• I've visited 86 countries and seen a lot of beautiful places around the world.
• Wānaka, New Zealand, has an incredible natural landscape.
• I loved the architecture in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay.

In January 2016, I took my first solo trip to Hawaii and instantly fell in love with this form of travel. Now, nearly 10 years later, I run a travel blog, No Man Nomad, and have solo traveled to 86 countries across all seven continents.

Throughout my travels, I've been lucky enough to visit some truly beautiful locations. From the second largest canyon in the world to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, here are five of the most beautiful destinations I've been to.

Valle d'Aosta is one of the most underrated regions in Italy.

Valle d'Aosta, Italy's smallest and least populated region, took my breath away when I visited in September 2024.

Located in the northwest corner of the country, the region shares a border with Switzerland and France, creating a majestic mountainous backdrop thanks to Mont Blanc straddling all three countries.

I recommend staying in the capital, Aosta. Nicknamed "little Rome of the Alps," it's not just Mont Blanc that's worth viewing — Aosta is full of historic ruins, like Porta Pretoria and Criptoportico Forense.

Wānaka, New Zealand, is ideal for immersing yourself in nature.

In January 2019, I traveled to New Zealand and rented a campervan for a road trip from Queenstown to Aoraki/Mount Cook.

My first stop was Wānaka, where I frolicked through fields of flowers and tasted local honey at Wānaka Lavender Farm.

I also hiked Roys Peak — a 5,177-foot summit where I saw plenty of sheep as I made my way to the panoramic views of the town.

Each morning, I sipped coffee on Lake Wānaka and admired the lone willow tree that grows in the water. As a New Yorker, I really enjoyed being able to lose myself in nature.

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, is a peaceful escape.

When I visited Buenos Aires in January 2023, I decided to take a ferry to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, for a day trip.

The town is full of white, stone, and pastel-colored buildings, many of which are adorned with flowers. Together, they contrasted beautifully with the cobblestone streets.

Colonia del Sacramento's historic quarter is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here, you can head to the San Miguel Bastion for views of the sea or Ruinas del Convento de San Francisco for the only remnants left from a convent built in the 1690s.

Fish River Canyon in Namibia, left me speechless.

On another international road trip, I visited Fish River Canyon in Namibia, which is the largest canyon in Africa and the second largest in the world after the Grand Canyon.

There were barely any tourists when I visited on a hot day in April 2024. Looking out at the massive, colorful gorge was an experience I'll never forget. It was extremely quiet, and I sat by the edge to take it all in.

Jeju Island, South Korea, is gorgeous.

In March 2019, I scored a $12 flight from Seoul to Jeju Island, South Korea.

One of my first stops was to see Oedolgae, a unique rock formation that's believed to have been formed by a volcanic eruption. As I walked there from my hostel, I passed plenty of waterfalls and witnessed early signs of the island's blooming cherry blossoms.

When I arrived, I watched as the waves crashed into Oedolgae and the other massive volcanic rocks that jarred from the ocean's floor.

Ryan Coogler has dazzled audiences with big-budget Marvel movies (the "Black Panther" franchise), introduced a new generation to the Rocky Balboa saga ( "Creed," "Creed II"), and painted a devastatingly human portrait of a real-life tragedy ("Fruitvale Station"), but his newest film unlocks his true potential.

Coogler's fifth feature, "Sinners," marks the first time the director is working with a completely original concept, and it's an ambitious, genre-hopping ride worthy of all the early praise (the film has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes as of publication).

The film, which Coogler also wrote, tells the story of identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), who leave their posts as muscle in the 1930s Chicago underworld and return to their home state of Mississippi to run a juke joint. Everything is going according to plan on opening night, with top-notch blues musicians and smooth tasting hooch, until a trio of vampires shows up and turns everything upside down.

But even as the movie veers sharply from period piece to vampire flick (blood-sucking included), in Coogler's hands, "Sinners" is more than a thrilling genre movie. With eye-popping cinematography of the Mississippi Delta, a moving score from Coogler's longtime collaborator Ludwig Göransson, and subplots focusing on religion and the generational influence of the blues, "Sinners" is chock-full of well-executed big ideas. It's Hollywood filmmaking on an epic scale — and the secret sauce is that it's grounded in a personal, heartfelt story.

In the latest interview in Business Insider's "Director's Chair" series, Coogler discusses how the project came to be, what led to the movie's memorable music sequence, and what motivated him to make a deal with Warner Bros. so he'll one day own the rights to "Sinners."

Business Insider: You've spoken about "Sinners" being a love letter to your grandfather and uncle. How did you go from celebrating family to vampires and the blues?

Ryan Coogler: I never knew my grandfather. He died shortly after my parents got married. He was from Mississippi. Born there, raised there. Then he moved to Oakland and married my grandmother who was from Texas. My grandmother had two little sisters and one of her younger sisters married a man who was from Mississippi, a different part, and that was my Uncle James.

My Uncle James, for a large portion of my life, was the oldest male member of my family. What he loved to do was three things: listening to Delta Blues music, he loved drinking all types of whiskey, and he loved the San Francisco Giants, watching them on TV and listening to them on the radio. So if you went and spent time with him he was doing one or all three of those things.

I loved my uncle. I associate that music with him. He passed away in 2015, and after that, I oftentimes found myself playing blues records to remind myself of him. And that act of listening to that music and feeling he was there with me is kind of what inspired the period setting and the blues. And that is why the movie is so personal. 

