• Some Americans are struggling to find work due to a challenging labor market.
• Many have found temporary ways to generate some income while they look for jobs.
• These strategies aren't always enough to prevent significant financial challenges.

Americans who are struggling to land full-time jobs are finding creative ways to pay the bills while they search for work.

Juan Pelaez has been looking for a job for more than two years. To generate some income, Pelaez said he's driven for Uber Eats and Instacart, done some part-time work for his prior employer, and was a background actor in the coming film "Happy Gilmore 2." However, since he was laid off from his account executive job at a marketing agency, Pelaez said he and his wife have taken on tens of thousands of dollars in debt from credit cards and personal loans.

Pelaez, 47, is based in New Jersey and said he earned about $3,500 across roughly 22 days of work for the acting opportunity. Landing the gig has helped him get similar work on a few other productions.

"It has not accounted for a full-time position salary, but it has been a great help," he told Business Insider.

Pelaez is among the Americans who have had a hard time finding work in recent years. Since October, more than 750 recent job seekers between the ages of 18 and 76 have responded to Business Insider's informal, nonrepresentative surveys and shared their stories with reporters through emails. Some said they've faced stiff competition for white-collar roles, while others shared that they couldn't land a job in their industry, despite having an advanced degree.

Their struggles have been driven in part by a widespread hiring slowdown in the US. Excluding a two-month pandemic-related dip in 2020, US businesses are hiring at the lowest rate since 2013. Among the nearly 7 million unemployed individuals as of December, about 1.5 million had been looking for work for at least six months — up from 1.1 million a year prior. To be sure, the unemployment rate remains low compared with historical levels.

The job seekers who BI heard from said part-time employment, gig work, selling their belongings, and other strategies have helped them stay afloat financially, but many continue to face significant financial challenges.

Are you looking for a job and comfortable sharing your story with a reporter? Did an AI job tool help you land a job recently? Please fill out this form.

Many earning opportunities don't replace a full-time job

Some job seekers told BI they found part-time roles, but the jobs haven't paid enough to cover the bills.

Rhonda Alexander has been looking for customer success management jobs since being laid off from her tech role in March 2023. To earn some income, Alexander, who's 55 and based in Illinois, started working part-time as an AI content engineer last April. She said the role involved evaluating the quality of AI-generated content.

Alexander said she enjoyed the work but was paid $21 an hour, which she felt wasn't enough to support herself. She said that her contract came to an end in late December.

"It seems that I am back on this miserable roller coaster of seeking a role in order to literally put food on the table and a roof over my head," she said. Going forward, Alexander said she's focused on developing new income streams, including becoming a notary. She's also driven for Uber and DoorDash in recent months.

Amanda Wilson has been looking for work for months. She quit her part-time caregiving gig in July — which she said was unsustainable due to the long commute and the physical demands of the job. She said an injury she suffered last year has limited her.

The 35-year-old, who's based in Arizona, said she's applied to hundreds of jobs — including customer service and management roles — but has only received an offer for one job: a different part-time caregiving gig where she's working 10 hours a week.

To earn some income, Wilson said she sold her Xbox One and a few video games for about $150, as well as three swords from her collection for about $100 each. But this money wasn't enough: Wilson said she's been forced to max out her credit cards and draw upon her savings.

"Right now, I can afford rent and my car payment for this coming month, but that's it," she said in December, adding, "I will probably have to sell off more things."

Meanwhile, Pelaez is hopeful that boosting his skills — and reflecting those changes on his résumé — will help him land a job that matches his experience level. For example, he said he's working toward Google's data analytics certificate through Coursera. While he's continued his gig driving and acting work, he said he temporarily paused his job search in October.

"With the overwhelming ghosting and lack of feedback from prospective employers, it becomes a cycle of never-ending applications," he said.

• In 2024, vintage watches and expensive alarm clocks were the epitome of luxury.
• This year, however, $600 calendars and stained-glass lamps have become the new status symbols.
• Giant tote bags from Coach and oval-shaped Miu Miu glasses also signify luxury and taste in 2025.

A new year calls for fresh routines, lofty goals, and the latest luxuries.

While 2024 was all about vintage watches and expensive alarm clocks, different status symbols are taking over in 2025.

Home decor is now all about stained-glass lamps and $600 calendars. Fashionable outfits, on the other hand, aren't complete without giant tote bags and fancy glasses.

Here's a closer look at the luxurious products you'll see everywhere — and probably be tempted to buy — this year.

Everyone wants to elevate their spaces with stained-glass Tiffany lamps.

If you watched any Christmas gift hauls on TikTok recently, there's a good chance you've heard more than a few mentions of Tiffany lamps.

The stained-glass pieces were first made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the original design director of Tiffany & Co., in the late 1890s.

His style became so popular that other artisans picked it up, and it has remained an interior design staple. Now, most colorful glass lamps are called "Tiffany" lamps, regardless of the craftsman who made them.

To add one to your home this year, you can buy a Tiffany lamp from a modern artisan or search thrift stores for a vintage one. However, if you want an authentic piece from Tiffany Studios, be prepared to spend between $20,000 and $120,000.

All the "it girls" are carrying oversize tote bags from Coach.

Coach has massively rebounded in recent years thanks to its new trendy purse styles, flashy social-media ads, and a loyal Gen Z fan base.

So, of course, the go-to bag for 2025 is a style from the New York City brand: the Brooklyn 39 shoulder bag.

Typically made from smooth leather, the totes are sold in seven colors and measure 17 inches tall. Some fans of the $495 bags include TikTok fashion influencers and model Bella Hadid.

Coach also offers a brown suede version of the product.

Whether you need glasses or not, you'll probably want a pair of Miu Miu frames soon enough.

We've long surpassed the days when glasses were considered nerdy and unappealing. Still, some pairs are more chic than others.

Enter the Miu Miu Regard frames. At $505 a piece, the oval glasses are decorated with a tortoiseshell print and set with transparent lenses, which are said to block the sun and blue light.

Adding to the appeal is the fact that the Miu Miu acessory looks more like a pair of traditional readers than sunglasses, which they technically are.

If you need more convincing, just look at Sabrina Carpenter wearing them.

Car air fresheners are out, and fancy scent diffusers are in.

Classic, tree-shaped air fresheners are convenient. You can find them at just about any store, and they typically cost under $3 each.

The Pura Car Diffuser, on the other hand, takes things to the next level. The $34.99 device fits in most cupholders, plugs into car USB ports, and releases luxury scents from brands like Anthropologie and Nest.

Each cartridge costs under $18 and is said to remain fragrant for at least 30 days. You can also adjust scent intensity via an app, and the diffuser stops and starts as you move your car.

Talk about high tech.

iPads have made a comeback.

For a while there, iPads seemed a lot like glorified, oversize iPhones. In 2025, however, the tablets are key to organization and success.

Since the holiday season, people on TikTok have been showcasing their new tech and, more importantly, the apps and features they'll use most in the new year.

One popular video with over 32,000 views shows customized calendars, vision boards, and notepads with the caption, "2025 iPad girl loading."

There are a few iPads on the market, but the two most popular options are the 13-inch iPad Pro ($1,299) and the 13-inch iPad Air ($799).

Paper calendars are fine, but digital ones from Skylight are far more lavish.

Maybe iPads are too small for your liking, or maybe their surplus of apps distracts you from staying organized.

That's where Skylight comes in. For months, people have praised the brand's digital calendars on TikTok, saying they appreciate the product's touchscreen checklists, color-coding options, and massive size.

The calendars also double as frames, displaying slideshows of your favorite photos as a screensaver.

However, if you want to add one to your home, be prepared to spend a decent chunk of change. The calendars cost between $159 and $599 each.

You'll likely see Rhode's gray skincare bottles on every bathroom counter.

Hailey Bieber launched her skincare brand Rhode in 2022, and it's been a steady player in the beauty industry ever since.

Her line's lip treatments and phone cases were the skincare status symbols of 2024, but its face products are now set to have a big year.

Beauty lovers have recently been displaying their gray bottles of the brand's $32 glazing milk, $38 moisturizers, and other products in their recent TikTok videos. Rhode was also a major part of many "what I got for Christmas" hauls online.

Many are also looking forward to coming releases, which some fans speculate will include eye patches and skincare sticks.

You can skip the line at Starbucks if you have a fancy espresso maker at home.

So, what's the machine of choice this year? Look no further than Terra Kaffe's TK-02. Many coffee fanatics got the device as holiday presents to upgrade their daily espresso.

The $1,695 device is sold in black and white colorways and has a touchscreen that makes it easy to brew your morning cup even when you're half asleep.

It makes hot and cold drinks, works with all kinds of milk, and utilizes pre-ground or whole beans.

If you don't have a KitchenAid mixer, now is the time to get one.

Visit any baker or chef's kitchen, and you'll likely find a KitchenAid mixer. One specific one, though, stands out among the rest.

In 2025, foodies can't get enough of the $699.95 KitchenAid Design Series mixer, which features a forest-green body and a wooden mixing bowl.

It's arguably the most aesthetically pleasing design the brand has ever released and is considered a bestseller at Williams Sonoma.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk never did face off in that cage match, "Uncle Elon" has bested Zuck in the political arena, becoming one of the most powerful unelected figures in modern US history. Now, in hopes of forging a friendlier relationship with the Trump administration a second time around, Zuckerberg seems to be following a new mantra: If you can't beat Elon, be him.

On Tuesday, Meta announced it would end third-party fact-checking and replace it with a more hands-off content-moderation policy in which users police one another through community notes — just like Musk's X. In a video announcing the changes, Zuckerberg said that "governments and legacy media" had pushed for more censorship in recent years, and that Meta had decided its "complex systems" had "too many mistakes and too much censorship." "The recent elections," the Meta CEO added, "also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech." His language would have sounded natural coming out of the mouth of Musk, who shared Zuckerberg's video on X and dubbed Meta's move "cool."

Community notes is only the latest page Zuckerberg has taken from his billionaire rival's playbook. Whether conducting mass layoffs or removing the guardrails to social media or joining forces with Musk against their shared competitor OpenAI or spending time at Mar-a-Lago, Zuckerberg has been following Musk's lead more often.

This isn't the first time Zuckerberg, who has helmed Facebook since he was 19, has reinvented himself. From the brash, hoodie-wearing Harvard dropout in Facebook's early days to the suit-wearing, meat-smoking, Silicon Valley nice guy in the years after the company went public to the hardened, martial-arts-practicing "wartime"-mode Zuck who emerged in the wake of the most turbulent period in company history, Zuckerberg has fashioned several personas that approximate what his company most needs him to be at the time. In 2025, don't let his longer hair, oversize T-shirts, and statement jewelry fool you. The persona Mark Zuckerberg has taken on to ensure Meta's success as his historical adversary Donald Trump returns to the White House acts a lot like Donald Trump's right-hand man, Elon Musk.

When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he shaved content moderation to bare bones in the name of free speech and cut more than 80% of its staff, sending shockwaves through the tech world. Many speculated that Twitter would crack under the pressure, and die. When, despite some hiccups, the platform continued to function largely as normal, Zuckerberg, like several other tech CEOs, applauded Musk for making Twitter "leaner" (doing so on the Musk superfan Lex Fridman's podcast). Meta also laid off 11,000 workers days after Musk took over Twitter, and Zuckerberg then dubbed 2023 "the year of efficiency" at Meta, cutting another 10,000 people. Zuckerberg now also plans to move trust-and-safety workers from California to Texas, following in step with Musk, who has relocated X from San Francisco to Texas, where he has also located Starlink and The Boring Company.

And as Zuckerberg stayed quieter throughout the 2024 presidential election after Meta took heat for misinformation in 2016 and 2020, Musk did the opposite. The world's richest man appeared onstage alongside Trump, backed Trump with more than $250 million, and posted to X incessantly in support of the now president-elect. Musk has again come out on top, as he now sits at the pinnacle of political influence and is poised to radically reshape government spending as he and Vivek Ramaswamy spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency. Big Tech's other power players who want a favorable relationship with Trump are left to follow in his path.

Since November, Apple's Tim Cook, Open AI's Sam Altman, and Amazon have each donated to Trump's inaugural fund. Zuckerberg has done that and more, including visiting Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with the president-elect; naming UFC CEO Dana White, a close Trump ally, to Meta's board; and promoting Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican lobbyist, to chief global affairs officer. (On Tuesday, Kaplan gave an interview on "Fox & Friends" to promote the company's content-moderation changes.)

All of this is meant to quell a once adversarial relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump, who had threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if his social sites interfered with the 2024 election and years ago accused Facebook of being "anti-Trump" and colluding against him (Zuckerberg pushed back against such claims).

As my colleague Peter Kafka wrote of the community notes news: "There's no way to see Zuckerberg's moves as anything other than a straightforward attempt to please Trump and the incoming president's conservative allies, who have often complained that Zuckerberg's properties were biased against them." Even Trump said Tuesday that Meta was "probably" responding to his own past threats against Zuck by pivoting.

The very fact-checkers who will soon be dismissed by Meta began with a program in December 2016, after Facebook faced harsh criticism for its role in spreading misinformation in Trump's first election a month prior. Meta actively worked to downplay political content following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and it suspended Trump from Facebook and Instagram (Meta lifted the suspension in early 2023, saying the public should be able to access what politicians are saying; the move came shortly after Musk allowed Trump back on Twitter). When Meta launched Threads, its own Twitter competitor, in 2023, the Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, said the new app would not encourage breaking news and politics posts. But Musk, who has rebuilt X in his own image to favor conservative and far-right accounts, has found that a social-media site can win when embracing the president. On Tuesday, Meta also said it would reverse course and stop downgrading political content, and start phasing politics back into users' feeds. (A Meta spokesperson referred to past public statements but did not provide new comment for this story.)

Early research on X's community notes shows the move has led to mixed results when it comes to combating misinformation. But changes at X have certainly proved a mammoth victory for Musk, whose wealth has grown by an estimated $200 billion since the election. As he's molded himself more in Uncle Elon's image, Nephew Zuck may also find himself in Trump's favor.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Amazon delayed its full return-to-office plan in some places because of insufficient office space.
• An internal list shows where Amazon employees will work three days a week until space is ready.
• The list has more than 40 locations where the full five-day RTO policy is delayed.

Amazon delayed its five-day return-to-office plan in some locations because of a lack of space, as Business Insider recently reported.

An internal Amazon list viewed by BI shows where employees are being asked to continue following the company's policy requiring only three days a week in the office.

The locations include major tech hubs such as Santa Clara, California; Austin; Beijing; Shenzhen, China; and Bengaluru, India.

