s beloved, ultra-comfortable yoga pants, which catapulted the brand into a global phenomenon years ago.

Still, Lululemon’s real work is just beginning. Its main challenge as a company is communicating its design process to customers, to show them how Lululemon stands apart from other activewear brands on the market because it is interested in comfort for every unique type of body. Whitespace, and the customer experiences it’s developing, is part of that effort.

“All our lives, we’ve learned that human bodies move in more or less the same way,” Waller says. “A big part of challenge for us is explaining this new science to our customers. It’s one thing to gather insights in a lab, and quite another to bring this knowledge into the world to help people find clothes that improve the way they perform in everyday life.”

If narrative convention counts for anything, the story of Be More Chill should have been over a long time ago. The sci-fi musical opened at a regional theater in New Jersey in 2015, ran for about four weeks, and closed after receiving a mixed response from critics, including a lukewarm review in the New York Times, which described its teen-centered plot as formulaic and its comedic efforts as having a “whiff of the stale about them.” Typically, a low-stakes show with scant marketing resources would not have had much of a life beyond that.

But when a cast recording made its way to Spotify and other streaming platforms after the run had ended, something remarkable happened. The musical’s handful of local fans—a small but passionate group of mostly high school and college students—refused to let it die. With the distribution engine of social media at their disposal, they shared the music with their friends, amplified it, commented on how they related to its themes of teenage alienation and not fitting in.

Word spread on social networks like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram until a thousand fans became ten thousand, and then a hundred thousand. “Raise a glass to this song describing very accurately what it’s like to have a panic attack,” reads a typical comment.

Because Be More Chill had already closed, there was no live show for these new fans to see, but they weren’t deterred. They filled in the visual blanks with fan-created videos, sketching out the characters and plot lines on animated storyboards.

Fervor around the show continued to build for more than two years, propelled by an online mythology that seemed to be taking on a life of its own. Some of the fan-created videos generated upwards of 4 million views on YouTube, complete with endless comment threads about the show’s appeal. It got to the point where the show’s creators, with help from Tony-nominated producer Jerry Goehring, decided to mount a limited run off-Broadway this past summer, testing to see if that passionate online fan base would translate into ticket buyers.

Did it ever.

“We had $300,000 in sales the very first day off-Broadway, with zero advertising,” Goehring told me. “We kept thinking, well, it’s just a bubble.”

It wasn’t just a bubble. Not only did the entire run sell out by opening night, but the show has since announced it will transfer to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre next spring, an amazing journey for a work with such a humble origin story. Goehring, who came on as producer before the off-Broadway run and will be its lead producer on Broadway, says the fandom is not like anything he’s ever seen. “It’s like Beatlemania after the show,” he says. “These kids want to meet these people they’ve seen online, that they’ve seen clips of. They’re stars now in their eyes, and it’s because of this access they have that social media allows.”

Lessons for creators

On paper, Be More Chill may not read as anything exceptional. The story, based on a 2004 novel by the late writer Ned Vizzini, centers around an awkward high schooler who discovers a computerized pill that latches to his brain and coaches him to a steely confidence. But something about the plot, and the pop-infused music by Joe Iconis, resonated with young audiences.

More than that, the show’s unusual trajectory—closing on stage, then reopening years later in response to viral social media buzz—seems to lay waste to the long-held fear that the internet and its endless terabytes of free musical content pose an existential threat to live theater. Since the early days of cast recordings, Broadway producers have quarreled about the extent to which theater content would be cannibalized by electronic mediums.

It’s hard to quantify how legitimate those fears are. Certainly, stage producers have good reason to want to protect their investments, especially in an environment where the majority of shows don’t recoup their production costs. But theater history is replete with examples of recorded mediums boosting ticket sales, not depressing them. Chicago, for instance, saw a bump in sales after the movie was released in 2002, as did the musical Legally Blondeafter a live-captured version aired on MTV five years later.