It's so personal, in fact, that you made a deal with Warner Bros. to get the rights to the film in 25 years. The reason for that is because this is a story of what Smoke and Stack do at the start of the movie — open a juke joint in the Jim Crow South. The idea of Black ownership motivated you, correct?

Yeah. That was the reason for that ask. That was actually the only motivation.

Do you have the rights to any of your other movies? Is this a first time for you?

No. It's the first time.

Do you want to continue owning the rights to your movies going forward?

No. It was this specific project.

One of the movie's most memorable moments is a sequence where everyone is dancing in the juke joint, and suddenly, past, present, and future musical influences of the blues appear — a guitarist playing an electric guitar, a DJ on turntables, ancient chants. How long had you been thinking about doing that?

It was in the original script, but the specifics of it, the nature of it, I came up with while I was writing. So it existed in every form of the screenplay but it was a concept that came to be. Like, it wasn't in the outline. I was writing the script, and I was listening to the music, trying to conjure a time, and thinking how I would use that music. I would think about my uncle and wonder what my uncle was thinking of when he was listening to it. 

Was that sequence always ambitious from the start?

The ambition evolved as I was researching it and digging into it. I realized the epic nature of the story as I researched it. At first, I thought it was small. As I researched and dug into blues music and how it was developed and why, when I got to Mississippi and stood on some plantations, that's where the form was born. These people whose parents were enslaved and were living in back-breaking societal conditions created an art form that was so incredible that it transcended the planet. We are still making incarnations of that music. And so my mind kind of blew up and I saw the movie showing that creation. 

There was a report that the post-production process on "Sinners" was longer than usual because you shot on film and there aren't many film labs left.

That's not the whole reason. We wanted to make film prints but we also wanted to make the movie in the best way possible. We actually did this fast. 

Are you concerned about shooting on film going forward? There are definitely fewer labs than there were 10 or even five years ago.

There are enough filmmakers who believe in the format that I have faith. I actually hope there's a resurgence. My first movie, "Fruitvale Station," was shot on film. It was shot on Super 16mm, so the format has always mattered to me. And I was so happy to get back to it. But with the epic nature of the story, I was also happy to shoot large format. 

I was going to ask about shooting on IMAX. Was that something you thought about doing back in the script stage?

No. When I first came up with the concept of "Sinners" I thought we were going to shoot it on Super 16mm. I thought it was going to be a down-and-dirty movie. 

Oh, so originally "Sinners" had a grimy, dirty South feel?

Exactly, bro. But this was before I went to Mississippi and really learned about the story I was telling. During that time I realized the story has to be epic and mythic. That's when an executive at Warner Bros. reached out and asked if I considered large format. And he was asking from a business sense, seeing how complicated it's become to convince folks to come out of their house and watch something that's original. So he was thinking about it from that side. But as soon as he said that, it unlocked something in me. It was the missing link to what the movie needed. 

I mean, America is a fucking beautiful landscape. It's gorgeous, and the natural landscapes totally dictate the people you are interacting with. The Mississippi Delta felt that way. It is the single most African place I've ever been to that wasn't Africa in terms of the feeling that I had. The epic feel of that flat pastoral landscape. You stand in some of the places in the Delta and it's so flat you felt you could see the Earth bending on the horizon. 

Are you hooked on shooting on IMAX cameras going forward?

I loved the experience. I think it's something I could see myself definitely doing in the future. It's incredibly addictive.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Sinners" is in theaters now.

• Many US residents don't have to travel far to see gorgeous waterfalls.
• From New York to Alaska and beyond, plenty of states have cascades worth visiting.
• Some are easily accessible, but others require a trek.

Waterfalls are one of nature's most awe-inspiring sights. The sound of pounding water, the feel of mist, and the visual of cascading water all combine for an unforgettable experience.

The US has some amazing cascades, from New York to Alaska to Tennessee.

These natural marvels can draw millions of visitors a year, propping up local economies. Visitor spending in Niagara County, New York, which is home to Niagara Falls, reached a record high of $1.082 billion in 2023, according to data from Tourism Economics.

However, not all of the country's most beautiful waterfalls are major tourist attractions. Some require arduous hikes that reward visitors with picturesque views. Others are visible from the roadside, perfect for snapping unforgettable photos without much effort.

Here are 17 of the US's most jaw-dropping waterfalls.

Bridal Veil Falls, Alaska

For over 40 years, daredevils have been climbing the icy walls of Keystone Canyon as part of an annual festival. Located near Valdez, east of Anchorage, the canyon also contains more than a dozen waterfalls. Bridal Veil Falls is among them, its rushing water suspended in a frozen tableau during the winter. It's over 600 feet tall and is viewable from Richardson Highway.

Havasu Falls, Arizona

The contrast of teal water and dusty orange rocks makes Havasu Falls a memorable sight. The waterfall is one of several on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Over 60 miles from Grand Canyon Village, it's a 10-mile hike to see the vivid scenery. Temperatures can get scorching, as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The popular spot also requires a reservation in advance.

Burney Falls in, California

Volcanoes and erosion shaped Northern California's Burney Falls. The craggy rocks are remnants of basalt lava flows, with nooks and crannies that hold flowing water. Snow melt and springs feed the 129-foot cascade, upping its intensity in the spring and summer. They end in a misty reservoir below the falls. Sightseekers pack the park during warmer months, so expect lots of traffic if you visit.