Amazon's original guidance required employees to work from the office five days a week beginning January 2. An Amazon spokesperson told BI on Tuesday that buildings were ready for most employees on that day.

The company's real-estate team late last year started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Here are more of the Amazon locations where employees are being told to continue working three days a week in the office: Raleigh, Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, Columbia, Austin, Cupertino, Irvine, Nashville, Boulder, Charlotte, Houston, Jersey City, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, East Palo Alto, Mexico City, Santa Clara, São Paulo, Tampa, Miami, Brooklyn, Columbus, New York, Sacramento, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Amman, Milan, Cairo, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, Istanbul, Beijing, Hyderabad, Shenzhen, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• Spotify added audiobooks last year. Paid subscribers get 15 hours worth each month.
• You can also get them through Amazon or your library — celebrity memoirs are great on audiobooks.
• I'd never cared one way or the other about Al Pacino until I listened to him read his audiobook.

You probably already know that Spotify offers audiobooks with its paid-tier subscriptions. (If not, now you do!)

You might even be confused as to why I'm mentioning this when the audiobook feature launched more than a year ago, in November 2023.

Well, I'm writing this because fairly often over the last year, when I'm talking to people and I mention that I've listened to a book on Spotify, they're surprised — they didn't notice the audiobook feature even if they're a regular Spotify music listener. Or maybe they didn't realize that the books were all included for free with their subscription.

So I am taking it upon myself, during this quiet dead time between the holidays to remind you all:

You can listen to books for free* on Spotify.

(*OK, technically, you get 15 hours a month for free with your subscription. That's typically one or two books. If you go over, you can purchase more books à la carte. For me, 15 hours is fine.)

On Amazon, the largest bookseller, you can go through its Audible subscription service, which charges a monthly fee in exchange for credits you can use to purchase audiobooks. Amazon Music is now doing something similar to Spotify — you get one free book to listen to a month with a paid subscription.

Of course, there are people who are extremely high-volume consumers of audiobooks — and one book a month isn't going to even come close to cutting it for them. On Reddit, some of these power listeners who burn through three to five books in a week discussed their strategies: mixing together Audible credits, the one free Amazon Music books, and Libby (the app for public libraries, which is great because it's unlimited and actually free, but it doesn't have everything and there can be long wait times for new releases or popular titles).

There's also a shady underworld to audiobooks: torrent sites, or YouTube brain rot-style videos where someone plays Minecraft over the audiobook narration for the entire "Lord of the Rings" series.

I don't condone any of that. Point is: With Spotify or Amazon Music, the audiobooks are a nice add-on. They could completely change your reading habits if you're now someone who really loves the feel of paper in your hands or likes to curl up with their Kindle.

If you've never listened to audiobooks, allow me to make the case for a specific genre that they're perfect for: celebrity memoirs, especially if the celebrities themselves read them.

Most recently, I listened to Al Pacino's autobiography, "Sonny Boy: A Memoir." Pacino reads it himself, and it's the perfect delivery — he's got all the strangely YELLED WORDS!!! and quiet asides. At points, I wondered if he was even going off-script, it sounded so natural.

I hadn't previously particularly cared much either way about Al Pacino, but I finished the book absolutely delighted by him and his commitment to leading an artistic life. But I truly think that I wouldn't have found the book as compelling if I had read it on paper — his reading of it added so much.

Celebrity autobiographies often aren't exactly hugely weighty or complicated tomes — you can listen as you would a podcast: while doing the dishes, grocery shopping, driving.

So here's my pitch: If you're already paying for Spotify, Amazon, or any other service, give an audiobook a try. It's usually free, there's nothing to lose — if you think the book stinks, just start a new one!

• The Netflix Korean-language series "Squid Game" returned for season two this week.
• The latest "Doctor Who" Christmas special, "Joy to the World," is streaming on Disney+.
• Comedian Nate Bargatze has a new stand-up special on Netflix.

The year is winding down, but there are still plenty of new streaming releases to catch up on before 2025 arrives.

Netflix's wildly popular Korean-language show "Squid Game" returned three years after season one premiered and became a global phenomenon. Meanwhile "Doctor Who" fans, also known as Whovians, will rejoice in the franchise's annual Christmas special, released on Disney+ this week.

Comedy fans can check out Nate Bargatze's new stand-up special on Netflix. Those who have been keeping up with the ongoing drama surrounding the UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione, can watch a special edition of "20/20" on Hulu.

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

Whovians can tune into the new "Doctor Who" Christmas special, "Doctor Who: Joy to the World."

The "Doctor Who" special, released on Christmas Day, follows the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) as he and a woman named Joy (Nicola Coughlan) meet at the Time Hotel and embark on a time-traveling adventure.

Streaming on: Disney+

Keep the Christmas season vibes going with "Elf."

In Jon Favreau's 2003 movie "Elf," Will Ferrell plays Buddy, a human raised by elves who experiences culture shock when he travels to New York City in search of his biological father.

Streaming on: Hulu, Max

Or another classic, "The Holiday," before it leaves Prime Video in a few days.

The iconic 2006 Nancy Meyers rom-com stars Cameron Diaz as Amanda and Kate Winslet as Iris, two heartbroken women who swap homes during the holidays and end up striking up new romances.

Streaming on: Prime Video

"Squid Game" returned for an explosive second season this week.

In season two of Netflix's breakout hit, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), known as Player 456, returns to the games and tries to end the deadly competition for good. The new season features two major plot twists, a high-stakes finale, and a tease for "Squid Game" season three, coming in 2025.

Streaming on: Netflix

Sports fans can get a behind-the-scenes look at Aaron Rodgers' comeback in "Aaron Rodgers: Enigma."

The three-episode docuseries follows Rodgers as he recovers from an Achilles heel injury, experiments with alternative medicine, and draws controversy for his stance on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Streaming on: Netflix

For sports-meets-true-crime, watch "ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chief's Clothing."

The documentary is based on the real-life story of Xaviar Babudar, a Kansas City Chiefs mega fan who funded his obsession through a series of bank and credit union robberies in 2022. Babudar, who was known as "ChiefsAholic," was charged with 19 counts in 2023.

Streaming on: Prime Video

There's already a primetime special about Luigi Mangione, called "Manhunt: Luigi Mangione and the CEO Murder — A Special Edition of 20/20."

The one-hour special chronicles the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a sidewalk in Manhattan in early December and unpacks the public's fascination with Luigi Mangione, who was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a five-day hunt for the killer.

The primetime special hit Hulu on December 20, after premiering on ABC the night prior. Mangione pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges.

Streaming on: Hulu

The 2022 psychological thriller "Alice, Darling" starring Anna Kendrick arrives on Hulu on Saturday.

Anna Kendrick portrays the titular Alice, a woman who goes on a vacation with two friends amid issues with her psychologically abusive boyfriend.

Streaming on: Hulu

For a romantic drama, check out "Culpa Tuya."

"Culpa Tuya" (which translates to "Your Fault") is the sequel to 2023 movie "Culpa Mia" ("My Fault") and continues the love story between the characters Nick (Gabriel Guevara) and Noah (Nicole Wallace).

The YA films are based on Mercedes Ron's New York Times best-selling book trilogy "Culpables."

Streaming on: Prime Video

For laughs, watch the new comedy special "Your Friend, Nate Bargatze."

After hosting "Saturday Night Live" for the second time and performing at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival earlier this year, stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze released this third comedy special on Netflix.

Streaming on: Netflix

Beyoncé's Christmas Day NFL halftime show, dubbed "Beyoncé Bowl," was released on Friday as a stand-alone special.

After experiencing livestreaming difficulties during the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match, Netflix was prepared for the Beyhive turnout for Beyoncé's halftime performance at the Baltimore Ravens vs. Houston Texans game on Wednesday. The Texas native performed an array of tracks from her country album "Cowboy Carter" and brought out surprise guests including her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, Post Malone, and Shaboozey.

In case you missed her performance or want to watch it over and over again, "Beyoncé Bowl" is now available as a stand-alone special on the streamer.

Streaming on: Netflix

• I love Facebook Marketplace, except for this one problem with how it does geographic searches.
• I often see search results that are inconveniently located because they're across a body of water.
• Make the search functions in travel time, not miles radius!

If there is one thing I absolutely love doing, it's buying cheap crap on the internet. But I feel bad about this; I worry about overconsumption and our planet — not to mention the effects on my own wallet.

Which is why I love Facebook Marketplace. It scratches the itch for mindless consumption in a more sustainable way. I'm simply virtuous — my place in Heaven secured! — for buying a used 8-by-10 rug in good condition for $75 instead of a brand-new one.

I probably spend more time browsing Facebook Marketplace than I spend on lots of other interesting and popular things. My iPhone's screen time tells me that I spent more time on the Facebook app last week than TikTok, Slack, or Bluesky. And you'll have to just believe me when I tell you that I spent a lot of time on those other apps.

However, I have a very specific and very real gripe.

Facebook Marketplace shows me listings for items located across a body of water — even if the items are within my specified distance radius.

Let me explain: For local listings, you can select a distance range of a set number of miles — just a few, or even farther, say 50 miles. Facebook Marketplace will then create a perfect circle of that search radius, giving you as-the-crow-flies distance in every direction.

But in reality, 10 miles to the east isn't always the same as 10 miles to the west. Especially in cases where a river or body of water is involved.

Let's say I'm in downtown Brooklyn. If I search a 4-mile radius, Facebook Marketplace will show me items for sale deeper into Brooklyn, easily accessible by car or subway, and it will also show me results in lower Manhattan (more annoying to drive to) — and worst of all, it will also give some results in New Jersey.

This is by no means a knock on the great Garden State. In fact, I've often observed in my Marketplace searching that New Jersey has some of the most desirable furniture and other items. But it is a massive pain to get from Brooklyn to New Jersey just to pick up a used end table— the tolls alone make it not worth it.

Consider searching around suburban Connecticut, where things are more spread out, and 20 miles of driving isn't unreasonable. However, this creates a big enough search radius that it extends across the Long Island Sound, into the northern tips of Long Island. Do you have any idea how long it takes to drive from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Huntington Station, New York? Long enough to drop dead, that's how long.

This isn't just an East Coast problem, either. In fact, for Meta employees, this should hit close to home. Menlo Park, California — where Meta is based — is located along a body of water. That makes it quite annoying to get to the land on the other side of the bay, either by public transportation or car.

I have a proposed solution here: One option could be that instead of making a perfect circle of a search radius, you could draw your own search shape with your finger. Zillow has a version of this that it uses for its home search.

Another option — and my preference — would be to factor in driving distance or public transit access. It would be great to say, "Show me all the coffee tables within 30 minutes driving distance," instead of a perfect circle on a map.

When I asked a representative for Meta if they viewed the water issue as a problem, they seemed slightly puzzled and asked if I was seeing things that were actually errors — results outside the specified range.

Currently, Meta doesn't really directly profit from these in-person Marketplace transactions — when you show up at someone's home and hand them cash for their stuff. (Meta does take a cut if the monetary transaction is completed on Facebook, typically for shipped items.) It may not be a big profit center for Meta, but it definitely is important.

Marketplace is a cornerstone of Facebook's strategy for young people. Despite its sometimes fuddy-duddy reputation, Facebook is actually growing its Gen Z user base. So, improving Marketplace is important to Facebook's overall health. Many young people tend to live in urban areas near bodies of water (rivers, bays, oceans). No one wants to have to drive over a bridge to buy a couch.

My plea to Mark Zuckerberg is to take a break from the kickboxing and focus in on this important issue. End the Marketplace search that goes across water boundaries!

On a cold and rainy night in November, over 2,000 people trekked to a nondescript arena on Long Island for some Christmas cheer.

They were there for the Great American Family Christmas Festival, an event put on by the cable TV network of the same name. For five weekends, the festival transformed the UBS Arena into a holiday wonderland complete with ice skating, fire pits, igloos, $20 spiked cider, and obviously, Santa.

But the main draw on opening night was an appearance from former "Full House" star and current GAF mainstay Candace Cameron Bure, who was on hand to light the Christmas tree and greet her fans, who paid anywhere from $15 to $249 for the experience.

"It's not about standing in line to get an autograph from a celebrity. We're just there to enhance the family experience," Bure told Business Insider over the phone in December. "It's really a place to come with your family and friends and feel like you're in a little Christmas movie."

She would know. With over 15 holiday movies to her name across Hallmark and GAF and a role as chief creative officer at GAF's parent company Great American Media, Bure has built her second act at the center of the Christmas movie industrial complex. After years of laying the groundwork, business is booming: Variety reported in 2022 that Bure was making around $1 million a year for her exclusive Hallmark deal before she joined ex-Hallmark boss Bill Abbott's relaunch of Great American Family that year for a sum reported to be "nearly double that."

Bure got in on the ground floor of what was once a cottage industry, providing a blueprint for other actors looking to reinvigorate their careers and make some relatively fast money while spreading holiday cheer. Others have followed suit: "Mean Girls" star Lacey Chabert has spent more than a decade building her career as one of Hallmark's — and now Netflix's — leading holiday ladies; erstwhile teen heartthrob Chad Michael Murray likes working on Christmas movies for their relative stability while raising a family; Lindsay Lohan returned to acting with her first major film role in years in the 2022 Netflix Christmas movie "Falling for Christmas" (she followed it up with another one, "Our Little Secret," in 2024).

In an industry that's constantly in flux, the holiday movie's heartwarming tried-and-true formula can be as comforting to actors looking for steady work as it is to audiences watching at home on their couches. Christmas comes every year, after all.

Candace Cameron Bure set the blueprint as one of the original queens of Christmas

Bure's reign as the queen of Christmas started more than a decade after the end of "Full House" with the 2008 Hallmark Christmas movie "Moonlight and Mistletoe." At the time, Bure wasn't thinking about being the queen of anything — she was just grateful for a job.

After taking a self-imposed hiatus from Hollywood to have children and build a family — she called it her "10-year retirement" — holiday movies provided Bure a relatively gentle runway back into the working world.

As far as jobs in Hollywood go, acting in a Christmas movie is a fairly predictable and stable gig: The typical made-for-TV holiday movie has a 15-day shoot that takes place over three weeks. While the days are long, it's still far less of a time commitment than a feature film, which can shoot for several months, or a multi-cam sitcom like "Full House," which had Bure rehearsing an entire week before filming a single 30-minute episode in front of a live audience.

Bure's timing was also auspicious: It was the start of Hallmark's golden era, when Abbott, then the head of Hallmark's parent company Crown Media, would go on to launch the network's genre-defining Countdown to Christmas campaign. By Bure's fourth or fifth Christmas movie, she realized it would be wise to refocus her career around her newfound holiday niche.