In the Instagram age, Be More Chill is part of a new wave of musicals, like Dear Evan Hansen and the West End’s production of Heathers, that seem to benefit enormously by posting content on social media and encouraging fans to interact with it. If you hit the right combination, your reach can explode well beyond the contingent of New York theatergoers who would have seen the show live when it first opened—and that notoriety can create a lucrative pipeline of new ticket buyers.

Mike Karns, who runs social media for Be More Chill with his marketing company Marathon Digital, says the show’s success offers lessons for theater creators and producers about the ability of social media to transform a musical into a must-see phenomenon. “There was a moment—I’m not sure when it was—where it went from being not about the cast album, but being about this community,” he says. “It’s so much about people sharing in the fact that they feel like that kid who didn’t fit in in high school, or they are that kid.”

Karns is a self-described “theater kid” himself. He studied stage management and lighting design at Penn State University, and says he grew up on a steady diet of musical theater cast recordings. Except in those days, there were no social media platforms on which to share his passion for Broadway. “I was burning through the Wicked CD, listening to Rent on repeat all the time,” he recalls. “But I didn’t have the ability to connect with other people who were excited about that outside of my high school theater class.”

Not so anymore: Broadway, despite being centered around a few dozen theaters in midtown Manhattan, is no longer restrained by its local boundaries. That’s an exciting prospect for a new generation of show creators, but Goehring says it will require a shift in thinking for producers who are still tempted to stick with the old ways of doing things. “When I talk to my colleagues, they’ll give me the advice that you can’t put too much out there, or people are not going to want to see the real thing,” he says. “We’re seeing just the opposite.”

Then he sums up the success of Be More Chill in more contemporary terms. “FOMO was a big part of it,” he adds.

The unofficial theme of Hasan Minhaj’s breakthrough 2017 Netflix special, Homecoming King, is “Log kya kahenge,” a Hindi phrase that translates to “What will people think?” The first-generation Indian American refers to the line in anecdotes that explore racism and cultural tradition—including a heartbreaking story about a hate crime committed against his family on September 12, 2001. Although he prods his audience to let go of the “Log kya kahenge” outlook, Minhaj’s talent for influencing what people think has been a hallmark of his career. It’s a skill he honed as a former correspondent for The Daily Show and as the host of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April of last year. After his remarks garnered praise from both sides of the political spectrum, Minhaj teamed up with Netflix to create a weekly, half-hour talk show, Patriot Act, which earned an unprecedented 32-episode order. Here’s how he uses message-driven comedy to shift perspectives.

Be cutting, but not cruel

There have been two White House Correspondents’ Dinners since the Trump era began, and the entertainers took decidedly different approaches. This year, comedian Michelle Wolf opted for a profanity-laced set that took President Trump and team to task. Unsurprisingly, milder jabs at Democrats didn’t win her any accolades from the right. When Minhaj and his cowriter Prashanth Venkataramanujam were preparing his speech for the 2017 event, their plan was to win the audience with what Minhaj calls “angry optimism.” He took light digs at members of the Trump administration and at President Trump’s speculation about President Obama’s faith, but he also roasted Hillary Clinton, Nate Silver, and the mainstream media. He chided [MSNBC] for constantly focusing on how the Russians hacked the 2016 election. He ended the bit by saying: “Meanwhile, everybody in Latin America and the Middle East is like, ‘Ah, a foreign government tampered with your election? What is that like? Do tell, MSNBC.’ ” By poking fun at the network, he was able to raise a serious issue for people at home and abroad.

Break out of your constraints

When Jon Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015, he challenged Minhaj and the other correspondents to push the program’s limits. Minhaj soon realized that The Daily Show and other late-night shows sat hosts behind desks with graphics positioned over their shoulders. It inspired him to try a new execution: In Homecoming King, he stood in front of a backdrop like one you’d see on a concert stage, with wall-to-wall LED screens showing infographics and changing colors to reflect the mood of the set. In Patriot Act, he applies the same immersive environment to a weekly news show. “Every episode, every headline piece has an infinite amount of variability [that can be extended to the set],” he says. “It doesn’t have to be just a fake city skyline.”