Yosemite Falls, California

Melting snow turns into the pounding Yosemite Falls in spring. By late summer, it's like someone has turned off the tap. Three cascades make up the Yosemite National Park's falls, which are among the tallest in the world at 2,425 feet. Full moons in April and May produce an effect known as a moonbow, when the Lower Yosemite Falls' splashing water creates a lunar rainbow. Visitors can take a 1-mile path to the bottom or a more taxing 7.2-mile hike to the Upper Falls.

Bridal Veil Falls, Colorado

Telluride is known for its skiing, but it's also home to Colorado's tallest free-falling waterfall. Like Alaska's Bridal Veil Falls, it freezes in the winter. Snow enthusiasts come for the spectacular views as well as ice climbing. In summer, hikers, bikers, and four-wheelers arrive for a peek at the 365-foot flow. Atop the falls sits a hydroelectric power plant, built in 1907.

Wailua Falls, Hawaii

Two streams meet and part in the Kauai's Wailua Falls, depending on the amount of water flowing. The trail to the falls is dangerous, and hiking is prohibited — however, tourists barely have to leave their cars to get a glimpse of the twin falls. In the mornings, rainbows dance in the falls' mist. It's a hugely popular spot for wedding photos, and park officials have had to create guidelines to keep it from getting overrun with couples on their big day.

Waimoku Falls, Hawaii

It's no easy feat to reach Maui's 400-foot Waimoku Falls. After a twisty drive to Haleakalā National Park, hikers take the Pīpīwai Trail through a bamboo forest. Moss coats the trees, and the water thunders over the precipitous cliff. There can be rock falls and flash floods in the park, so visitors should be alert.

Shoshone Falls, Idaho

Outside Twin Falls, what's known as the "Niagara of the West" spans 900 feet and plummets from 212 feet. It pours into the Snake River, which winds through a basalt canyon. Kayakers and canoeists travel along the river when it's warm. Spring means melting snow adds oomph to the flow, which slows in summer when some of the water is used for irrigation. Viewing decks offer opportunities for breathtaking photos, and there are hiking trails and picnic areas in the park as well.

Cumberland Falls, Kentucky

Like Yosemite, Cumberland Falls produces lunar rainbows when the 125-foot-wide expanse of water catches the light during full moons. Crowds make their way to the Cumberland Falls State Resort Park to see the moonbow, either hiking the challenging trail for a closeup or staking out a spot in the parking lot, which has a view of the falls.

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

Winters are cold in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but the Tahquamenon Falls don't freeze over every year. They're nicknamed the "Root Beer Falls" because cedar tannins have turned the water soda-pop brown. Water also foams as it drops nearly 50 feet, like the foam on a freshly poured soft drink. There are two sets of falls, located about 4 miles apart.

Niagara Falls, New York

Arguably the most famous falls in North America, Niagara flows through both Canada and the US. One of its cataracts, Horseshoe Falls, thunders down 180 feet and is located in both Ontario and New York. There are plenty of vantage points for watching the three waterfalls, including bridges and an observation tower. Perhaps the most unique is the Maid of the Mist boat tour, which has been ferrying passengers past the falls since 1847.

Rainbow Falls, New York

Niagara Falls doesn't have a monopoly on New York's pretty waterfalls. Near Lake Placid is the 150-foot Rainbow Falls, located in the Ausable Chasm, a sandstone gorge. True to its name, a spectrum of colors dazzles on the rock wall as the light catches the mist. Visitors need a reservation if they're going to make the 8.5-mile roundtrip hike from May through October. The Route 9 bridge also crosses nearby.

Dry Falls, North Carolina

For those who like to peer at waterfalls from behind the curtain of water, Dry Falls is a spectacular option. A trail through the Nantahala National Forest takes hikers around the back of the 75-foot waterfall. Visitors can also see the front view after a short walk from the parking lot, but either way, this is a popular attraction that gets crowded.

Multnomah Falls, Oregon

A short drive from Portland brings travelers to the state's tallest waterfall. Underground springs supply the two-tiered Multnomah Falls, which crashes down over 600 feet. Though that flow is heaviest in winter and spring, tourist traffic peaks in the summer. Visitors need a permit for admittance at the end of May through early September.

Ruby Falls, Tennessee

Take an elevator ride into a limestone cave in Lookout Mountain, and follow the trail to Ruby Falls. It's named not for its color but for the wife of Leo Lambert, who found the waterfall in 1928. Raining down 145 feet, the underground waterfall is a popular attraction that's not far from Chattanooga. Today, lights illuminate the cave, and tickets are needed to enter.

Snoqualmie Falls, Washington

The gushing waterfall in the opening credits of the '90s show "Twin Peaks" is Snoqualmie Falls. Less than an hour from Seattle, it cascades 268 feet against a backdrop of granite cliffs. Sightseers can enjoy them from an accessible observation deck or check into the Salish Lodge, which overlooks the falls.

Yellowstone Falls, Wyoming

Hydrothermal vents aren't Yellowstone's only stunning water feature. The Upper and Lower Falls carry the Yellowstone River to the park's Grand Canyon. Each tumbles roughly 100 feet into the canyon, which is over 20 miles long and a rich mix of reds and yellows. Roads with viewpoints run along both the Upper and Lower Falls.

• A Utah family is suing Southwest Airlines, saying their young son was burned by a hot coffee.
• They claimed the flight attendants were unapologetic and unsure how to treat his injuries.
• The four-year-old has since had difficulties sitting and missed weeks of preschool.