"Realizing that the numbers were successful, the viewership's successful, and it was a growing genre was like, 'OK, this is a great little pocket to stay in,'" Bure told BI.

Since then, Bure has starred in dozens more Hallmark movies, including more than 10 Christmas titles, before leaving the network to join Abbott at GAF in 2022, where's she starring in and producing films under her Candy Rock Entertainment banner.

Though Bure wouldn't share numbers with BI, she acknowledged that she's "very, very pleased" with how her pay has grown since her "Moonlight and Mistletoe" days.

"It's 15 years of work in the genre," she said, "and just like anyone's salary and their value, it goes up."

Pay for actors is solid — and there's plenty of opportunity

Even for actors who didn't get in on the ground floor like Bure, a pivot to Christmasland can be a smart career move. The entertainment industry, ever an unstable business, is in a particularly volatile era due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes, which won some benefits and protections for actors and writers but also led to declining production, resulting in fewer jobs and budget cuts.

Yet the market for original holiday movies is only growing. Lisa Hamilton Daly, the executive vice president of programming at Hallmark Media, said in an email statement to BI that 2024 was the company's biggest holiday season yet, with over 40 new movies debuting across its two networks and streaming service. It's a significant increase since Countdown to Christmas officially launched in 2009 with only four movies on the Hallmark Channel.

It's not just Hallmark, either. More networks and streamers are hopping on the holiday bandwagon than ever before. Abbott, the former Hallmark executive who now heads Great American Family, called the rapid growth in the space remarkable. "Everybody's seeing what we were involved with early on and now the appetite for the viewer to experience Christmas in an entertainment way is almost insatiable," he said.

For actors, appearing in a Christmas movie can provide "an element of financial security," said Jennifer Goldhar, the owner of Characters Talent Agency. Goldhar's company is based in Canada, where many Christmas movies are filmed, and many working Canadian actors make them their day-to-day livelihoods. She said a conservative midrange estimate for a holiday movie lead's salary — not a tentpole figure like Bure or Lacey Chabert, who command a lot more — is $150,000. Not exactly a blockbuster star-level payday, but still a solid payout for what's usually only a three-week commitment.

Sarah Ramos, an actor who has starred in Hallmark's "A Kismet Christmas" and "Christmas in Notting Hill," agrees the pay isn't too shabby for 15 days of work: "If you're getting a chunk of change and you're going to have fun, maybe travel somewhere too, that's not a bad deal."

Christmas movie sets are a 'well-oiled machine,' and the mood is usually light

Working in a Christmas wonderland can also do wonders for your mental health. Chad Michael Murray, who most recently starred in Netflix's stripper-hunk Christmas movie "The Merry Gentlemen," told BI that he likes working on holiday movies because there's less risk of encountering heavy subject matter that will bleed over into his personal life.

He recalled his experience shooting the 2016 Western "Outlaws and Angels," after which Murray said it took him a month to emotionally release himself from the character. He doesn't want to go through that again anytime soon.

"At this point in my life where I am, I got three young kids, this is what speaks to me. I love going home and being able to bring light to the situation," Murray said.

Podcaster Danny Pellegrino, who wrote and starred in his first Hallmark movie, 2024's "Deck the Walls," said his experience on set was surprisingly pleasant.

"You hear stories about being on movie sets, and so I was looking around thinking, 'Who's going to be dramatic? Where's the trouble going to be?' But everything was so smooth," Pellegrino said. "Everything is just a well-oiled machine."

Christmas movies have a cheesy reputation, but it probably won't damage yours

Though starring in a Christmas movie will never have the gravitas of a Scorsese movie, it's no longer taboo to say you enjoy holiday movies or want to be in one. Even Anne Hathaway is "desperate" to make a great Christmas movie, calling it her "weird bucket list thing" — and she already crossed "get an Oscar" off that same list.

Goldhar credits major streamers like Netflix entering the game with improving the genre's esteem. "That ups the game a little bit for people, and they see it differently," she said.

Of course, there's still a risk of typecasting where "somebody may seem more of a Hallmark type and so they don't get cast in mainstream television," Goldhar said. But that's less of an issue for already established actors with an extensive body of work — former teen heartthrobs like Murray, or "Beverly Hills 90210" star Jason Priestley, for example.

Ramos, who's best known for starring as Haddie Braverman on the 2010s NBC drama "Parenthood," admitted that when she was first approached for a Hallmark movie, she was hesitant.

"My first instinct was snobby, and I was like, no, I'm not going to do this. This is embarrassing. These aren't real movies, they're TV movies," Ramos said. She stressed over whether creators she wanted to work with would turn their noses up upon hearing she'd been in a Hallmark movie.

"Then I kind of realized, I don't know what good me trying to impress ['The White Lotus' creator] Mike White or whatever quote-unquote legitimate directors is doing for me," she said. "They kind of still weren't hiring me."

In fact, the opposite happened. Christopher Storer, the creator of FX's hit series "The Bear," was one of the people encouraging Ramos to do the Hallmark movie when she put it to a poll vote on her Instagram.

"He was like, 'I really want to learn how to make these,' and was basically like, 'Go for it,'" Ramos recalled.

Then he hired her for a recurring role on "The Bear."

• 2024 was full of great movies.
• Big spectacles like "Wicked" and "Dune: Part Two" captured viewers' and critics' attention.
• Smaller dramas like "Civil War" and "The Substance" also packed a punch and prompted discourse online.

Giant sandworms! Singing witches! Horny tennis players! The best movies of 2024 offered a wide array of cinematic pleasures — and a double dose of Zendaya.

Below are Business Insider's best movies of 2024. Scroll to the end to see entertainment correspondent Jason Guerrasio and senior editor Caralynn Matassa's personal top five movies of the year.

"A Complete Unknown"

Almost twenty years after director James Mangold gave us the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line," he's returned to the space with a look at Bob Dylan's transition from acoustic to electric.

As much as the music will dazzle Dylan fans, it's the acting that's the highlight. Timothée Chalamet delivers one of the best performances burgeoning career, getting Dylan's voice and mannerisms down perfectly. — Jason Guerrasio

"A Different Man"

Sebastian Stan gives one of two standout performances this year in "A Different Man." The surreal, twisty psychological thriller follows Stan as Edward, an introverted, struggling actor with neurofibromatosis (a disorder causing facial differences) who is cured through an experimental procedure. Reinventing himself as "Guy" doesn't quite give him the dream life he'd hoped for, though.

The darkly comic film from writer-director Aaron Schimberg also features great supporting performances from Renate Reinsve (who had her breakthrough in 2021's "The Worst Person in the World") and Adam Pearson as Oswald, a confident and charismatic man who also has neurofibromatosis. — Caralynn Matassa

"Alien: Romulus"

For this latest trek back into the sci-fi world of "Alien," director Fede Álvarez takes full advantage of the IP by weaving a story that touches on the original movie and the world of "Prometheus." The result is a thrill ride that will satisfy fans of the franchise and scare the hell out of the newbies who have never seen an "Alien" movie. — JG

"Anora"

Sean Baker made a name for himself as one of the most acclaimed independent filmmakers, and for good reason. He excels at slice-of-life movies (2017's "The Florida Project" and 2021's criminally underrated "Red Rocket") that spotlight marginalized communities.

His latest, "Anora," centers on the titular sex worker played by "Scream 5" standout Mikey Madison. The film landed the Palme d'Or, the Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, thanks to Madison's subtly powerful performance and Baker's propulsive script. — CM

"The Apprentice"

It shouldn't come as a shock that the most polarizing movie of the year was one about Donald Trump's rise to power as a New York City real estate tycoon.

But take away your political views and opinions on Trump (which, I know, is hard), and this movie from director Ali Abbasi is a fascinating exploration of how those with power and influence move through the world.

And then there are the performances by Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as Trump's fixer and mentor Roy Cohn, both of which should be recognized during award season. — JG

"Babygirl"

Nicole Kidman gives one of the best and boldest performances of her decadeslong career in "Babygirl." The erotic thriller, written and directed by "Bodies Bodies Bodies" filmmaker Halina Reijn, puts the female gaze on a distinctly male, often-problematic genre, tackling female sexuality, gender, and power dynamics as Kidman's Romy Mathis, a high-powered CEO, pursues a secret affair with her intern (Harris Dickinson). — CM

"Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"

I wasn't expecting a "Beverly Hills Cop" sequel made on Netflix to give me some of the biggest laugh-out-loud moments this year, but that's exactly what happened.

Director Mark Molloy certainly understood the assignment: lean in to what made the first two movies so beloved (let's not talk about the third one).

Focusing on Eddie Murphy's jokes, big action sequences, and that memorable soundtrack, the fourth movie in the franchise became one of the surprise delights at the movies this year. — JG

"The Brutalist"

One of the boldest epics made in some time, this three-and-a-half-hour drama shot on VistaVision is an exquisite exploration of one immigrant's drive for the American Dream in post-World War II America.

Directed and co-written by Brady Corbet ("Vox Lux"), "The Brutalist" follows fictional character László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jew who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the US in the late 1940s. Over three decades, Tóth, a talented architect, struggles to make a living and get his wife (Felicity Jones) to the States. Then a wealthy man (Guy Pearce) changes his life.

With masterful production design, photography, score, and performances, this is a movie that will stay with you long after you've seen it. — JG

“Challengers”

Zendaya dazzles in Luca Guadagnino's sporty, steamy drama.

As a former tennis great thrust into a love triangle with two other players, her now-husband Art (Mike Faist) and her ex-boyfriend Patrick (Josh O'Connor), Zendaya delivers one of the most layered performances of her career as she navigates love, lust, and mind games. — JG

“Civil War”

Alex Garland's latest showcases a United States that has been ravaged by civil unrest.

Kirsten Dunst is magnificent as a hardened war journalist in an existential crisis who travels from New York City to Washington, D.C. to cover the story. The war scenes are brutal and devastating, but that's the point. — JG

"Conclave"

Ralph Fiennes leads a drama filled with Shakespearian-level mystery, backstabbing, and intrigue as the Cardinal-Dean in charge of the papal conclave. In the process, he finds himself investigating scandals and secrets as the choices narrow for who will become the next pope.

Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini are also outstanding in supporting roles. — JG

"Deadpool & Wolverine"

After a bevy of delays that included Fox being bought by Disney, COVID, and the strikes by the writers and actors in Hollywood, we finally got the third "Deadpool" movie. And it was worth the wait.

From the brawls with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the endless Disney IP jokes, and a fight with countless Deadpools, the movie is the rare payoff for fans of superhero movies in the post-"Endgame" era of the MCU. — JG

“Dune: Part Two”

Denis Villeneuve's continuation of his adaptation of Frank Herbert's beloved sci-fi novel takes us back to Arrakis, where Paul (Timothée Chalamet) goes from the hunted to the hunter as he teams with the Fremen to fight his enemies and becomes a Messiah in the process.

Like the first movie, the visuals are stunning, but the sequel also features more Zendaya as Paul's love interest, heightening the stakes by the end. — JG

"The Fall Guy"

Though "The Fall Guy" underperformed at the box office, David Leitch's love letter to stunt performers is one of the most enjoyable movie-watching experiences of the year.

A big reason for that is the performances from Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, whose chemistry as they navigate an on-and-off relationship while coping with movie-making madness is off the charts. — JG

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"

George Miller's latest trek into the Wasteland may not be as jaw-dropping as his magnum opus "Mad Max: Fury Road," but the auteur of action still dazzles with breathtaking shots of desolate sandy vistas and ultra-violent car chases.

The major highlight is Anya Taylor-Joy as Imperator Furiosa (originally played by Charlize Theron in "Fury Road"). With very little dialogue, Taylor-Joy must use facial expressions and a multitude of stunts to convey her character's origin story and complex emotional arc. It's well worth the ride. — JG

"Gladiator II"

Twenty-four years after the Oscar-winning original, Ridley Scott returns to the Coliseum with a new star (Paul Mescal) and bigger fights. The result is an enjoyable mix of blockbuster thrills and nostalgic callbacks to the first movie.

But what sets "Gladiator II" apart is Denzel Washington, whose devilish, scenery-chewing performance as a gladiator owner with plans of getting his hooks into the Roman Senate elevates the movie whenever he's on the screen. — JG

“The Greatest Night in Pop”

The song "We Are The World" brought together the greatest musicians in pop and rock, but the story of how it came together makes the song even more remarkable.

This Netflix documentary from Bao Nguyen features never-before-seen footage and candid interviews recounting a single evening in Los Angeles that would become a defining moment for pop culture in the 1980s.

The documentary is replete with fascinating details about how the song and its ensuing celebrity spectacle came to be. From seeing how Michael Jackson created the hook to watching musicians like Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis give it their all recording long into the night, "The Greatest Night in Pop" is a must-see for anyone who lived through or loved the '80s music scene. — JG

"Hard Truths"

On a surface level, Pansy Deacon, the lead character of "Hard Truths," isn't someone you'd root for. She's a deeply depressed, angry middle-aged British woman who takes her fury out on anyone and everyone around her, from fellow shoppers at the supermarket to her own browbeaten husband and adult son.

The film starts out almost comically, as Pansy finds every imaginable reason to rant and rave at everything from babies with pockets (what do babies need pockets for anyway?) to the salesperson attempting to help her buy a couch. Marianne Jean-Baptiste infuses Pansy with so much heart and deep-seated pain that you can't help but feel for her, even as you're horrified by her behavior.

Writer-director Mike Leigh's unique filmmaking process (he and his cast start off without a script and collaboratively develop the characters) results in one of the most stunning performances of the year. — CM

"Incoming"

Hollywood is still trying to perfect this generation's high school movie. "Incoming" gets pretty close.

Following a group of friends who are the only freshmen invited to a party thrown by a senior, this raunchy comedy uses staples from the high school genre and mixes them with today's culture to concoct a hilarious movie. — JG

"Inside Out 2"

After a lot of confusion and frustration within the walls of Pixar over its COVID-era release strategy, the beloved animation house is having a much-deserved big-screen resurgence thanks to "Inside Out 2."

In the sequel to the Oscar-winning 2015 original, we catch up with Riley's key emotions like Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) right when Riley hits puberty. And just like that, new emotions like Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) show up wanting to be in control of Riley's feelings.

The movie is a funny and emotionally charged journey that highlights those impressionable years when we can no longer lean on our parents to make the right choices; it's now on us. — JG

"Longlegs"

Beyond having the most brilliant marketing campaign of the year, "Longlegs" is also genuinely freaky.

