What's on Your Mind?

This past weekend, there were more disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport due to Federal Aviation Administration equipment outages. It has added to the air travel chaos at Newark over the past month, which has included air traffic controllers losing communication with planes for up to 90 seconds, and led to the delay and cancellation of hundreds of flights. On Monday morning, there were at least 59 flight delays and more than 80 cancellations at Newark, according to FlightAware data. Air traffic controllers and the 79,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, are calling on the FAA to update its aging infrastructure to ensure the system is as safe and …

The value of higher education has been on a steady decline for Americans over the past 15 years. According to a September Gallup poll, only 35% of U.S. adults said a college education is “very important,” compared to 75% in 2010. This is what a marketer would call a brand problem. The University of North Carolina is unveiling a refreshed brand identity and reorganizing its marketing structure to meet these 21st-century challenges. The centuries-old university has a storied history as a top-ranked academic institution and a legendary sports brand (thank you Michael Jordan). Chancellor Lee Roberts says that awareness isn’t UNC’s problem. Everyone in North Carolina…

On most golf courses, silence is sacred. At the WM Phoenix Open’s 16th hole, noise is the point. Every year, tens of thousands of fans pack into a stadium-like enclosure at TPC Scottsdale, turning a short par 3 into one of the most recognizable—and rowdiest—settings in sports. Missed putts are booed. Holes in one trigger cascades of beer. The atmosphere is closer to a college football rivalry than a PGA Tour stop. But as iconic as the 16th hole has become, its future wasn’t guaranteed by tradition alone. Behind the spectacle, the structure itself had reached a limit—architecturally, operationally, and environmentally. “We made the decision that that was as goo…

My first time plopping down on my therapist’s couch, I tried to breeze through the basics. Yes, upbringing, romance, family, social life—all important. But I entered that softly lit space to vent about the place that eats up a third of my waking life. I was there to talk about the office. The physical location wasn’t the issue; the office snacks were elite. The problem was the people: the supervisor with no respect for work-life balance, the snooty coworker firing off slick emails, the boy’s club that would always look out for its own. Being the only Black employee there wore me out in ways I couldn’t always name. And talking it out with a licensed professional who lo…

It’s all fun and games, until there are billions of dollars involved. But these Brands That Matter honorees manage to tap into our love for sports and entertainment in ways that only help boost that passion. BritBox Read about how BritBox’s first major brand campaign showcased the craftsmanship of British TV. NBA Read about how the NBA made its app a destination for fans by building a network of creators it equipped with editing tools and 25,000 hours of game footage. State Farm As crazy as it sounds, this is an insurance company steeped in culture. This past year, State Farm pushed its Super Bowl ad to March Madness, due to sensitivity around the L.…

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Notre Dame’s Niele Ivey is doing it the way she learned how to coach, pacing the sideline in stylish attire in a time when most coaches favor far more casual attire. “When I first got into coaching, I learned under a Hall of Fame coach,” Ivey said. “Being coached under Coach (Muffet) McGraw, her whole staff dressed up. Coaching with her we dressed up. That’s kind of the fabric of Notre Dame, and what I’m used to style-wise.” As the NCAA Tournament heats up, the styles of Ivey, LSU’s Kim Mulkey, Alabama’s Nate Oats and South Carolina’s Dawn Staley stand out in a sea of coaches in team polo shirts and quarter-zip pullovers. There are a handful of coaches on the men’…

With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions. So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 …

On the evening of January 7, the Eaton Fire hit Altadena, destroying more than 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Last month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neig…

The way Bran Ferren sees it, the future of warfare depends as much on creativity as it does on raw firepower. The former head of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering—the elite R&D arm responsible for the entertainment empire’s “secret sauce”—the 72-year-old Ferren has spent decades building a reputation for fusing art, design, and storytelling with serious technical and engineering know-how in pursuit of novel innovations and experiences. This pioneering approach to “creative technology” is the heart and soul of Applied Minds, the company Ferren cofounded 25 years ago to help clients from the Pentagon to Fortune 500 companies envision and test brea…

Growing up in the mountains of western Guatemala, Feliciano Perez Tomas cultivated the same type of native maize his family had for generations. The breed of corn was central to his Indigenous K’iche’ community’s diet, a grain and pulse-heavy intake that dates back to the time of the Maya Civilization. But over the years, more frequent and intense rains—linked to climate change—came earlier in the year, disrupting the harvest. “Before it rained in March and we would sow seeds when it happened, but these days the rains can begin in February, and there can be a lot of ice and colder conditions,” said Tomas, 42. “We would have to work so hard, but receive little.…

Fernando Moreno has been on dialysis for about two years, enduring an “unbearable” wait for a new kidney to save his life. His limited world of social contacts has meant that his hopes have hinged on inching up the national waiting list for a transplant. That was until earlier this year, when the Philadelphia hospital where he receives treatment connected him with a promising pilot project that has paired him with “angel advocates” — Good Samaritan strangers scattered around the country who leverage their own social media contacts to share his story. So far, the Great Social Experiment, as it was named by its founder, Los Angeles filmmaker David Krissman, hasn’t found t…

Kristina Smithe was running the California International Marathon in 2019, grabbing cups of water to stay hydrated, when she started to think about how much waste such events produce. On the flight home, she did the math: 9,000 runners, 17 aid stations, and something like 150,000 cups used once and thrown away. “I was just shocked that, even in California, it’s not sustainable,” Smithe said. That sparked her idea for something more durable—a lightweight, pliable silicone cup that could be used again and again. After working out a design, Smithe ordered her first shipment and tested them at a race in 2021. Now her business, Hiccup Earth, has 70,000 cups that Smithe rent…

If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures. A clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark’s job when the Winter Games open in Italy on Feb. 6 is to help athletes interpret what it means to be successful. Should gold medals be the only measure? Part of a 15-member staff providing psychological services, Clark nurtures athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure. The staff deals with matters termed “mental health and mental performance.” They include topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, tra…

Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engage in bold adventures. But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a date for residents — many of whom are in their 80s and 90s — to take turns donning virtual reality headsets. Within a matter of minutes, the headsets can transport them to Europe, immerse them in the ocean depths or send them soaring on breathtaking hang-gliding expeditions while they sit by each other. The selection of VR programming was cura…

As an app designed to facilitate gay hookups, popular site Sniffies has had a limitation since it started in 2018—it was only accessible via web browser. Until Monday, when the map-based cruising site debuted its Apple-approved iOS app. Building an app that complies with Apple’s notoriously stringent content moderation—and total ban on apps that directly serve adult content—was a challenge for Sniffies, which wears its sexuality proudly. Its users, which it calls “cruisers,” do, too. Many users put nude images as their cover photos, meaning adult content is visible from the second the platform is opened in a browser. The company needed to tame the experience for…

When life gives people lemons, most try to make the best out of a bad situation. Instead, Beau du Bois, vice president of bar and spirits at Marisi Italian restaurant in La Jolla, California, found himself with an incredible opportunity. In 2021, the Adler and Lombrozo families, owners of the Puesto Mexican restaurant chain, tapped du Bois to build Marisi’s bar program from the ground up. One of the first actions du Bois took when learning about this new venture was starting a batch of limoncello, using a lesser-known Amalfi Coast technique. “They told me about Marisi almost exactly a year before we opened,” du Bois tells Fast Company. “And the very next day, even…