Southwest Airlines is being sued by a couple who say their young son suffered second-degree burns after hot coffee was spilled on him during a flight.

Ryan and Kamrie Wong filed the lawsuit in Chicago on Wednesday. Reuters reported that their son, known as K.W. in the suit, is four years old.

The family was flying from Orlando to Chicago last September when a Southwest flight attendant was "precariously" carrying a drinks tray with one arm, the suit stated.

It adds that a coffee then spilled on the boy, who screamed, "It's so hot!"

The child was crying and screaming, suffering second-degree burns to his buttocks, per the suit.

It also claimed that the flight attendants were unapologetic and unsure how to treat the boy's injuries.

"K.W. was in significant, visible, and vocal pain and distress throughout the rest of the flight," the complaint added.

After landing in Chicago, the family then had to wait for another flight to Utah, where they live.

The lawsuit says a Southwest gate agent made the situation worse by placing K.W. directly on his buttocks, which caused one of his burn blisters to burst.

Among other activities, the complaint adds that K.W. has had difficulties sitting in his car seat, using the bathroom, and getting dressed since the incident.

The boy is said to have missed about two weeks of preschool due to the pain and treatment for his burns.

"When K.W. did return to school, he struggled to sit for extended periods of time," the suit stated.

The Wongs accused Southwest Airlines of negligence and were seeking unspecified damages in excess of $75,000.

Southwest told Business Insider it did not comment on pending litigation.

• Google just upgraded its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5.
• Flash is an AI model that allows you to give it a "thinking budget."
• Developers can now calibrate how much thinking Google's Gemini model does for any task.

Google just rolled out an upgraded version of its latest AI model, with a new feature letting you "turn thinking on or off."

On Thursday, the tech giant rolled out an early version of Gemini 2.5 Flash, an updated version of the 2.5 model it released in March.

That model — a so-called "thinking" model — was dubbed Google's most intelligent one to date, given its ability to reason through ideas before responding.

However, Google is now ready to let you choose how much this new model thinks. And if you really want to, you can tell it to stop thinking completely.

In a blog post, Google Gemini's director of product management, Tulsee Doshi, said that developers can "set thinking budgets to find the right tradeoff between quality, cost, and latency."

The new feature aims to address the intense processing and computing requirements of a new wave of "reasoning" models that have spurred interest across the AI industry, including OpenAI's o3, released on Wednesday.

Google's new model aims to ensure that its reasoning model uses only as much processing power as necessary and applies it only when needed.

Doshi noted that not all tasks require the same reasoning. For example, the reasoning needed to answer "How many provinces does Canada have?" is different from asking AI to calculate the maximum bending stress on a cantilever beam of particular dimensions, she said.

To allocate different levels of reasoning abilities to user queries, Google will allow developers to set a "thinking budget" that Doshi said will offer "fine-grained control" over the number of tokens — units of data — a model generates while operating.

The move to introduce a "thinking budget" also follows a wider shift in the industry to become more "efficient" in the use of computing power.

This followed the release of a reasoning model in January from Chinese startup DeepSeek that claimed to use less computing power.

• About seven years ago, I moved from one of the cloudiest US cities to one of the sunniest — Reno.
• Instead of only spending half of my year in the sun, I spend around 70% of it basking in sunshine.
• I miss living near family, but the pleasant year-round outdoor lifestyle I have now is hard to beat.

In 2018, I moved from Youngstown, Ohio — one of the cloudiest cities in the US — to Reno, Nevada — one of the sunniest.

Whereas my hometown of Youngstown averages about 200 days of cloudy skies each year, Reno averages over 250 days of sunshine.

Moving across the country for graduate school was an exciting new start, and I couldn't wait to leave Ohio's dark, gray skies behind.

At the time, I was still a bit hesitant to leave my friends and family in the Midwest, but I hoped moving to a sunny climate would be a major lifestyle boost.

It was. Although I miss some parts of living in Ohio, I'm still based in Reno seven years later.

The sun is almost always shining in Reno — and the city still experiences all 4 seasons

Reno is regularly ranked among the top sunniest cities in the United States. The city, located in a high desert valley, typically sees sunny skies for the majority of the year.

During my first few months in Reno, I was shocked by how consistently I experienced sunshine and clear skies. The sky shined a vibrant shade of blue nearly every day — I had never seen such predictable weather in Northeast Ohio.

The weather also had a positive effect on my mood. I always dreaded Ohio's gloomiest days, and Reno's sunshine made me feel more cheerful and motivated.

Plus, I like that the city still experiences changing seasons — mild temperatures in spring and fall, heat in the summer, and even the occasional snowfall in winter.

I mostly enjoyed the changing seasons in Ohio, especially the state's stunning fall foliage. Winters, though, could be especially harsh with overcast skies and frigid temperatures.

In Reno, I can experience all four seasons while still enjoying the near-constant sunshine. A bit of sun definitely makes chilly winter days more pleasant.

I love the city's outdoor access — and the active lifestyle is hard to beat

After moving from Youngstown to Reno, I couldn't help but notice the lifestyle differences between a cloudy and sunny city.

With excellent weather and spectacular scenery, Reno's culture seems to revolve around outdoor activities.

Nearly every person I met here seemed to enjoy a variety of active hobbies, whether skiing, cycling, backpacking, or rock climbing. The sunshine just helps foster an active lifestyle.