Put a face on it

Minhaj has learned that getting personal elicits empathy from audiences. In Homecoming King, he recalled the day, in September 2001, that he came home to discover his family’s car had been vandalized. He realized that because he was born in the U.S., he had “the audacity of equality,” but his father, who calmly swept up the glass, saw the crime as just “the price we pay for being here.” His commitment to illuminating issues for an audience is one reason he still prefers not to craft arguments around the 24-hour news cycle—it’s often too hard for people to see the humanity at the center. Instead, in Patriot Act, he uses breaking news as a jumping-off point to explore who is affected by current events. The goal is to show viewers how hot-button issues might affect them personally, even if they feel detached from the headlines.

Narrow your audience

While Minhaj wants to show viewers why they should care about an issue, he also doesn’t waste any time trying to reel in people whose political opinions won’t budge. “I don’t think anyone can bear that burden,” he says. With Patriot Act, he tailors his arguments to speak to the politically agnostic—a group he thought might be elusive, until he learned that several of his (college-educated, prosperous) friends didn’t bother to vote in the last election. And although the show never shies away from the country’s thorniest issues, Minhaj always maintains a light touch. As he learned on his high school debate team, arguments get better scores if you can make the judges laugh. “My job is to be as funny as possible, and to tell the truth,” he says. “If I can do those two things, hopefully I can reach people”—and spur them into action.

To mark National Voter Registration Day—a voter registration drive that kicks off every fourth Tuesday in September—the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced the launch of a new voter education tool, VoteSmartJustice.org, which is focused on criminal justice reform issues. The website gives voters access to information about thousands of candidates for Congress, governor, and state legislatures to see where they stand on criminal justice reform issues.

It’s the latest effort by the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice to educate voters about the importance of criminal justice reform. The campaign may be working, too, because the ACLU also just released new public opinion polling that shows broad support for the issue, with 78% of likely voters eager to support candidates who want criminal justice reform, including 72% of Republicans.

Even if criminal justice reform isn’t your top issue, getting registered to vote now is important, as elections are coming up on Tuesday, November 6. In some states, you need to be registered to vote 30 days before the election, aka next weekend, so check your state’s deadline. If you’re looking to register to vote, just Google it. The search engine’s homepage features a Google Doodle with information on how to get registered before the November 6 elections. The link leads to information on how individuals in each state can register to vote.

If that doesn’t convince you to register, try Billy Eichner’s star-studded campaign with Funny or Die, called GlamUpTheMidterms.com, where late-night hosts Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Robin Thede, Andy Cohen, and Chelsea Handler team up to get people to vote.

Late on Monday, Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger shocked the tech world by announcing that they were stepping down from the company that they founded eight years ago and have grown into one of the most powerful and influential social media platforms in the world. With over 1 billion users, Instagram is the go-to app for millennials and is now five times the size of Snapchat. Bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, it’s now estimated to be worth more than 100 times that. 

Beyond its suddenness—there was no hint that the men had any plans to transition into a “next chapter,” as they said in a statement—the move comes at a critical time for both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has been under attack for a variety of problems relating to disseminating fake news and its role in a number of global elections. User growth has slowed down at the flagship service, putting more of a spotlight on Instagram as the future for the company’s user and revenue growth. 

For its entire history, Instagram’s founders have consistently and elegantly intuited what people want from a mobile experience. Now the service will have to do it without them.  

In mid-September, Fast Company sat down with Krieger to discuss the genesis and vision behind IGTV for a forthcoming feature story. At the time, the 32-year-old CTO gave no hint that he was in his final weeks at Instagram. Dressed casually in a black T-shirt and jeans, he spoke effusively about ideating with Systrom last fall to create “the next generation’s TV viewing experience,” frequently veering into broader tangents about how he and Systrom have always viewed Instagram as a continuously evolving experience that began with square-shaped photos and now is an all-encompassing entertainment app. 