Osgood Perkins channels "Silence of the Lambs," mixed with devil worship and possessed dolls for good measure, for a crazy genre mashup: a police procedural horror movie. Maika Monroe gives an understated performance as traumatized FBI agent Lee Harker, who's investigating a series of murder-suicides that all point back to one mysterious figure: Longlegs.

The eventual reveal of what's going on — and the physical reveal of Nicolas Cage's Longlegs, a noteworthy entry in the actor's list of batshit roles — is disturbing and memorable. — CM

"The Last Showgirl"

Pamela Anderson gives a career best performance as an aging Las Vegas showgirl who must come to terms with losing her job when her revue abruptly closes.

Anderson holds nothing back as she plays a character who still is intoxicated by the glitz and glamour of the strip of yesteryear but comes to the harsh realization that show business has nothing left for a woman her age.

Ironically, after decades in the limelight, this is the role that is finally getting Anderson the recognition for her acting that she deserves. — JG

"Moana 2"

Originally planned as a TV series, Disney made the right move by turning this instead into a feature-length sequel to the beloved 2016 original.

This time, Moana (Auli'i Cravalho) must defeat an evil God who controls an island so that all islands across the sea can be reconnected.

The higher stakes, new characters, and catchy songs make the movie a worthwhile continuation of a story audiences couldn't wait to return to. — JG

"Nickel Boys"

Some viewers criticized RaMell Ross's bold decision to shoot "Nickel Boys," an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's 2019 novel, in a first-person point-of-view, where we see through the eyes of the character speaking. To that, I politely say: You're wrong, sorry.

The immersive filming style works perfectly to put the audience right in the mix as Elwood and Turner, two Black boys sent to a reform school called the Nickel Academy (based on an actual school in Florida), struggle to survive amid the racist institution's many often deadly abuses.

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson give a pair of breakout performances as Elwood and Turner, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is devastating as Hattie, Elwood's devoted grandmother. It's a tough watch, but a worthy one. — CM

"Nosferatu"

Looking back on the work of Robert Eggers, his obsession with telling stories set long ago has led up to this: an adaptation of the iconic gothic vampire tale.

With exquisite production design, makeup, and effects to transform Bill Skarsgård into the creature of the night, and a tour-de-force performance by Lily-Rose Depp as a woman overcome by a spell that fills her with desire and fear, this is Eggers' masterwork. — JG

"Queer"

Yep, both of Luca Guadagnino's 2024 releases made this list. "Queer" is a very different film from "Challengers" in many ways, but both cement Guadagnino as a filmmaker with an innate understanding of desire and a master at evoking it onscreen.

Based on William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella, the movie follows William Lee, a gay American expat living in 1950s Mexico City, who becomes obsessively infatuated with the much younger Eugene Allerton. Daniel Craig's no-holds-barred performance as Lee, a stand-in for Burroughs himself, establishes him as one of the most talented and versatile working actors today. It's also gorgeously shot, courtesy of Guadagnino's go-to cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. — CM

"Rebel Ridge"

There's always one Netflix movie that comes out of the blue every year and grabs attention. This year, it was "Rebel Ridge."

Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier ("Blue Ruin"), this impressive action movie gives a jolt to the genre with its gritty take. It's also a showcase for Aaron Pierre, who is on his way to big-screen stardom (he also voiced the title character in Disney's end-of-year release, "Mufasa.") — JG

"Strange Darling"

JT Mollner's thriller "Strange Darling" flew under the radar this year, but boy, is it a trip.

The story is told in a destabilizing nonlinear format; it's a clever narrative trick to make you think the movie is something it's not. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner are knockouts as the two leads, keeping viewers transfixed and with our hearts in our throats. It's also beautifully shot by Giovanni Ribisi (yes, the actor) in his feature debut as a cinematographer. — CM

"The Substance"

"The Substance" is not for the faint of heart. French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat established herself as a genius of phantasmagoria with her debut feature, 2017's "Revenge," but she takes things up several notches in her follow-up.

The satirical feminist body-horror movie is completely insane, in the best way. It's a disgusting, disturbing, and extremely real fable of female self-hatred that goes off the rails (complimentary) like few movies I've seen before.

Demi Moore grounds it all as Elisabeth Sparkle, a washed-up middle-aged celebrity who's driven to try the mysterious drug dubbed The Substance after being fired from her aerobics show on her 50th birthday. Margaret Qualley is positively demonic as Elisabeth's younger and more perfect self Sue, the product of that black market serum fated to be Elisabeth's downfall. — CM

"Twisters"

This summer, we learned that if you mix Glen Powell and tornadoes, you've got yourself a hit.

This sequel to the 1996 hit "Twister" features more GGI-fueled storms and chemistry so hot between Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones that audiences were bummed they didn't kiss at the end — everything you need from a hit summer blockbuster. — JG

"Wicked"

I was prepared to be a hater heading into "Wicked." After all, how could someone successfully adapt one of the most successful Broadway musicals of all time? After being blown away by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande's performances, I'll gladly admit I was wrong.

As the movie's seemingly endless press tour has demonstrated, Erivo and Grande have incredible chemistry as Elphaba and Glinda, two witches who were once best friends before their paths diverged. Erivo is devastating as the lost, deeply lonely but resolute Elphaba, while Grande imbues so many layers into her performance as Glinda. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience with a showstopping finale, even if it's not the most technically impressive film on this list. — CM

"The Wild Robot"

Based on Peter Brown's popular books, "The Wild Robot" weaves one of the most emotional yarns of the year. The movie tells the story of Roz (Lupita Nyong'o), a robot who washes up on a deserted island and learns the ways of the wildlife that inhabits it, leading to her becoming the guardian of an orphaned gosling.

Beautiful to look at, with animation that has a watercolor quality, it's the uplifting story that elevates this movie from an impressive fantasy tale to a work that will be cherished by audiences for years to come. — JG

Jason's top five of 2024

1. "The Wild Robot"
2. "The Apprentice"
3. "The Brutalist"
4. "The Substance"
5. "Conclave"

Caralynn's top 5 of 2024

1. "The Substance"
2. "Hard Truths"
3. "Queer"
4. "Anora"
5. "Nickel Boys"

• Google on Friday proposed possible remedies to resolve an antitrust case over its search business.
• Last month, the DOJ suggested that the judge force Google to sell its Chrome browser.
• Judge Amit Mehta is expected to rule on the final remedies by August 2025.

Google on Friday proposed limitations to its search partnerships as a potential remedy to resolve antitrust violations in its search business.

The proposal would allow Google to continue partnering with third-party companies like Apple in revenue-sharing deals that make Google the default search engine on their devices, unlike the Justice Department's proposal. However, Google's proposal would make the deals non-exclusive, the company said in its filing.

"We don't propose these changes lightly," Google said in a blog post about the proposal. "They would come at a cost to our partners by regulating how they must go about picking the best search engine for their customers. And they would impose burdensome restrictions and oversight over contracts that have reduced prices for devices and supported innovation in rival browsers, both of which have been good for consumers."

Last month, the Justice Department and a group of states asked Judge Amit Mehta to force Google to sell its Chrome browser to resolve the case. They also asked that Google be stopped from entering default search agreements with Apple and other companies and that Google should open its search engine results to competitors.

Industry experts previously told Business Insider that selling Chrome off would open up the browser market and would likely be cheered on by search rivals and advertisers, though it remains unclear how a possible Chrome spinoff might work.

Both sides will present arguments for their proposals at a hearing scheduled for April. The judge is expected to rule on the final remedies by August.

Kent Walker, Google's president of global affairs, previously said the company intends to appeal the judge's ruling, potentially delaying a final decision by several years.

Representatives for the Justice Department's antitrust division did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Business Insider's creative team covered an array of projects this year. We brought our stories to life by incorporating animations, crafting bespoke multimedia experiences for our biggest stories, producing and commissioning hundreds of illustrations, and working with photographers around the globe.

Our visuals captured a wide range of topics, from looking into illegal lockouts in major US cities to Ozempic Scams.

We hired nearly 250 talented freelancers who helped bring our most compelling stories to life, producing over 1,500 pieces of custom art that enhanced our storytelling.

Here are some of our favorite visual creations from 2024.

For God, for country, for rain

Photos by Jett Lara

Why we don't exercise

Illustration by Timo Lenzen

Locked out

Illustration by Andrei Cojocaru, Design and Development by Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Randy Yeip, and Annie Fu, Photos by Bridget Bennett, Callaghan O'Hare, Alyssa Pointer, Abel Uribe

The risky allure of WiFi Money

Illustrations by Brandon Celi

Lunar New Year traditions through the lens of three photographers

Photos by Caroline Xia, Ramona Jingru Wang, and Sam Lee

The plight of big sisters

Illustration by Gracia Lam

Albums are too damn long

Illustration by Tyler Le

Want to make money as a pop star? Dream on.

Illustrations by Chris Burnett

The American dream is shrinking

Illustration by Javier Jaén

America is facing a 'fringe friend' crisis

Illustration by Seba Cestaro

'Civilizations rise and fall'

Illustration by Hokyoung Kim

Gen Z's new status symbol

Illustration by Pablo Declan

Joseph Stiglitz on why America's appetite for Trump endures

Photos by Dina Litovsky

The Big Dumb Economic Lie of 2024

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Scared your partner is cheating? Strangers on the internet are here to help — for a fee

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath

New York City's new Gilded Age

Illustration by Carl Godfrey

The pot farm massacre

Photos by Mike Simmons

From ALICEs to DINKs

Illustrations by Jimmy Simpson

The best albums of 2024

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

A founding father of Utah's VC industry is stepping back as accusations of sexual harassment surface

Illustration by Deena So'Oteh

The death of the nuclear family

Illustration by Mark Harris

The online minefield of Ozempic knock-offs

Illustration by Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

To the manor shorn

Photos by Astrid Landon

Through the roof

Illustration by Alex Castro

The mismeasure of America

Illustration by Chris Gash

The rise of the job-search bots

Illustrations by Hugo Herrera

The world's meanest app

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez

It's gearing up to be a hot travel debt summer for Gen Z and millennials

Illustration by Rebecca Zisser

Hot girls love book clubs

Illustration by Natalia Agatte

What an extra $500 to $1,000 a month did for 8 families

Design and Development by Kim Nguyen, Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Photos by Jovelle Tamayo, Tim Evans, Helynn Ospina, Andre Chung, Brittany Greeson, Libby March

'No CCP in USA!'

Illustrations by Matt Harrison Clough

Drake Bell knows life is not a Disney movie

Photos by Ana Topoleanu

AI Power List 2024

Illustration by Karan Singh

Soup to nuts

Illustrations by Tyler Le

The professors turned porn stars

Photos by Simone Lueck

Inside the Billionaire Bunker

Illustration by Saratta Chuengsatiansup

The poisoned chalice of restaurant popularity

Illustration by Valentin Tkach

Gen Z's fading dream

Illustration by Abanti Chowdhury

China's massive stimulus misfire

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Rob McElhenney is betting on himself

Photos by Sheryl Nields

The hidden costs of traveling while gay

Illustration by Derek Abella

The cursed inheritance

Illustrations by Nate Sweitzer

Steam loops vs. doom loops

Illustration by Sam Green

This Ramadan, queer and transgender Muslims made their own community

Photos by Ramie Ahmed

The fitness fad graveyard

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• Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop has undergone two rounds of layoffs in recent months.
• The company has said it's pivoting to focus on beauty, fashion, and food.
• The changes highlight Goop's challenges to build a sustainable business beyond its famous founder.

Gwyneth Paltrow took a measured tone earlier this year when she discussed Goop, her newsletter turned e-commerce company, onstage at a Forbes event. She didn't brag about the nine figures the brand had raised or its latest product release. Instead, she said she was proud Goop was still in business.

"Some years we're down, then we're back up," she said. "I'm proud that we're still alive and kicking."

That might seem surprising for a company that was valued at $433 million in 2020 and was a trailblazer for what a celebrity brand could be. But it's reflective of a company that — despite its name recognition and pop-culture footprint — has undergone several painful pivots in recent years.

In September, Goop laid off nearly 20% of its staff, including its chief technology officer and VP of content. A few weeks later, it laid off about 6% of the remaining employees.

Goop's recent cuts come as the company shifts focus to its beauty, fashion, and food businesses. It's the latest in a series of strategy changes over the last several years.

Changes in focus are normal for a startup. Still, after 16 years of existence, the company isn't profitable and continues to struggle to build a firm foundation apart from Paltrow.

The company's once-buzzy supplement regimens generated $100,000 in sales on the day they launched in 2017. Now, only one of the four initial regimens is still offered online, and for a discount. A Goop spokesperson told Business Insider that any new supplements it launched would be part of its beauty business.

Julia Hunter, a Goop board member and the former CEO of Jenni Kayne, addressed some of the company's struggles in an interview with Puck, published after BI sent Goop a series of questions for this story.

"The company is doing very well from a revenue perspective, but
operating expenses have continued to grow," Hunter said. "I know that it's unpopular to let people go, but they hired a lot of people that they probably shouldn't have."

On the content side, Goop has recently cut many editorial positions, including the VP of content, head beauty editor, and several other editors. A review of Goop's website shows few new articles, and its book imprint hasn't published a new release in over a year. The magazine ran two issues before folding, and while there were reports that Goop's Netflix series, "The Goop Lab," was renewed, it hasn't materialized.

Paltrow's importance to the brand is evident in product launches, two former Goop employees told BI. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation; their identities are known to BI.

When she's part of a launch — what is called in Goop parlance an "A launch" — the performance of the advertising on social media "quadruples," one of the former employees said. Performance often drops off once she's no longer involved, this person added.

Last month, a video featuring Paltrow that promoted Goop's newest release, a retinol serum, drew 1,100 likes on Instagram. The next day, a second post about the serum — which didn't include Paltrow — got fewer than 275 likes.

"Brands need to find viable business models, rather than simply a celebrity face," Simeon Siegel, an analyst at BMO Capital, said of A-list entrepreneurs.

The celebrity brands that have grown to be the largest — like Kim Kardashian's Skims, Rihanna's Fenty, and Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty — have moved beyond their founder's image. Skims, which is valued at $4 billion, has made using models from popular culture a core part of its marketing strategy, for instance.

From newsletter to e-commerce shop: over a decade of pivoting

Goop's founding story has become lore to a certain type of aspirant. In 2008, Paltrow was sitting in the kitchen of the London house she shared with her then-husband, Chris Martin, when she decided to pen a newsletter for "family, friends, and friends of friends." The issue featured a recipe for banana muffins and photos shot on Paltrow's Blackberry.