Back in Ohio, I had trouble finding motivation to get outside on those dreary, cloudy days. In Reno, I relish the opportunity to explore the outdoors.

I've taken up road cycling and take any chance I can find to pedal through the valley and nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.

Plus, Reno's easy access to Lake Tahoe has put even more outdoor adventures at my fingertips when I want to go hiking, kayaking, or scuba diving.

I miss living near family, but I can't imagine living in a cloudy city again

After living in Nevada for years, the state feels like home. I love walking my dog on sunny hiking trails (even in winter!) and knowing I can expect relatively pleasant weather year-round.

That being said, I don't love everything about living here. The weather can be exceptionally windy at times, and summers come with a risk of smoke from nearby wildfires.

I miss living close to family, and the distance has been harder to handle since becoming an aunt to my adorable niece and nephews back east.

Even still, I can't imagine moving back. The outdoor lifestyle in Reno is unlike anything I experienced in the Midwest, and the sunshine keeps me feeling happy and motivated.

Although the future is uncertain, I know one thing for sure: I'd never choose to live in such a cloudy place again, and I'm happy to call sunny Reno my home.

• President Donald Trump compared the US to a department store that everyone wants "a piece" of.
• In Oval Office remarks on Thursday, he said trade deals could be concluded in a matter of weeks.
• He said there would be a "little bit of transition" before tariffs are successful.

President Donald Trump compared the US to a "big beautiful department store, before that business was destroyed by the internet."

In Oval Office remarks on Thursday, he said that he felt each country wants "a piece of that store."

"China wants it, Japan wants it, Mexico, Canada — they live off it, those two, without us, they wouldn't have a country," he added.

Trump was responding to questions from reporters about US trade deals with other countries.

Asked how much time he thought the US needed to make deals, Trump said, "I would think over the next 3 to 4 weeks."

"I think maybe the whole thing could be concluded" by then, he said.

But Trump said that, at a certain point, if a deal isn't made, a tariff will just be set and the country or the market may find the tariff rate too high.

"They'll come back and say, 'Well, we think this is too high, and we'll negotiate,' or they're going to say something else, they're going to say, 'Let's see what happens,'" Trump said.

Trump's recent tariff announcements have roiled global markets and affected relationships between the US and other countries worldwide.

Trump said any country has the right to decide not to shop in the "store of America" in order to avoid the tariffs, but that "we have something that nobody else has, and that's the American consumer."

In his remarks on Thursday, Trump also said that he may not raise tariffs on China if it goes beyond the 125% duty it currently has on American goods.

"At a certain point, I don't want them to go higher because at a certain point, you make it where people don't buy," he said.

• Melinda French Gates feared her family's vast wealth would result in entitled children.
• The billionaire philanthropist sent them to local schools, and they all took part in community work.
• Bill Gates' ex-wife used an allowance and chores to keep them grounded, she told a podcast.

Melinda French Gates knew her three children were at high risk of being detached from reality, so she says she took pains to keep them grounded.

With Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates as their father, Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe Gates were surrounded by a "crazy amount of wealth" and lived in an "extraordinarily large house," French Gates told NPR's "Fresh Air" podcast this week.

The philanthropist is worth about $14 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. She said she reflected on her own childhood, and the tenets her middle-class parents instilled in her, to figure out how to stave off entitlement and elitism in her kids.

"I wanted them to have deep values. And I wanted them to know they were lucky," French Gates said in the interview, part of the publicity tour for her new book: "The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward."

French Gates, who divorced Gates in 2021 and stepped down as cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last year, said she enrolled her children in local schools instead of homeschooling them. She wanted her family to be part of the community, and believed it would benefit her children, she said.

Her kids did take some "knocks" as she moved them between numerous schools in search of the "right school for the right kid," she said.

French Gates, who launched The Giving Pledge with Gates and Warren Buffett, made sure to expose her kids to the outside world whether they were overseas or at home.

"We went out and saw what life was like for other kids," she said. "And even in the Seattle community, we would go out and work with the homeless, work in a community shelter, be on the lines where they're feeding people."

Those experiences opened their eyes to how lucky they were and made them think about their role in society, French Gates said. She added that her younger daughter, Phoebe, worked in Rwanda for several summers in middle and high school and lived with a local family there.

French Gates said that seeing the world gave her kids perspective about the harsh realities of life and the fact that Seattle was just a "tiny speck on the map."

"And so I tried to ground them in that, ground them with chores, ground them with an allowance," she said, adding that she made sure the hired help had good values too.

French Gates also discussed why she values community work on the "On With Kara Swisher" podcast this week. She said that helping the homeless, mentoring or helping kids with their homework, and serving food to the less fortunate teaches valuable lessons and makes people feel better for helping out.

• I always wanted to be a journalist even though I knew it was a tough industry.
• I landed a full-time job right after graduating from college.
• Having work experience and realistic expectations helped.

Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a print journalist. In high school, a few teachers tried to steer me in a different direction because getting a job in the media was so difficult even then, but I was determined to make it happen.

I studied for a double degree in journalism and business management and graduated in 2007. Despite the naysayers, I immediately landed a full-time cadetship job at a newspaper. I believe three things got me over the line.

I did as much work experience as possible

When I wasn't at university, I did as much work experience as I could. While my friends were busy enjoying their time off school by going to the beach or the movies, I was cutting my teeth in a newsroom. My degree required a minimum of one internship, but I wanted to do extras.