Here are a few key insights from one of Instagram’s visionaries, perspectives that are baked into the organization Systrom and Krieger built, and are part of the mind-set that will guide their now former employees.

1. Exploit available technology, but only when it’s really ready

Instagram started out as a simple photo-sharing app in 2010. Krieger says that the technology actually existed to include video, but because it wouldn’t have been a seamless experience, he and Systrom decided to wait:

For me, Instagram is sort of this continuous evolution toward the goal that’s been set from the very, very beginning,” he told me. “I like to get kind of geeky here and talk about science fiction. At its best, a startup is kind of envisioning a science fiction future and then building toward that with currently available technology. Or currently unavailable technology if you’re trying to invent something brand new. Which is less our style. I think Kevin and I like to find technology that’s ready to bring to everybody and then make it happen. 

So for us when we started, it was always, Can you make someone feel like they’re in another place with somebody else and experiencing with them? And through that, both enhance the feeling of the person who’s actually experiencing it by telling a story and bringing your friends along, and for everybody else to teleport, basically, to this other place. 

Of course, you have to work within constraints. So as of 2009, 2010 when we started building this thing, the best available constraint was the iPhone 2G. Remember that thing? Over Edge Networks. So San Francisco was especially brutal because they had too many phones and not enough cell towers. So at your best, you could send a photo. 

So the technology existed for us to do video, and we chose not to in the first version, because we couldn’t deliver a great experience around that because it was gonna be a lot of loading. The uploads would be slow. They failed more often than not. It just didn’t feel right. Then you hit 2013, and we’re like, ‘Alright we have 3G now. We have even 4G in some places. I think the world is ready for video.’ Let’s bring that to everybody. And let’s let that fit into the Instagram experience.

2. Make changes in a way no one even notices

Instagram has been just as controlled about slowly layering in product updates and features. Unlike, say, Snapchat, users aren’t deluged on a seemingly daily basis with new filters and stickers. Krieger says this is by design.

When asked how IGTV will look in a year, Krieger says:

Pretty different. But in a typical Instagram way, you won’t notice until you get there, and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Wow! that’s really different. Even Stories. Most people’s Stories, when we launched, had very few stickers. No polling stickers, no question stickers. All the formats we launched, those things didn’t exist. And now you take them for granted because they’re in the product and that’s how it works. 

So that’s just the Instagram way of doing product, I think. Like, keeping forward momentum and learning until . . . The whole product is a good representation of that. I don’t think people realize all the things that have changed. I used to get this question, Why does Instagram change so slowly? I’m like, it changes more than you think. Go download or look at screenshots from a year ago and you’ll be like, Whoa, is that what it looked like? I think we’re doing our jobs right if that’s what’s happening. 

3. Diverge and converge

As leaders, Krieger says he and Systrom have a system of opening up conversations and ideas as broadly as possible, and then narrowing that conversation down to focus on key elements. Rinse and repeat. This is how they work.

I was a design-thinking major. I studied human-computer interaction. So a lot of what we were studying was the process behind the idea and shipping it out to the world. And my favorite illustration of it is one of convergence and divergence. So you start with, What could we build? We could build anything! You’re going super broad. 

Well, we can’t build everything, so what are we building? But even within what we’re building, when we were building IGTV, there was a kind of wealth of alternatives we explored. Everything from the format to the browsing to how many people we opened it up to on day one. All of those decisions. And then you start converging again. I think a lot of what our role is now, as leaders of the company, is helping the company manage that process of diverging and converging on things.

Sanatan Suryavanshi’s career as an art director for TV and film was going well, but he couldn’t shake this one idea that he knew was beyond the scope of either medium. He wanted to explore darker, more mature themes in an interactive format. So while working on the 2017 Oscar-nominated animated film The Breadwinner, Suryavanshi and game development studio 4L linked up to start creating what would become Fracter, a thriller mobile game that dives into themes of light and darkness as an abstract puzzle.