"It was one of the first of its kind to leverage a curated lifestyle of a celebrity," Stacy Jones, the CEO of branding agency Hollywood Branded, told BI. "It is aligned to her own personal brand in a very unique way that hadn't been done to that extent before."

Before long, Paltrow was earning small checks from advertisers and began dreaming of a media empire.

Paltrow hired media veterans from Meredith and Condé Nast to run the publication. There was a lifestyle website with travel guides and interviews on alternative medicine. In 2015, Paltrow launched a publishing imprint, Goop Press, and in 2017, a magazine in partnership with Condé Nast. Conferences promised to be the next big thing for the brand when the In Goop Health Summit series kicked off in 2017, offering (mainly) women the promise of looking and feeling like Paltrow for the four-figure ticket price. In 2020, as streaming entered its golden age, she scored a deal with Netflix.

But Goop suffered in recent years amid a broader digital media downturn.

"Advertising business as a big part of revenue started to decline, and that was probably the biggest shift to revenue of the last several years," Hunter told Puck, adding that going forward, editorial would be "integrated with social media."

Paltrow still posts regular episodes of the Goop podcast, and after a few years off due to the pandemic, the In Goop Health Summit returned last year.

That said, Goop's media projects appear to have been largely shut down, as many of the staffers behind them were affected by the recent cuts.

As Goop's media initiatives fell short, its e-commerce ambitions — or what the company dubbed "contextual commerce" — took center stage.

The core of its e-commerce business has ebbed and flowed over the years. First, it pushed skincare, then fashion, then wellness.

Now, it's back to beauty and fashion.

"It's a lot of testing" of different verticals, the second former employee said.

In the latest restructuring, the hope of a revitalization

In May, Goop brought in outside consultants, led by Hunter, to help streamline the organization and reduce payroll.

Then, in September, Goop announced its latest pivot, saying it would double down on fashion, beauty, and food. These aren't new initiatives for Goop, but the company has touted their recent growth.

G. Label, the company's in-house clothing line, launched in 2016. The company told BI that the brand's sales are up 45% this year compared to the same period last year, but declined to share its revenue numbers.

The two former employees said they felt G. Label had historically underperformed partly because it was initially designed to fit Paltrow, who, at a slender 5-foot-nine-inches tall, has a much different figure than the average American woman.

"We were just putting together whatever Gwyneth felt like wearing," the first former employee said. They added that the company revised the line in the last year using a new, standard-fit model, which they said had helped its sales.

The Goop spokesperson said a new designer had been hired for G. Label in the last year, who revamped the line.

Goop's first foray into beauty was also in 2016.

A few of the products have repeat customers — the neck peptide serum is a top seller — but there isn't a breakthrough hero product.

Some recent efforts to expand the beauty offerings haven't taken off. Last year, the company launched Good Clean Goop, a moderately priced line, in Target and Amazon. Since then, the company has discounted a number of the brand's products, including the Daily Juice Cleanser and Aging Serum. Puck reported in June that Good Clean Goop was in the bottom 15% of beauty brands at Target. The brand has not posted on social media in more than a month. The two former employees said Goop's contract with Target ends at the beginning of next year.

Then there's Goop Kitchen, the "food" piece, which is not part of the core company. The Goop spokesperson said Goop Kitchen is set up as a joint venture and called it a "separate commercial entity." They declined to share what ownership stake Goop has, if any.

Goop has publicly touted growth statistics — like a 25% sales increase for Goop Beauty and a 45% increase for G. Label. The former employees said these figures were driven in part by an influx of paid ad spend.

The Goop spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company is profitable. Hunter told Puck it wasn't.

Whether Goop's latest efforts to boost revenue and cut back on staff are enough to turn the company around remains to be seen. Paltrow, for her part, has hinted that she wants Goop to thrive without her.

"I don't think I can have this job forever," she told The New York Times last year. "I think it would be nice to return my investors' money, and I really want to do that. That's important to me."

Many musicians struggled during the pandemic. Lil Wayne wasn't one of them. He sold master recordings from his record label's artists for more than $100 million. He was pardoned for felony gun possession in a last-minute action by then-President Donald Trump. He purchased a $15.4 million mansion in the mountains of Los Angeles.

And, as a Business Insider investigation found, he received an $8.9 million grant from a little-known pandemic-relief program that he used to cover more than two years' worth of spending on luxury hotel stays, designer clothes, and travel to and from nightclub appearances around the country.

The rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Carter Jr., spent more than $1.3 million from the grant on private-jet flights and over $460,000 on clothes and accessories, many of them from high-end brands like Gucci and Balenciaga. He billed taxpayers more than $175,000 for expenses related to a music festival promoting his marijuana brand, GKUA, including clothing for artists associated with his record label.

He also used grant money to cover nearly $15,000 worth of flights and luxury hotel rooms for women whose connection to Lil Wayne's touring operation was unclear, including a waitress at a Hooters-type restaurant and a porn actress.

On New Year's Eve 2021, he was scheduled to perform at a concert in Coachella, California.

But shortly before his set was scheduled to start, a concert employee announced that the rapper would be unable to perform "because of the wind and the flights." The crowd booed. (Wind gusts of 20 to 30 mph were reported in Southern California that night, but data from Flightradar24 indicates four other private jets flew the exact route Lil Wayne was scheduled to fly.)

Instead, posts on Instagram suggest he partied that night at a club on Sunset Boulevard with the rapper 2 Chainz.

For expenses related to the concert he never performed, Lil Wayne billed taxpayers nearly $88,000.

Lil Wayne's publicists didn't respond to numerous requests for comment on detailed questions. Reached by text, Lil Wayne made a sexually explicit overture to a reporter and did not respond to questions.

'An abuse of federal resources'

The money came from a program called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. Signed into law by Trump in 2020 and championed by lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Schumer, it was established as a lifeline for struggling independent venues and arts groups during the pandemic.

But pop stars used the program as a piggy bank to keep the party going, reporting by Business Insider shows.

The stars' spending took place against a backdrop of massive pandemic-relief fraud. The Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans gave out as much as $200 billion in suspected false claims, losses that combined with false unemployment-benefit claims amount to what the FBI has called the largest fraud in history. Compared with those better-known programs, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant had relatively strict eligibility requirements.

Still, accounting firms and money managers soon realized their stadium-filling musician clients might be eligible for grant money via their loan-out companies — corporate entities used to handle the business of touring. Grants awarded to clients of one high-powered entertainment-business-management firm, NKSFB, totaled at least $207 million, BI previously reported. NKSFB itself collected more than $7 million by helping its clients obtain the grants.

NKSFB's managing partner, Mickey Segal, didn't respond to requests for comment. The firm's lawyer Bryan Freedman said NKSFB doesn't comment on its clients' finances.

Grantees received up to $10 million that they could spend on certain "ordinary and necessary" expenses for their entertainment businesses. They had to make a good-faith statement to the Small Business Administration, which oversaw the program, that the grant was necessary to support the loan-out company's "ongoing operations" and show that the company's revenue had fallen by at least 25% between one quarter of 2019 and the same quarter of 2020.

In a statement, the SBA said it followed the law. But the law directed the SBA to examine revenue, not assets. Musicians with huge bank accounts and multiple mansions were still eligible for the awards as long as their loan-out company's revenue had declined.

Thousands of pages of accounting documents reviewed by Business Insider reveal, for the first time, how some wealthy musicians — including Chris Brown, the DJ Marshmello, and members of Alice in Chains — spent grants they received through the program.

The documents include detailed records explaining how celebrity musicians spent their grants, as well as correspondence between their accountants and the SBA. Business Insider has verified the authenticity of the documents.

They reveal how artists directed millions in taxpayer funds not toward touring crew members, but instead toward their own bank accounts, luxury purchases, and entertainment expenses — often while sitting on substantial wealth from other business ventures.

One top government-accountability expert said some of the spending Business Insider identified was questionable — but stopped short of saying it was fraudulent.

"At a minimum, it smells," said David Walker, a former comptroller general of the United States. "Whether it's legal or not is up to a lawyer or ultimately to a court. But it sure smells."

The SBA said it "implemented industry-leading fraud controls."

Sen. Gary Peters, the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said celebrity musicians' use of Shuttered Venue grants was "an abuse of federal resources." Business Insider's findings, he added, demonstrate "the need for continued oversight of pandemic-relief programs."

Pandemic relief was intended to help businesses and workers in need, the senator said — "not super wealthy celebrities."

An $80,000 birthday party

Lil Wayne wasn't the only one to engage in questionable grant spending. Chris Brown spent his grant on a big paycheck — and a big party. Of the $10 million grant Brown's company CBE Touring received, $5.1 million went to Brown personally. He also billed taxpayers nearly $80,000 for his 33rd birthday party.

The blowout, held in a luxe Los Angeles event space, featured a $3,650 LED dance floor and "atmosphere models" — nude women in body paint — who cost $2,100, according to expense reports and a blog post by the party planner. The bill included more than $29,000 for hookahs, bottle service, "nitrogen ice cream," and damages involving burn holes to rented couches.

While the grant was meant to support live entertainment, Brown also charged $24,000 to the grant for the cost of driving his tour bus from the US to Tulum, Mexico, and back in fall 2020 during a monthlong stay for him and his entourage in the resort town, where he did not perform. He spent several days in Tulum filming a video with Jack Harlow for a joint track, but it's not clear if the rest of the trip was for business or pleasure. And more than $179,000 of the grant went toward a celebrity basketball tournament broadcast on YouTube, including a $20,000 payment to the Indianapolis Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox, who played on Brown's basketball team.

Brown, his attorneys, and managers did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for Harlow and Alie-Cox also didn't respond to requests for comment.

Others also paid themselves, taking advantage of an SVOG spending category that Business Insider drew attention to last year: "owner compensation."

The SBA's guidance said artists could use grants paid to their loan-out company to pay themselves as long as the check was no bigger than it was in 2019.

Marshmello, whose real name is Christopher Comstock, received a $9.9 million grant. More than a year later, when the SBA asked for proof of where it went, his business manager Steven Macauley, of NKSFB, responded by saying all the money went into Comstock's pocket.

"Because the beneficiary received 2019 Officer Draws/Salary from 365 Touring International, Inc. in excess of the SVOG Grant Award, we therefore, expensed the entire Grant balance to Payroll," Macauley wrote in an April 2023 letter seen by Business Insider.

In other words, because Comstock made more than $9.9 million from touring in 2019, he was able to award himself the entire grant. In doing so, Comstock paid himself more than any other musician who received grant money.

Comstock's publicists and his manager didn't reply to requests for comment, nor did Macauley.

Artists often paid themselves far more than they paid anyone else involved in putting on their live shows.

Steve Aoki's loan-out company, DJ Kid Millionaire Touring, used $2.4 million in grant money on payroll costs, of which $1.9 million was officer pay. Aoki is the company's only officer. Aoki's publicists didn't respond to requests for comment.

Three of the four members of the rock band Shinedown split at least $2.5 million of their $8.3 million grant. On top of those distributions, Shinedown's four members paid themselves more than $100,000 each out of the roughly $1.2 million of the grant that was allocated to payroll.

The band's 15 touring-production workers, meanwhile, received a combined $650,000 of the grant money — less than a single member of the band got. Publicists for the band didn't respond to requests for comment.

Records seen by BI show that a good chunk of the $7.7 million grant to Sremm Touring, the loan-out company for the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, was paid to the rappers Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee, whose real names are Aaquil Brown and Khalif Brown. The duo's manager, lawyer, and publicists didn't respond to requests for comment.

On March 23, 2022, records show, the Alice in Chains singer and guitarist Jerry Cantrell took in $1.4 million as an "SVOG distribution." The band's drummer, Sean Kinney, received the same amount, and its bassist, Mike Inez, booked half that sum, about $682,000.

In all, $3.4 million of the $4.1 million the grant allotted for payroll went to the three musicians at the top.

Like other grant applicants, AIC Entertainment — the three band members' touring business — had to tell the government only that the money was "necessary." But the month before they took their grant payments, the band members recorded about $48 million in income from selling the copyrights on their catalog. They made hundreds of thousands of dollars more from merchandise sales and other profit distributions in 2022.

The band spent some money to pay its staff. It paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sound-equipment-rental firms, videographers, and managers. But the precarious nature of working in the live-entertainment business didn't change for some of its employees. Scott Dachroeden, a guitar tech and tour photographer who had worked with the band for years, received a cancer diagnosis in late 2022. The band, which records show did not spend grant money on benefits like health insurance, circulated a GoFundMe page on Twitter.

"He has no health insurance and now cannot work to pay his bills," the page said. The band's lead singer said on Facebook that Alice in Chains helped out behind the scenes, but a person familiar with the situation said that Dachroeden didn't get much, if any, money from the band during the pandemic and that after his diagnosis, the band connected Dachroeden with a charity that helps with medical bills. Dachroeden died soon after his diagnosis.

Alice in Chain's publicists and manager didn't respond to requests for comment.

Supporting 'middle-class people'

The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program was pitched to Americans as a way to ensure that arts groups would still exist after the pandemic.

In an interview with James Corden on "The Late Late Show," Chuck Schumer cast it as a way to protect "middle-class people" and "young artists" while pandemic restrictions forced closures.

Grant money would "keep these folks going" so that "these live venues will be out there bigger and better than ever" after the restrictions lift, Schumer said. Schumer's press office and chief of staff didn't respond to comment requests.

Ultimately, more than 13,000 arts groups received grants, including some who say they wouldn't still exist otherwise.

"When the shutdowns happened, it was existential. Immediate crisis," said Brandy Hotchner, the founder of Arizona Actors Academy, an acting school in Phoenix. The grant of less than $120,000 the group received, she said, "utterly saved us."

Musicians weren't explicitly categorized as eligible — and initially, the SBA interpreted the law to mean that artists' loan-out companies couldn't qualify for the grant either.

By mid-December 2021, for reasons BI was unable to determine, the agency had reversed that decision, according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider, which cleared the way for federal funding to flow to wealthy artists. The SBA didn't respond to a question about why it reversed itself.

The business-management firm NKSFB also made millions from the program.

Partners at the firm initially believed that their celebrity clients didn't qualify for the grants. At least one partner feared that applying could be perjury, and another, Rob Salzman, thought the whole thing was "bullshit," a court document said.

Later, in an interview with Billboard magazine as part of its list of "Top Business Managers," Salzman said that applying for the grants was an example of the firm's "outside-the-box" thinking.

The change of heart led to a big payday. Court documents show the firm made at least $7.5 million in fees on the grants. Salzman didn't respond to requests for comment.