I often found it super intimidating and felt out of my depth, but I gained real-world experience that proved to be invaluable. Doing work experience meant that by the time I graduated and was out there looking for a job, I already had my byline published in multiple publications and a portfolio of work to show prospective employers.

In my one and only job interview, the chief of staff wasn't interested in my university grades. In fact, I don't think he even asked about them. He wanted to see examples of my published work. The work experience I'd done definitely paid off.

I persevered

Where I lived on the Gold Coast in Australia, there was only one daily newspaper, the Gold Coast Bulletin, and I was desperate to work for them.

Back then, there was a scholarship program that high school seniors could apply for. It was a four-year program alternating work and study, with a guaranteed position as a newspaper journalist upon completion. Successful candidates could study for their Bachelor of Journalism at Bond University and work as a paid cadet journalist at the Gold Coast Bulletin on a semester-on, semester-off basis. I applied, but I missed out.

Even though I was extremely disappointed, I didn't let it discourage me. They say that there are many pathways to the same destination, and it's so true. I went to university for four years, then reapplied for a job with the Gold Coast Bulletin in 2007.

When I called and asked the chief of staff if they had any work available, he said they didn't. I dropped off my résumé and portfolio anyway with reception. Later that afternoon, he called me back and said to come for an interview.

The chief of staff gave me a chance and offered me a position on the copy desk, which basically involved answering phones and writing about kids' sporting achievements. It opened a door, and I was grateful that my perseverance paid off.

I was realistic about having to work my way up

Though the copy desk wasn't exactly where I wanted to be, the newsroom was, and I knew that I had to start somewhere.

I'd also conceded that if I didn't land a job at the Gold Coast, I was willing to move elsewhere to get started in a career in journalism. I think that being flexible and having realistic expectations about working your way up to where you want to be is really important as a graduate.

I ended up working at the Gold Coast Bulletin for three years, then traveling and working odd jobs while overseas. I returned to a newsroom as a print journalist in Melbourne in 2014, and then in 2015, I started my own copywriting business. Nowadays, I work from home and write freelance parenting, travel, and lifestyle articles for a range of publications. I still love my work.

I always tell my kids to reach for the stars and follow their dreams, even if they seem difficult to achieve. I did, and I never looked back.

• NATO has ramped up its presence in the Baltic Sea, sensing a threat from Russia.
• Countries that border the strategic waters are also ordering more vessels.
• The sea is important both to Russia and to NATO.

NATO countries that share a strategically important sea with Russia have boosted their presence there and are buying more warships, as they eye Russia warily.

Denmark, which sits at the mouth of the Baltic Sea, announced plans to buy dozens more ships amid rising threats in the Baltic and the Arctic.

The Baltic Sea is a major trade and telecomms route that has seen increased patrols and alleged sabotages of undersea cables since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many European officials say they believe Russia is behind the severing of cables.

Lithuania, which borders Russia and the sea, announced this month that it is buying two new attack boats. Poland is also building new frigates and is planning to buy submarines. Estonia, which has only eight ships and one of the world's smallest navies, aims to purchase up to 12 new vessels.

Sweden, which joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine, is also procuring four more surface vessels.

Much of Sweden's military was designed with a fight against Russia in mind, and it has even issued its citizens a booklet advising them about how to prepare for such a war.

Pål Jonson, Sweden's defense minister, told BI in February that Sweden is "in the process also of procuring four new surface vessels," saying they will "be significantly bigger" than its existing Visby class corvettes.

Bryan Clark, a naval operations expert at the Hudson Institute who served on the US Navy headquarters staff, said the vessels, combined with Sweden's submarines, would be "very useful for closing off the Baltic Sea if they wanted to, using the combination of the submarines and those surface combatants."

The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration said last year that two of the ships were planned to be delivered to the Swedish Armed Forces in 2030.

The country's admission to NATO boosted the alliance's maritime presence, particularly in the Baltic Sea, which is flanked by countries including Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Russia's naval presence in the Baltic as of December 2023 included one attack submarine, five guided missile destroyers, one guided missile frigate, and 35 smaller ships, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

However, Russia moves its naval assets around, changing what is based in each port.

Many alliance members have started calling the Baltic the "NATO Sea," after Sweden and neighboring Finland joined NATO.

Sweden brings submarine capabilities that few other NATO members in the region have. Estonia, Latvia, Denmark, Finland, and Lithuania have no submarines, while Poland has just one.

Sweden's submarines are also well suited for the Baltic Sea in particular, according to naval warfare experts.

Steven Horrell, a former US naval intelligence officer and now a warfare expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BI that Sweden's small and quiet submarines are perfect for a sea with "smaller inlets, small islands, small shallow waters."

Jonson said Sweden could bring "unique capabilities" to NATO's operations in the Baltic Sea, underwater and on the surface.

Sweden also knows the sea well: Jonson described operating there as "something we've been doing for hundreds of years, and we like to think that we know the Baltic Sea inside out."

He said "a lot of things" were being done to protect critical infrastructure on the seabed, adding that Sweden was using its own navy and coast guard, but NATO had also stepped up its efforts.

Sweden is part of NATO's Baltic Sentry operation, which has put more ships and control vessels in the sea. But Jonson said more could be done.

Sweden's defense minister warned last year that, even though Russia's forces were "tied up" in Ukraine, "We cannot rule out a Russian attack on our country."

In addition to boosting defense spending, Sweden is giving Ukraine its biggest-ever support package this year, worth about $1.6 billion.