There was just one problem: Suryavanshi knew absolutely nothing about the mobile gaming space.

“I think you need to be a little scared in order to do good work,” Suryavanshi says. “I had to learn really fast that I couldn’t think like a feature-film guy. I couldn’t think like an animation guy.” Suryavanshi cut his teeth as an art director six years ago, apprenticing for Hans Bacher, the legendary production designer behind Disney classics including The Lion King, Mulan, Hercules, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. Suryavanshi mostly stayed on the family-friendly route of animation when he joined the Toronto-based animation group Guru Studio in 2012, working on film and TV shows like The Breadwinner and True and the Rainbow Kingdom.

The Breadwinner, which tells the story of a young girl who takes on the persona of a boy to take care of her family after her father is imprisoned by the Taliban, deals with heavier subject matter than many animated films. But Suryavanshi was also interested in having a “dialogue rather than a monologue” with an audience through the interactivity of a game.

Frank Falcone, head of 4L Games, came up with the initial concept for Fracter and tapped Suryavanshi’s artistic and cinematic sensibilities to help bring it to life. Suryavanshi started early sketches for Fracter, formerly known as Once Upon a Time, in 2016, with the original game taking place in a haunted house with illustrative and intricate animation. “But when I started working with programmers, it became very apparent, very quickly, that there was no way they were pulling that off on a device you had to hold in your hand.”

So he had to boil down his idea into what was essential. And that became a stark, black-and-white landscape that relies just as much on sound design as it does visuals.

“What I found underneath it all when I distilled it was this very, very simple idea—which for a long time, has stayed with me—which was duality,” Suryavanshi says.

Fracter starts out with the main character being split into an array of light and dark versions of itself. The goal is to collect all the light elements and avoid the dark, which are represented as nightmarish creatures. The game launched in the Apple Store this past July and became the top puzzle game in Canada and the U.K. It has also been featured on Apple’s roundups for “New Games We Love” and “Awesome Indie Games.”

What Suryavanshi found gratifying is how abstract the game became when he stripped it down. During beta testing, some saw the game as collecting pieces of a broken heart, while others viewed as a rumination of loss and grief.

“The kind of stories I like the most are the ones where they give me enough to tell me what it is they’re talking about,” Suryavanshi says. “They give me enough to suggest some things about it, but they leave enough room for me to make up my own mind about how I feel about them—less literal with a little more breathing room.”

“In the traditional animation space, what the most amazing studios are doing craft-wise is at a high level, but in terms of the themes they’re exploring, at least in North America, it’s not necessarily as diverse,” he says. “For games, it’s a blue-sky stage compared to where films are at.”

Twitter has released a new moderation policy explicitly banning dehumanizing speech. If it has been a while since that college linguistics class, you may be wondering what dehumanizing speech exactly is. According to a blog post about the policy change, Twitter explains that it’s “language that treats others as less than human.”

It further explains:

Dehumanization can occur when others are denied of human qualities (animalistic dehumanization) or when others are denied of human nature (mechanistic dehumanization). Examples can include comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic), or reducing groups to their genitalia (mechanistic).

Identifiable group: Any group of people that can be distinguished by their shared characteristics such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, serious disease, occupation, political beliefs, location, or social practices.

The policy is still a work in progress, and Twitter wants user feedback. So if dehumanization speaks to you (so to speak), take a brief Twitter survey, which will be available until Tuesday, October 9, at 6 a.m. PT. After the survey, Twitter will continue with its regular implementation process and will update the Twitter Rules later this year, presumably incorporating the user feedback.

With the new policy, Twitter may be trying to get ahead of an issue that Facebook has been struggling with in regards to the spread of hate speech. Facebook was recently called out by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight over its policies in Myanmar, where the social network has been used to incite violence against Rohingya Muslims.