"NKSFB, one of the most respected business management firms in the world, does not comment on its clients' financial information," said Freedman, the firm's lawyer. "Based on the uninformed questions that BI has asked, it is clear it has little to no understanding on this subject."

Other white-collar professionals also outearned techs and roadies. Lawyers at the celebrity-favorite firms Greenberg Traurig and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks received up to 5% of their clients' grants. Brown's manager took 7% of his grant, and Shinedown's managers received 20% of theirs. A spokesperson for Greenberg Traurig didn't answer questions about the firm's actions. Partners at Grubman Shire didn't respond to emails or phone calls.

Over $2.1 million of Lil Wayne's grant paid off a debt to a former manager, Cortez Bryant. Another $300,000 went to a former accountant, and his manager at the time, Mack Maine, whose real name is Jermaine Preyan, took $1.7 million. All told, roughly $5.3 million went to managers, accountants, and attorneys as fees and commissions — more than 13 times the amount Lil Wayne paid the drummer, sound techs, and other contractors who helped put on his live shows.

Bryant and Preyan didn't respond to requests for comment.

A music-industry insider who learned from Business Insider about NKSFB's wave of grant applications said he was stunned the Small Business Administration approved them.

"It never crossed my mind that we should be trying to get this money for my artists," said the insider, an artist manager who was involved in lobbying lawmakers to pass the legislation and who asked not to be named because of the issue's sensitivity.

"I was in countless conversations," he said. "No one ever discussed artists collecting this money. It never came up."

Hotchner, the acting-school founder, said she was "speechless" upon learning about Business Insider's reporting on how celebrity musicians spent their grants. Though the amount of money sent to pop stars is small relative to the overall amount of money disbursed through the grant program, she said she worried it would taint the public's perception of government support for the arts — support that's still needed.

"I will never forget how hard-fought-for this funding was," she said. "It's such a disappointment."

'Shut up, sit down. Process the file.'

Soon after Congress created the program, lawmakers began pressing the Small Business Administration to get money out the door. By mid-June 2021, more than 200 members of Congress had signed two separate letters demanding the agency disburse the funds expeditiously, saying arts organizations could go out of business without immediate relief.

The SBA said congressional pressure "was not the driving factor" behind changes that sped up the grant process and merely "coincided" with changes it was already making.

The agency hoped to balance a quick release of funds with a desire to protect against large-scale fraud that had plagued other pandemic programs. Its compromise was to relax some anti-fraud controls on the front end of the grant process, a report from the SBA's inspector general said. Instead, it planned to verify whether the grantees were actually eligible and how the money was spent after distributing the grants. In its response to the inspector general's report, the agency said it disagreed with the conclusion that changes to how it evaluated applications amounted to "weakened" fraud controls.

The approach had mixed results. The Government Accountability Office said that it submitted three phony applications to the program and that all three were rejected. But some of the eight current and former SBA workers who spoke to Business Insider said they felt the agency was too permissive and ignored or misinterpreted relevant rules — for example, allowing grantees to spend federal funds on thousands of dollars' worth of alcohol.

"They were just trying to get money out. If it was fraudulent, if it was not eligible — whatever," a person who worked on the grants said. They asked not to be named because they feared retaliation, but their identity is known to Business Insider.

The SBA's inspector general criticized the agency's decision to spot problems after the recipients already spent the money, saying it "does not provide sufficient fraud prevention and comes at a point when funds are potentially unrecoverable." Some SBA employees said that as the program began to wind down, they were pressured to certify recipients' compliance with program rules rather than dig through detailed records of their spending.

The SBA said in September it had recouped $43 million worth of the grants — an amount that hadn't increased since July. It's not clear how the agency recovered that money. While the SBA has a team to recover wrongfully awarded grants, an organizational chart suggests that as of late September it hadn't assigned any staff to it. Documents obtained in a public-records request said $6 billion worth of grants remain under review for compliance with program rules.

The SBA said "some" of the grants Business Insider mentioned in its reporting "remain open due to ongoing third-party audits that the Agency is resolving." The agency spokesperson didn't respond to questions about recoupment and didn't respond to a follow-up question asking which grants remain unresolved.

Four people who worked on the program said they tried to raise concerns about grantees' eligibility and spending to supervisors, to no avail. "I was never so disappointed in my fellow man than in that program," one of the people said. "The graft was unbelievable."

Two of those people said they were frustrated the agency wasn't doing more to investigate possible misspending and recover funds.

"Everybody kept saying shut up, sit down. Process the file," said a current SBA employee who asked not to be named because they're not authorized to speak to the press.

This person said that while some issues stemmed from the dwindling number of SVOG employees drowning in documentation, other problems arose because of the way the program was administered. "It was our fault because we threw this thing together in five seconds," they said.

An SBA spokesperson defended its processes. "By design, the vast majority of processing staff did not have access to the complete results of fraud checks and, therefore, are not positioned to comment on the internal review process or its outcomes," the spokesperson said in an email.

"Where credible evidence suggests funds were misspent or a grantee misrepresented their expenditures to SBA, the agency's robust fraud and waste oversight structure reviewed such allegations," the spokesperson said. "When substantiated, SBA and its law enforcement partners vigorously prosecute suspected wrongdoing. As a matter of policy, the SBA cannot comment on specific investigations or law enforcement action, whether planned or ongoing."

Meanwhile, the government has recovered at least some money from one musician.

As pandemic restrictions faded, Chris Brown returned to performing. In early 2022, he announced a 27-stop nationwide tour and launched a variety of side projects, including a novelty cereal called Breezy's Cosmic Crunch and an NFT collection.

While the Small Business Administration was disbursing money to Brown's touring company, federal and state tax authorities were becoming very interested in his finances.

In early 2021, the IRS notified Brown that he owed $3.2 million in unpaid taxes. In 2022, the IRS determined that Brown owed an additional $2.2 million, while California's Franchise Tax Board found that Brown hadn't paid $1.3 million in state taxes.

He settled these debts in April last year — but not before American taxpayers had unwittingly paid $80,000 for his birthday party.

Have a tip? Know more? Reach Jack Newsham via email ([email protected]) or via Signal (+1-314-971-1627). Do not use a work device.

• The government lost billions of dollars to fraud and improper payments last year.
• Both Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated they'll crack down on fraud through DOGE.
• Some experts told BI they're optimistic about action on fraud, but the DOGE leaders have to be willing to invest in the issue.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have an opportunity to take on fraud in government programs once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Musk and Ramaswamy are tasked with leading the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which seeks to reduce government waste and slash spending. Musk set a goal of cutting $2 trillion in annual outlays.

One of Musk and Ramaswamy's aims for DOGE could lead to a relatively early win with bipartisan support: eliminating fraud in federal programs like Medicare. In a recent interview, Ramaswamy told CNBC that "the dirty little secret is that many of those entitlement dollars aren't even going to people who they were supposed to be going to in the first place."

"There are hundreds of billions of dollars of savings to extract" through basic fraud prevention measures, he said.

Musk shared that sentiment, posting on X in November: "The sheer magnitude & audacity of government fraud is mind-blowing!"

Data from the Government Accountability Office showed that government agencies have made about $2.7 trillion in improper payments since 2003, and in fiscal year 2023, the GAO estimated agencies made $236 billion in improper payments. Notably, those improper payments include other categories than intentional fraud, like administrative errors, Orice Williams Brown, the GAO's chief operating officer, said in a September testimony to Congress.

"While all fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are due to fraud," Brown said.

The top impacted agencies were Medicare and Medicaid, which the GAO said had $51 billion and $50 billion in improper payments, respectively, followed by pandemic programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program.

Experts told Business Insider that there's potential for DOGE to make progress on the issue if they focus on effective solutions like system modernization and improved data analysis, an area where Ramaswamy and Musk could leverage their Silicon Valley tech experience.

Both fraud and improper payments have been difficult for the government to address because of "outdated technology and a limited focus on program integrity," Linda Miller, cofounder of the Program Integrity Alliance — a group that focuses on fraud prevention in the government — told BI.

"You need to use advanced technology and data in order to really move the needle," Miller said. "And the government is not using advanced technology and data to solve this problem."

Jetson Leder-Luis, an assistant professor at Boston University and researcher on government fraud, told BI that DOGE could pursue "a lot of low-hanging fruit ideas" to combat fraud in big industries like healthcare.

"I think DOGE has the opportunity to make big strides on fraud," Leder-Luis said, adding that if they boost enforcement funding and create enhanced data pipelines, "they have a major opportunity to save tens of billions of dollars."

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

How government programs make way for fraud

The government has been unable to implement widescale fraud intervention in recent decades because of a lack of resources and staff to investigate fraud, and a failure to modernize data and technology systems, according to Miller and Leder-Luis.

The GAO found that the government's annual financial losses from fraud were between $233 billion and $521 billion, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022.

Miller pointed to the pandemic as the "perfect storm" for fraud, with the Paycheck Protection Program and disaster loan programs as key examples. Miller said that all that aid being available, coupled with limited oversight at the government level during a national emergency, made it easier for fraud to go undetected; some of the programs allowed individuals to self-certify their loan applications, paving the way for misrepresentations.

"The lack of modernization of our digital technology at the state government level was a real hindrance to fraud prevention during the pandemic," Leder-Luis said.

There have been a number of instances where individuals attempt, and sometimes succeed, to game the system and score welfare benefits that they're not entitled to. But, Miller said, the bigger concern is beyond the individual circumstances; it's the "large-scale fraud schemes" that have taken millions of dollars from the government. For example, the FBI opened an investigation into a scheme that Medicare officials said defrauded the program out of $3 billion after some companies billed the program for catheters patients never requested or used.

Lawmakers and the Department of Justice have worked to take action over the past years to address fraud, including with the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee that oversaw pandemic-era programs. Still, Miller said that while agencies are focused on getting benefits to the beneficiary, there still isn't enough attention on ensuring benefits are going to the right person.

"That's the kind of thing that I think really angers Americans," Miller said. "You wonder, 'What are your tax dollars going to if they're not stopping that kind of fraud?'"

Where DOGE can play a role

Miller said she expects DOGE to look for "quick wins" soon after Trump takes office. These could include modernizing IT systems and investing more resources into fraud detection. A critical point DOGE will have to contend with is that cracking down on the cost of fraud would require some upfront investments.

"It can be very helpful to have a private sector lens come in and look at this," Miller said, which is why Musk and Ramaswamy's backgrounds could be useful in introducing new technology to government systems. However, she said, the two DOGE leaders have to be willing to invest in new fraud detection systems because, even amid their goals to slash spending, modernizing technology is not going to be free.

The GAO's Brown also outlined recommendations for federal agencies to better prevent fraud, including using external data from third parties to verify information Americans provide on loan and insurance applications.

With Republicans soon holding control of both Congress and the White House, DOGE's recommendations to Trump and lawmakers would likely see an easier path to passage. Addressing fraud has also seen Democratic support; Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the Government Spending Oversight Committee Act in April, which would give federal inspectors general tools to combat fraud across major funding bills.

To be sure, some lawmakers and experts are skeptical of DOGE's approach. The US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, data from the Treasury Department showed, and it wouldn't be as simple as the DOGE leaders have said to ax that spending, lawyers told BI.

While administrative law requires a lengthy process to rescind regulations in federal agencies, Musk and Ramaswamy previously said they would recommend a list of regulations that Trump could "immediately pause." Some lawyers previously said the process is a lot more complicated, and the DOGE leaders would likely face legal hurdles if they pursued that route.

Musk and Ramaswamy also aren't the first to suggest cuts to government spending. Former President Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission, aimed at eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government, eliminated $22 billion in social welfare programs that ended up being offset by his tax cuts and defense spending.

Still, Leder-Luis said, what DOGE determines as "waste" is up for interpretation, whereas fraud is illegal, and there's support across the aisle to take that on.

"If we lose $50 billion a year to fraud in just the healthcare system alone, that's ultimately paid for by us," Leder-Luis said. "There are so many things that people want the government to be able to pay for that we all think are good and valuable, like better roads and schools. And when we say, 'I'm sorry, we can't afford that,' well, we are affording healthcare fraud instead."

• In recent years, remote work and affordable housing drove young Americans to move to rural areas.
• Places like Dawson County, Georgia, are seeing growth among young people seeking space and savings.
• It reverses a decadeslong trend of movement into cities.

Chase Voss, 36, moved this year from Hawaii to rural Georgia to be closer to family.

His new home, Dawson County, is one of the fastest-growing counties in the US for young people, amid a wave of movers into rural areas that's reversing a decadeslong trend toward cities.

We want to hear from Americans about their financial goals for 2025. Are you looking for a new job? Planning to retire? Applying to college? Tell us all about your goals and the hurdles you may face trying to accomplish them by filling out this form.

Voss, a real-estate agent, said many younger and middle-aged families have moved to Dawsonville from out of state for job reasons. Though there aren't many jobs in Dawsonville itself, which has a population of just over 4,600, some work tourism or nature jobs in the nearby mountains, while others commute the over 50 miles to Atlanta or work remotely.

"Dawsonville is far enough away where they can feel that remoteness but still close enough to the city that they can have access to everything," Voss said.

In recent years, younger professionals have been bucking a longtime trend of their age group: moving to cities. Now, with flexible work arrangements and high housing costs, many are forgoing more densely populated areas in favor of rural America. Those areas bring bigger houses, lower prices, and a different pace of life — and their own new challenges.

Where younger people are moving

A recent analysis of Census data by Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia, found that 63% of rural counties or counties in small metros experienced increases in their populations of 25- to 44-year-olds between 2020 and 2023, compared to 27% between 2010 and 2013.

Northern Georgia, the Mountain West, and New England were rural regions with particularly strong population growth among young Americans. The 10 counties that saw the biggest influxes of younger adults were largely rural; the most populated of all of those areas is Hays County, Texas, in the suburbs of Austin, which had a population of around 280,500 in 2023. Musselshell County, which is the least populous, had just 5,308 people as of 2023.

That's a big shift from pre-pandemic patterns: From 1980 to 2020, white-collar workers increasingly moved into densely populated areas, per Lombard's analysis. That trend was expected to continue — until the pandemic and the rise of remote work. Since 2020, Lombard found, rural areas and smaller cities have attracted that younger workforce at the highest rate in nearly a century.

Jeannie Steele, a real-estate broker in Townsend, Montana, has seen an influx of young people. Broadwater County, with about 8,000 residents, was the third-fastest-growing county for Americans ages 25 to 44, Lombard's analysis found. Townsend is located about 30 miles from Helena, though Steele said many commute to Bozeman or Three Forks.

Steele said she previously considered her area a retirement hub. However, the construction of a new elementary school starting in 2019 brought many younger families, particularly some working in construction, mining, or medicine. Many are moving from Washington, California, and Minnesota, Steele said.