Jonson described that as a message to its allies: "We have to all step up and provide more assistance to Ukraine."

He called supporting Ukraine "the right thing to do and the smart thing to do because it's really also an investment into our own security because the stakes before us are enormous."

• Many consultants and accountants strive to become a partner at one of the Big Four firms.
• BI asked executive recruiters and a former PwC partner for their tips for making it to the top rank.
• Their advice includes developing a commercial mindset, being a team player, and learning to navigate internal politics.

Making it to partner at one of the Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, EY, PwC, and KPMG — is the pinnacle of success for many consultants and accountants.

Partners are the firms' most senior employees. Those who hold equity in the business traditionally get a vote in strategic matters and a share of annual profits. That meant each of Deloitte's equity partners in the UK received the equivalent of $1.3 million last year.

Becoming a partner is notoriously difficult, and is only getting more competitive as structural shake-ups and slowing growth have reduced partner numbers and annual payouts.

Business Insider asked two recruiters who place partners at the Big Four firms and a former PwC partner who recently left the firm for the advice they'd give early-career employees who want the coveted role.

Networking

James O'Dowd, founder of the global executive recruiter Patrick Morgan, which specializes in senior partner hiring and industry analysis, told BI that two key traits were needed to become a Big Four partner: a "commercial nature" and an understanding of "the politics within the business."

"A lot of your success is about the support and encouragement you get from senior individuals and the individuals around you as much as it is your competence," he said.

You can be technically good, but unless you invest time building those internal networks, you won't progress as quickly, O'Dowd said.

Mohamed Kande, who made it all the way to become PwC's global chairman last year, wrote in a 2021 LinkedIn post that several executives in the firm helped him "learn the many areas of our business" and "helped me grow and provided me with tremendous opportunities to advance my career."

As a junior, you should start putting your hand up to do the tasks other people don't want to do, said O'Dowd. Over your career, that will build you a reputation as someone who can get stuff done, he added.

Paul Webster is a former EY employee who's now a managing partner at Page Executive, a senior talent recruitment firm. He said there was no doubt that networking was a necessary skill at the Big Four.

Webster, who has worked in the advisory world for the past 20 years, advised employees to start incorporating more networking and client events into their schedules, and "be good at schmoozing."

You should also draw on these social skills to be a team player, Webster added. Whereas other industries have more of a focus on individual performance, he said the Big Four don't want to see you trying to get ahead by stepping on someone else's toes.

"You're trying to help the team win so that the firm gets ahead. They particularly venerate collaboration and an extremely collegiate style."

Develop a commercial mindset

"Ultimately, a partner in a Big Four is a sales role," O'Dowd told BI. "Your sole focus is on winning and nurturing client relationships."

He said a Big Four career meant transitioning from doer to revenue generator to seller.

"As you progress through those levels, you're increasingly managing people and then eventually the onus is on not only managing but bringing in money," so developing those skills from an early point will help to set you apart, O'Dowd said.

Even if everyday tasks don't require commercial skills, he advised junior employees to get as much exposure as they can to the commercial side of projects by attending client-facing meetings and connecting with people who are known for doing it really well.

O'Dowd added that senior partners tend to frown on those who work from home, preferring people to demonstrate the interpersonal skills necessary for commercial business, so going to the office is a good idea.

Webster said the focus on business skills has become even more pertinent over the past decade.

"Even when you're getting up to senior manager grade, they now start to expect you to have some level of a Rolodex or some contacts or some sort of ability to bring in business even before you get to partner," he said.

Climbing the ranks isn't the only option

Working your way up the ranks internally isn't the only way to a Big Four partnership.

Alan Paton joined PwC as an equity partner from Google. He worked in AI cloud capabilities in its financial services division before leaving the Big Four firm this year.

He told BI that joining the firm required more than a year of individual interviews, panel interviews, personality and academic references — and that was while being "fast-tracked."

Every hiring decision is based on the business case, so to become a partner from an external company, you have to have specific skills the firm is lacking, Paton told BI.

He added that the firms are desperate for high-quality people with cloud, AI, data, and tech skills, but anything else will not get you very far.

He added it was "pretty tough" to break into the Big Four from a smaller consulting firm if your work consists only of "generic consulting."

O'Dowd said Big Four employees should be thinking carefully about positioning themselves and their skill sets.

"Think strategically about your progression and the area you're filling versus who else is in the organisation," he said. "If I'm smart and I'm still developing my capability, I might position myself into an area where I know there's a gap."

In response to a request for comment, KPMG US's vice chair of talent and culture, Sandy Torchia, said the firm aimed to empower partners with three essential mindsets.

"These mindsets — referred to as 'owner, operator, steward' — are vital to the partnership's strength and provide our partners with meaningful connections to KPMG throughout their careers and beyond," she said.

We also recognize that career aspirations evolve. By fostering a multi-disciplinary firm with diverse career pathways, we not only better support our clients but also offer our professionals layered opportunities throughout their journey."

PwC, EY, and Deloitte did not respond to requests for comment.

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• In March 2024, I moved from New York City to Seattle.
• I expected to love it, but it had a lot of challenges.
• After a little over a year, I returned to New York and am much happier now.

In early 2024, I decided to leave my life in New York City and embark on a new adventure on the West Coast in Seattle.

After visiting my mom's cousin in western Washington as a teen and seeing the area that was depicted in my beloved "Twilight" franchise, I vowed I would live there one day — and I finally had the chance.