"We have a lot of people here that come and have this vision of homesteading," Steele said. "They want to grow their own food. They want to have chickens and gardens. Interestingly enough, though, all those things in our environment are difficult."

In Custer County, Colorado — the area that's seen the highest net percent increase of 25 to 44-year-olds — 28-year-old Arrott Smith has seen many more nice cars driving around as younger, well-off remote workers move into town.

"For the most part, that's kind of a weird juxtaposition because it is a very working-class county," Smith said.

Smith, the manager and a roaster at local haunt Peregrine Coffee, said that the area has traditionally skewed older — but saw a big influx of younger workers over the last few years. Smith said that the area's newer residents are buying homes even as costs have gone up.

"To me it's more like the people that are moving here have a romanticized version of what it is to live up here," Smith said.

Going rural can be challenging

Economist Jed Kolko said that, with the proliferation of remote work, Americans moved out of bigger urban areas into nearby suburbs or smaller towns. But headwinds in some occupations might slow down the influx of newcomers.

"If unemployment rises, particularly in the kinds of occupations where remote work is more common, employers might be more able to insist on workers spending more days in the office," Kolko said. "Even if that doesn't cause people to reverse the moves that they made during or after the pandemic, it could still slow down that trend in the future."

Meanwhile, in areas that have seen a rush of new residents like Townsend, Kolko said it's key for housing to keep up with demand. If not, affordability challenges from big cities could spread out.

New challenges confront the residents reshaping these areas. Steele said many people moved to her part of Montana after the TV series "Yellowstone" aired, though she's seen many younger people regret their moves. She said many don't anticipate the challenges of living in a more remote part of the US, such as navigating storms, buying goods in bulk, or dealing with isolation.

Recently, rentals have gone really fast, Steele said, adding that rents, on average, have increased from about $750 in 2019 to well over $1,000 monthly. A more stark comparison is some of the county's single-family homes, many of which were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s; while they sold for about $100,000 in 2017, they range from $390,000 to $400,000 today, Steele said.

Housing affordability pushed Solitaire Miles, a Gen X musician, to move from Chicago to northwestern Indiana in 2013. Miles and her husband lived in the Chicago area for about 13 years. While they were gainfully employed, she said, they weren't earning enough to live comfortably while renting. They couldn't afford a home in Illinois, especially with high property taxes. But in Indiana, they found a home with three-quarters of an acre of land just 50 miles from Chicago for under $200,000.

Miles loves having the space. A quieter pace of living has helped stimulate her creativity and her at-home border collie rescue — they currently have five of their own dogs.

But the area has changed over the past few years; the pandemic also fractured her community.

"After Covid, everything just kind of went downhill. So many people died, a lot of elderly died, or they left and they moved south," Miles said.

She's glad they ended up buying out there, and if and when they choose to sell, they'll make a tidy profit. Even so, though, the move came with its own struggles.

"It was hard. I had the gym that I loved and the spas and my beauty salon and the restaurants — all of our friends," she said. "I mean, I did make friends here, but it took time, and I had to go to places where I knew they would be."

For Voss, the real-estate agent, it took him time to acclimate to the South. As a gay man, he noticed more hostility toward his community, though he said many in Dawsonville have appreciated his advocacy work. He's enjoying rural Georgia for the time being but anticipates splitting his time with Hawaii in a few years.

"Georgia is beautiful, I love it. It's so great for so many people," Voss said. "But for me, because of the mentality of the people here, I just don't see myself staying full-time."

Have you moved to a rural area and regretted it (or loved it)? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

• As a personal stylist, I think the quiet-luxury look is easy to achieve.
• Look for high-quality pieces in classic silhouettes, which can be found on sale or secondhand.
• Accessorize with simple pieces and avoid wearing too many designer logos.

As a personal stylist, I love trends like quiet luxury that encourage people to buy quality pieces that can be worn for years, or even decades.

After all, quiet-luxury style is all about using high-quality, understated pieces to create effortless looks.

Some celebrities have really nailed it. One example that comes to mind is Gwyneth Paltrow and the outfits she wore during her 2023 ski-collision trial.

Her chic, understated looks were covered closely by fashion publications like Vogue and consisted of lush sweaters, fitted blazers, and leather boots in various neutrals. Her classic outfits managed to say, "I'm rich" without screaming it.

Some fictional characters — like many in the final season of HBO's "Succession" — have also exemplified the quiet-luxury look by mixing quality neutrals and timeless silhouettes.

Fortunately, the quiet-luxury trend is really easy to duplicate. Here are five tips to keep in mind if you want to nail this look.

Don't go overboard with logos.

Head-to-toe looks covered in logos from expensive brands can scream, "I'm trying too hard to look rich."

Quiet luxury stresses the quiet. Items that fit this trend tend to look luxurious when they don't have visible branding.

The good news is that avoiding logos can make creating high-end looks for less very easy.

Whenever I'm unsure if a piece feels quietly luxurious or not, I ask, "Would a Nancy Meyers heroine wear this while meeting her architect for an espresso in her recently renovated kitchen?"

Many of the lead characters in the director's movies have mastered understated-yet-chic outfits, so the piece is a winner if my answer is "yes."

Check the tags before buying a garment.

Get into the habit of checking what garments are made of, especially since higher prices doesn't always mean you're getting higher-quality materials.

Clothing made of natural materials tends to last longer and look richer than pieces made of artificial fabrics such as acrylic and polyester.

You'll want to prioritize cotton, linen, cashmere, wool, and silk.

Do your best to invest in quality.

Despite having "luxury" in its name, this trend does not have to break the bank.

To start, I suggest upgrading your basics to the highest quality you can afford. One way to do so on a budget is seeking out sale finds at luxury department stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue or Nordstrom, or their discount spin-offs, Saks Off Fifth or Nordstrom Rack.

Also consider buying high-end pieces secondhand. I've had good luck finding luxury items at The RealReal, an online marketplace.

I recently purchased a 100% cashmere Giorgio Armani blazer there for the price of a marked-down Banana Republic jacket.

Quiet luxury is all about a relaxed silhouette.

If you're trying to lean into this look, leave your shapewear and skintight pieces at home. Embrace wide-leg pants, pleats, relaxed jeans, button-up blouses, and simple sweaters that are a little bit loose.

When choosing pieces, picture yourself as the kind of low-key chic person who replies to compliments with, "Oh, this thing? I just threw it on. I've had it for years."

Simple accessories subtly up the ante of a look.

One (or two) false moves and quiet luxury can look more boring than quiet. The easiest way to avoid this is with simple accessories.

Some of my favorite ways to elevate an outfit are with understated gold or silver hoops and a simple belt. A pearl or gold stud earring, simple chain necklace, or architectural ear cuff can also add an instant pop of chic to a simple look.

I also suggest investing in classic pieces that can instantly make you look more put together — like a trench coat or leather belt — and wearing them often.

• Susie Moore, a life coach, moved to NYC and landed a tech job by leveraging mutual connections.
• Networking to set yourself up for a future opportunity is especially effective during the holidays.
• She suggests setting intentions, creating ping lists, and attending events to expand your network.

When I was 25, I moved to New York City from Sydney without friends, career prospects, or a college degree. Despite being what some might call unprepared, I knew I would land a job because I excel at connecting with people and taking initiative.

Within two months, I started working for a tech company because I leveraged a mutual connection, an industry peer in Australia whose company had an NYC office. I asked for an introduction to her US team, and she gave me one. A single warm email connection was all it took to get me in the door.

Networking is simply building relationships by being proactive, and it doesn't have to be a cringe-worthy chore. It can be fun, graceful, and extremely rewarding, and the holiday season is the perfect time to do it. There's an undeniable "holiday glow" to people in December.

Now, as a life coach of over 10 years, I encourage my community to expand and nurture their networks no matter their career choices or future goals. If you want to step up your networking game as 2025 fast approaches, here's a checklist to seize the season before the year ends.

1. Set an intention

What do you want your networking efforts to accomplish? Are you seeking a new position in the new year? Do you want to attract new clients to your business? Do you want to kick off a side hustle? Or do you simply want to strengthen your network for the future?

A measurable goal is ideal, but networking is valuable even without a specific goal. A mentor of mine once told me she has a spreadsheet of 50 people she emails casually every quarter for no reason but to say hello and keep the relationship alive. So few people do this!

We let so many relationships go to waste because we make too little effort, so those who keep in touch win because we stand out and are top of mind when opportunities roll around — and they do. My connections have brought me investment opportunities, speaking engagements, and book deals.

2. Get into the holiday spirit

The season of goodwill is a great time to reach out and express gratitude. Most people are reflective and slow down a bit this time of year, so it's the ideal time to send a short gratitude note, text, or DM like this:

"Thanks for your help with X project this year — it meant a lot. Wishing you the best holiday break and start to 2025!"

"I'm lucky to have worked with you this year, and I hope the new job at X is going great! Hi to (spouse name)."

"I just found the coolest candle shop/whisky tasting/tennis memorabilia site (insert picture/link of the thing the person likes). Happy holidays to you!"

Sincere, short, sweet, personal messages go a long way in letting people know how they've encouraged, inspired, or helped you — or even that you're just thinking of them.

3. Create a custom ping list

Success can come down to volume and some experimentation. It's easier to start with people you know, but you can also include some people you'd like to know — for example, I might include 5-10 people I admire with mutual connections.

When I moved to NYC, I looked up connections of my friends on LinkedIn and used that as a way to introduce myself:

"Hi name! You and I are both friends with the lovely (friend's name).

I've just moved to NYC and this city is just beautiful in December. Perhaps we could have a latte if you have 20 minutes free next week? It would be great to share some industry information and connect. I'll gladly come to (part of the city where that person lives/works).

Happy holidays!"

Aim to reach at least 30 people before year-end based on your intention. These can be former coworkers, members of your running or book club, friends of friends, or anyone you'd like to know better.

Not everyone will respond to you, but the right people will. A few Decembers ago, I met up with a fellow entrepreneur who had recently moved to Florida. We've enjoyed more than one business collaboration since, and she's also become a client of mine.

4. Get out there

December is a social season. I've made many connections at apartment lobby parties, holiday celebrations, and New Year's Eve gatherings.

If you're more introverted, be selective about what you attend — just keep returning to your intention (a tech mixer might be worthwhile, for example, but drinks at your next-door neighbor's place may not). Generally, it's worth showing up if you feel on the fence about an invitation. A little face-time goes a long way in nurturing connections.

People are also less busy around the holidays than you think, particularly during the last two weeks of December when schedules slow down. This can be a great time to suggest meeting for coffee, a cocktail, or even a walk. This can also mean a lot to folks in an age of increasing isolation.

5. Underthink it — do it now

The reach-out part is fast. Attacking your ping list doesn't require blocking out hours on your calendar. You can act on it in small pockets throughout the day — waiting for an Uber, in line at CVS, when you have five minutes to spare before a meeting. Ditch the social media scroll and do something valuable with these idle minutes.

Doors open for those willing to knock. It's no secret that those who create and maintain sincere relationships experience more opportunities over time. Your network provides a safety net and a steady foundation for information-sharing, mutual support, and fun, so stay connected.

Susie Moore is a former sales director and startup advisor, a life coach and advice columnist, and the host of the Let It Be Easy podcast.

• Are you still paying for cable TV?
• If so, consider that the people who own cable TV networks seem increasingly uninterested in hanging on to them.
• That's the real story behind WBD's corporate maneuvering Thursday — to make a cable TV spinoff or sale much more likely.

Comcast is ditching its cable TV networks. Now Warner Bros. Discovery may do the same.

That's the takeaway from Thursday's news that WBD is splitting up its cable TV business from its streaming and studio operations.

To be clear: WBD is not saying that it intends to ditch its cable networks, like TNT and Food Network.

Instead, it's using hand-wavy language like "a new corporate structure designed to enhance its strategic flexibility and create potential opportunities to unlock additional shareholder value" to describe what it's doing.

But to be super clear: The reason WBD is doing this now is so it can get rid of its cable operations in the future, perhaps by merging them with the cable TV spinoff that Comcast has planned for next year. And, just as important, because it wants to tell Wall Street that a breakup is on the table.

Not coincidentally, WBD shares are up 13% on the news.

Reminder: WBD has floated this idea before, though less formally. Earlier this summer, WBD execs said (quietly) they were looking at the same kind of corporate restructuring, and then decided to back off the idea.

What has changed since then?

On the one hand, not a lot. The structural challenges around a split still remain: Namely, the fact that while cable TV networks are declining assets, they're still profitable ones, and those profits help keep their owners' other assets afloat.

On the other hand: Now that Comcast has announced it is absolutely going to split off its declining cable TV assets, it helps make other splits more likely. That's because Comcast's spun-off cable TV operation will want to find other cable TV networks to add to its collection so it can increase negotiating power. Which (potentially) solves the "who wants to buy a declining asset?" problem WBD was looking at before.

Also of note: Donald Trump's second term in office may be much, much friendlier to consolidation, as WBD CEO David Zaslav noted the morning after Trump's election. (Reminder: The Trump 2.0 merger mania many people expect may not extend across the board. Trump's incoming team continues to make noise about reining in Big Tech, and that scrutiny may also apply to (at least some parts of) Big Media.)

All of which is worth remembering if you still pay for a package of cable TV networks, which means you are continually being asked to pay more for them. (Just Thursday, Google said it was hiking the price of its YouTube TV cable bundle by 14%.) You, the consumer, are being told cable TV is worth paying more for. But cable TV owners want to get these things off their books.

• Some Spotify users this year lambasted the music streaming app's popular year-end round-up, Wrapped.
• A former Spotify engineer described what was different about Wrapped this year.
• Despite the negative reception, this year's Wrapped was the biggest the company has seen.

When Spotify dropped its viral year-end musical round-up Wrapped earlier this month, the disappointment online was palpable.

"I'm not usually one to complain but this was one of the most boring Spotify Wrapped recaps I've been a part of and I've been a member since 2017," Business Insider reported a Reddit user said.

"Spotify wrapped flopped this year so bad like where are the music cities, the playlists, the top genres or the listening auras… all that wait for WHAT," a user on X wrote.

Spotify superfan Sydney Brown told The New York Times her annual Wrapped release is "like my Super Bowl," but this year, she felt like her round-up was "a homework project that was turned in late."

While the company said a record number of users checked out their Wrapped this year, an engineer who once worked on the feature said he understands why many online were disappointed.

Glenn McDonald is a former Spotify software engineer who worked on projects including Wrapped for over a decade before being caught in one of several rounds of sweeping layoffs that saw a 25% staff reduction.

This year, Wrapped "didn't give me any context," McDonald told Business Insider.

"It didn't connect me to communities or the world, or put my listening in relationship to anything," he said. "So, for me, it misses the important potential of a streaming service where everybody is listening together and just treats it as if each individual listener is listening by themselves."

The Wrapped 2024 round-up skipped the genre stories and cultural comparisons found in previous editions, instead creating an AI "podcast" of computer-generated voices talking through users' listening stats and briefly describing what emotional "era" their listening habits might suggest.

While some users called it a flop, a Spotify spokesperson told Business Insider it was the biggest year yet for the music streaming app's year-end round-up.

"In the first 12 hours this year's Wrapped was the biggest we've seen, up over 26% compared to day one in 2023," the Spotify spokesperson told BI. And while the company tracks user reactions on social media — both negative and positive — internal engagement statistics showed a record number of individual shares "and the biggest volume we've ever seen across the entire experience."

A missed bet on the cutting-edge

Spotify wanted to embrace the cutting-edge features that AI has made possible, the spokesperson said. Still, it did not intend to diminish the humanistic elements of the Wrapped experience that users love.

In prior years, McDonald was on the team that brought Spotify users Wrapped features, including a Myers-Briggs-style description of the way users listen to music, comparisons of their music tastes to cities around the world, and genre stories that revealed the top types of music users were listening to.

He said those cultural elements weren't a priority this year, and the company leaned too much into "AI that doesn't really add anything to your life."

McDonald, a proponent of artificial intelligence who now works for an AI startup, said Spotify has always treated Wrapped primarily as a marketing exercise meant to go viral as users share their results. While he was at the company, he had to push for more community-focused features, he told BI.

"It's sort of hard to try to infuse humanity into a marketing exercise. It's not easy, and you're not always thanked for it," McDonald said.

He pointed to last year's layoffs as one reason remaining engineers may not have felt motivated to go the extra distance this year: "It doesn't surprise me that maybe anybody the following year looking at what happened last year goes, 'maybe I won't stick my neck out,'" he said.

While Spotify hasn't decided what future editions of Wrapped may include, the spokesperson said its features change each year to give users more of what they want.

On April 27, 2023, Diana Kulyk's father told her he was leaving the next day to start training to fight Russia. She was filled with dread but knew she needed to act. Her hands shaking, Kulyk, a 24-year-old only child, tried to type the perfect tweet that would convince her roughly 20,000 followers to donate more than $3,000 for equipment that would help keep her father alive.

"Hello, this is the most important tweet I have ever written," she began. "I'm Diana Kulyk, daughter of Ruslan Kulyk. My father is a simple man, a baker by profession, a human being full of love and care. The person who took care of me since I came into this world. He needs help." Beneath the text were two images: a selfie of Diana and Ruslan smiling under golden-hour sunlight, and a spreadsheet of equipment she'd determined her father needed for the battlefield, including steel body armor, a tactical headset, a ballistic helmet, and a sleep mat.

Diana had already raised about $30,000 over the previous year to buy protective gear for childhood friends fighting in Ukraine. Within two hours of posting about her father, she had raised enough to buy all 21 items on the spreadsheet. The donors came from all over: Ukraine, the United States, Germany, England.

Watching the donations flood in, Diana was overwhelmed. "It was a really weird moment," she says. "You are so scared, but also you see everyone coming together to help you. It gives you hope."

Diana's efforts are part of an immense crowdfunding movement helping fuel Ukraine's fight against Russia's far larger and more advanced military. The Ukrainian government has its own crowdsourcing platforms, like United24, which has raised more than $761 million to pay for things like ambulances and demining equipment and to reconstruct destroyed buildings. Individual military units are using social media to campaign for the specific gear they need on the front lines. The 79th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, for example, has used Instagram to gather donations for reconnaissance drones, generators, and night-vision goggles. And thousands of volunteers are raising funds to directly supply their loved ones on the battlefield with walkie-talkies, combat boots, Starlink internet satellites, medical supplies, ammunition, tanks, and phone chargers.

People have crowdfunded wars throughout history. In World War II, the Supermarine Spitfire, a British fighter aircraft, was largely financed by bake sales and fundraisers at primary schools. But never have funds been raised so easily, quickly, widely, and strategically by civilians and individual troops, says Keir Giles, a defense expert at the think tank Chatham House. "That's a big advantage," he says. With the modern tools of social media, influencer marketing tactics, crowdfunding platforms, and frontline postal services, "units can campaign for precisely the equipment and weapons they need and have them delivered."

Benjamin Jensen, a war-strategy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, describes this crowdfunding as a "game changer." People around the world, he says, are directly "buying commercial off-the-shelf capability to enhance combat power on the battlefield," often acting much more nimbly than the military.

Crowdfunding is also increasingly critical. While Western nations have contributed nearly $300 billion worth of aid, Ukraine's military has repeatedly suffered from shortages of key weaponry and defense equipment. Three grueling years in, several countries and leaders are weighing whether they'll continue their support — including the United States and President-elect Donald Trump, a frequent critic of US aid to Ukraine. The Ukrainian government said last year that crowdfunding accounted for 3% of the country's total military spending. To win the war, that number may need to climb. But fundraisers are struggling with fatigue among citizen donors and are getting creative to keep up funds and morale.

Before the war, Ruslan Kulyk was a pastry chef who made wedding cakes in Spain, where the family immigrated when Diana was young. When the wedding industry slowed in the winter, he visited family in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region. On February 24, 2022, he was preparing to return to Spain when Vladimir Putin launched Russia's full-scale invasion. Landlocked and infuriated, he joined his nephew at the military registration office. Recruiters enlisted his nephew but turned Ruslan away. "I wasn't prepared and was 50 years old," he says.

He got a job at a local bakery. He trained hard, dropping more than 50 pounds in 14 months. By the time he went back to enlist, Ukraine was thought to have lost as many as 17,500 soldiers and badly needed more men on the front lines.

After training in Kyiv, Ruslan joined a "storm" brigade, an extremely dangerous type of counteroffensive unit that often operates on the edge of Russian strongholds. Diana and Ruslan talked frequently, but his work often required him to go dark for days on end. For Diana, the wait was terrifying. She scoured the news to see where "the hottest part" of the fighting was, figuring that's where her father would be. "You wake up every day thinking I'm going to have bad news today," she says.

Being able to crowdfund equipment for her father and his fellow soldiers has given Diana a semblance of control to counter the nauseating sense of helplessness. It has also helped save lives.

In the summer of 2023, Ruslan texted his daughter, "I'm going on a mission." Four days later, he called from the hospital. He had been sent to Bakhmut, where a Russian drone had exploded 18 inches from his head, giving him and three of his comrades concussions. One was so severely injured that he had to be wrapped in a tourniquet that Diana had fundraised for. (The soldier's leg was amputated, and he's now with his family.) Diana spent a week with her father as he recovered in the hospital.

When he returned to active duty, Ruslan became a drone operator. Though he was farther from the front lines, he was arguably in even more danger. Drone operators have been very effective: Citing Ukrainian military commanders, The New York Times reported last month that Ukraine's drones accounted for at least 80% of Russian front-line losses. Several Ukrainian drone operators have told Business Insider that because of this, they are disproportionately in the enemy's crosshairs. Ruslan calls drone operators Russia's "target No. 1." This October, while in the Luhansk region, Ruslan used a surveillance drone Diana had raised funds for to spot four Russian soldiers advancing toward his unit, giving Ruslan and his comrades enough time to avert an onslaught.

Diana has raised more than $100,000 for drones, jackets, boots, helmets, medical supplies, trench-digging equipment, and thermal-vision gear. She credits part of her success to "how transparent I am with my situation, with my family." Much of her support comes from partnering with NAFO, the North Atlantic Fella Organization, an online community playing on the NATO name that challenges Russian disinformation, largely through dog memes.

Some crowdfunders encourage donations by sharing stories about themselves or their friends. Some host livestreams or ask followers to celebrate their birthday by donating to a soldier's unit. Others offer services and products: You can get a message written on ammunition to be fired at Russian targets or buy artwork made of bullets, shells, and destroyed Russian equipment and uniforms.

Dimko Zhluktenko, a 26-year-old former IT manager in Kyiv, didn't join the military at the start of the war. "I chickened out in the beginning a bit," he says, and he was taking care of his sick mother. But he knew his tech skills could allow him to help Ukraine in another way. It was obvious to him that the military wasn't getting the resources needed to win the war, so he started buying protective gear for his friends.

He posted about his efforts on X, sharing stories of his childhood friends on the front lines, like Max, who destroyed a bridge to stop a key Russian advance. His followers responded. "Many people started asking, 'How can I send you money?'" he says. By April 2022, Zhluktenko had received so many of those requests that he decided to work on fundraising full time, starting a charity organization to provide "high-tech equipment" that would increase "the efficiency of our forces." He called it Dzyga's Paw, named after his dog. Donors can get merch — like stickers, tote bags, and patches — based on how much they donate. He's raised more than $2.9 million from more than 28,000 individual donations.

Giles says that because the crowdfunding effort is so complex and unregulated, there have been "persistent allegations of fraud" against several groups. To counter that, Zhluktenko has made his organization radically transparent. On Dyzga's Paw's website, among other details about its budget, the organization keeps a daily log of its expenses. In one week in November, for example, it paid two employee salaries ($1,166.89) and bought 15 Starlink satellite receiver kits ($4,884.13), an F13-Retrik uncrewed aerial vehicle ($2,780.36), and paper clips ($0.75).

Zhluktenko is also transparent about who exactly is receiving which equipment and what they're using it for. To motivate people to donate, he constantly shares stories on social media about soldiers like Nazar, who coached a youth soccer team before the war. In a post on X in October advertising a fundraiser, Zhluktenko's organization wrote, "Nazar and his unit need essential equipment—from laptops to portable power stations and signal-boosting antennas for drones to be even more effective."

Dyzga's Paw also shares videos of frontline soldiers expressing gratitude, memes of gear en route to soldiers, and, crucially, footage of the gear donors have funded in action, often captured by drones they've also donated. Zhluktenko says these videos — often of Russian tanks being blown up or Russian soldiers surrendering — are extremely effective marketing: Donors "actually get to see the impact of the equipment they have sent" and how their donations "challenge the myth of an undefeatable Russian army."

Mats Kampshoff, a 25-year-old student in Germany, has given about $600 to Dyzga's Paw and other crowdfunding projects during the war, though he has no personal connection to Ukraine beyond the stories of soldiers he's been following. "Connecting this war effort with a daily life that I can connect to really brought home the point that I don't want this war to be around," he says. Donating feels "more like a logical decision than one based on morals," he says, adding that "it's just the small part that I can do to shape the world in the way that I envision."

In surveys of Ukrainians conducted in 2022 and 2023, almost 80% of respondents said they'd donated to some form of crowdfunding campaign during the war. Most of Zhluktenko's donors are from Europe, the US, Australia, Japan — "any countries Russia would call the collective West," he says. "There are people who have donated for 50-something weeks straight."

Hlib Fishchenko, 25, founded a volunteer organization called Vilni, which he said gets about 80% of its donations from Ukrainians. He raises money for items like excavators that help protect soldiers building trenches; the last one Vilni bought cost about $25,000, which it raised in a month. He said Ukrainian donors understand that they could donate to rebuild a school, or they could donate to help soldiers prevent Russia from destroying schools in the first place. They see their donations as preventive, he said, while some international donors are more willing to fund projects like reconstruction and medical aid.

Receiving donations for equipment is one thing. Getting the equipment to the front lines is another.

Zhluktenko's team goes on a frontline expedition about once a month. Their motto is "Just don't be stupid." In July they were driving toward Kharkiv when they learned of an imminent Russian glide-bomb attack nearby and changed their route.

Organizations and crowdfunders, including Dyzga's Paw and Diana Kulyk, often work with Nova Post, a major Ukrainian delivery company that delivers close to the front lines. Nova Post told BI that it delivers to residents and the military and that it stops only when the military "says that it is dangerous to work and forbids us to open branches." The company said that branches have indoor and outdoor shelters designed so that employees and clients can reach them within 30 seconds and that frontline branches have reinforced doors and windows.

The company's operations have only grown: It told BI it had opened 2,242 branches and two sorting offices and installed 1,853 parcel lockers since February 2022 and that it shipped 30% more parcels in 2023 than it did in 2022.

Experts say the crowdfunding of Ukraine's fight could offer a glimpse into the future of warfare. Major Western militaries are unlikely to start relying on crowdfunding anytime soon, given their extensive resources and stringent procurement policies. But Jensen, the war-strategy expert, predicts that crowdfunding via social media will be vital in "future insurgencies against authoritarian regimes." Giles says he's already seeing "more explicit calls on soldiers to equip themselves," with soldiers in countries like Latvia and Finland, which he says "may be facing Russian aggression next," buying more military equipment themselves.

Giles says this war might be unique in that it has dragged on long enough for these campaigns to develop. But it's also dragged on long enough for some support to wane. Several fundraising groups said they'd seen donations dry up in recent months; fatigue is setting in as the war concludes its third year. In November, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Bloomberg that the donations he'd received that month through YouTube livestreams had plummeted by two-thirds compared with what he raised in March. The advisor also said he feared that Donald Trump's return to the presidency would further hinder donations. "Floating talks about Trump's promise to end the war quickly and possibly bring peace reduce willingness of people to donate," he said.

One thousand and sixteen days into the war, fighting rages throughout Ukraine's east. Russia controls nearly 20% of the country. While there are no confirmed death tolls and estimates vary wildly, many tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have been killed on both sides.

Zhluktenko got married in July and then signed a military contract. "Ukraine needs people fighting," he says. "It's impossible to win a war for your freedom without fighting for your freedom." On October 23, his birthday, he posted on X: "My birthday wish this year is survival. I don't need any gifts this year except something that will help me be effective in my military role and to survive." While he's on duty, his wife has taken over Dyzga's Paw.

Diana Kulyk completed another campaign several months ago, raising $48,000 to buy her father's brigade two pickup trucks with night-vision cameras and all-terrain tires. But she says that regardless or whether her dad needs anything, she spends much of her mental energy trying to prepare herself for the possibility of her father's death. She's lost friends in the war. She lost her cousin — Ruslan's nephew, who went to the registration office with him. And she's watched her father lose comrades.

"There is a high chance of it eventually happening, so I have been working on that," she says. "I have a phrase I came up with to tell myself: 'Better to be a man of honor than to live scared.'"

Sinéad Baker is a News Correspondent based in Business Insider's London bureau, writing about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.