Plus, I had been in New York for about 10 months after moving from the UK and felt a lack of stability because I couldn't get a lease — I lacked a record of rental history in the US to qualify — and therefore was subletting. I needed a change.

I moved to Seattle expecting to love it but the reality was very different. A year later, I returned to New York City.

I loved my apartment with a water view, but the public transportation was lacking

I signed a six-month lease (which I later renewed for eight months) on an apartment in Kitsap County, which is about 15 miles outside Seattle by ferry.

My apartment was nothing short of incredible — it overlooked the Puget Sound, and I could often see sea lions and, if I was really lucky, orcas from my window.

I was situated a short walk from the Washington State Ferry terminal, with access to Seattle via a 30-minute $2 fast ferry ride or an hour's journey on the larger free ferry.

The time spent on the ferry was nothing I wasn't used to in New York, where it can easily take an hour to get from some parts of Queens to Brooklyn.

However, the major difference is that there were only eight larger ferries a day, often at odd times. The fast ferry was very small and often required waiting in line for upward of an hour at peak times if you wanted to snag a seat.

If I had a meeting in Seattle, I would need to account for an extra two hours, and if I ever wanted to go for dinner or a night out, I would have to catch the 10 p.m. ferry home or wait until after midnight — which did happen.

One evening, I met a friend visiting from out of town and, sure enough, missed the 10 p.m. ferry and had to wait for the 12:50 a.m. ferry, which got me home around 2 a.m.

While the ferries felt safe, I was still uneasy being out so late alone.

The public transportation was annoying but not my main issue with Seattle

I also thought that living in Washington would mean more exploring with long hikes and trips to the beach.

I had visions of myself frequently venturing to the Olympic National Park, but as I don't have a driver's license, this was nearly impossible without taking several buses on a journey that would take close to half a day to complete.

My mom's cousin still lived in the area, but despite having her and other distant family relatively nearby, I would rarely see them, and I found it difficult to make friends.

Before moving to the West Coast, several people warned me about how difficult it can be for newcomers to make friends — a phenomenon called the "Seattle freeze."

Oftentimes, I would smile and ask people about their day while grabbing a coffee or in a store. Most people were shocked that I even spoke to them and would ignore me.

I also tried Bumble BFF and joined Facebook Groups like Seattle's Girl Group, but nothing ever came from it. I would chat with people and arrange to meet up, but they either stopped responding or the unreliable ferry schedule made it unfeasible to meet up at a bar or club night — the type of outing a lot of people suggested.

I missed the hustle and bustle of NYC

Although it can be overwhelming at times, I really missed the hecticness and excitement of New York.

In Washington, there were times when I would go almost a week without leaving the house because I had no one to hang out with.

My small Kitsap County town was mainly made up of people in the military and retirees, and many venues closed by 8 p.m. And events I wanted to attend in Seattle sometimes didn't align with the ferry schedule.

On the other hand, when I lived in NYC, I would attend media events and hang out with friends at least three times a week.

The social aspect is what I missed the most.

So, in April, just over a year after first moving away, I headed back to New York City.

I don't regret my time in Seattle, but New York is home

The year I spent in Washington doesn't feel like wasted time. I learned a lot about myself and those around me.

It helped me realize that I was made for big city life, and I love being an honorary New Yorker. I truly feel alive in this city.

• Tesla owners have found themselves in the crosshairs of political protests across the world.
• Elon Musk's involvement in the Trump administration has had a knock-on impact on his EV company.
• One Tesla owner sold his Cybertruck, another told BI they sold company shares but kept the car.

In recent months, backlash against Elon Musk has spurred a Tesla boycott movement, pushing some owners and shareholders to ditch the brand — and, in some cases, leading to vandalism incidents.

Business Insider spoke to four Tesla owners about their concerns on ownership amid a growing campaign against the EV giant.

While one owner returned his Cybertruck as a precaution for his kids, the other three owners said they don't plan to get rid of their vehicles, despite the rise in anti-Tesla sentiment.

The following stories are based on transcribed conversations with Tesla owners. Business Insider has verified their identities and vehicle ownership. Their words have been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a big Tesla fan, but returned my Cybertruck because my daughter was worried about getting bullied

Ben Baker is a Tesla owner living in Sacramento, California, who sold his Cybertruck.

I'm a huge fan of technology. I already own a Tesla, which I absolutely love, and I really wanted a Cybertruck.

I think Cybertrucks are freaking awesome. They're really fun to drive. They're roomy and spacious. I wasn't buying it for other people, I was buying the Cybertruck because I wanted to drive the future.

Not too long ago, after the election, somebody keyed my Tesla Model Y, and I was like, "OK, that's no big deal." I live in California, which is a Democratic state, and so I kind of figured that there would be some of that stuff. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I went and bought a Cybertruck.

The first week I drove the Cybertruck, I took my family to Starbucks in it. My family went in and I took some cool pictures. As I was doing that, three people walked behind me and started looking at me and laughing. Then one of them called me a Nazi.

I go, "What are you talking about? I'm just buying this awesome truck. I think it's awesome. I'm not a Nazi." They were like, "Whatever, Nazi."

I thought was weird.

Later on, one of my daughters told me that if I kept the Cybertruck, she was going to get bullied. My son, who leans right, said I should be able to drive the car I want.

I started thinking about if one of them is driving the Tesla Cybertruck and someone started vandalizing it. My daughter is young, she's had her license maybe a year. That's terrifying to me.

I'm a father and I have to do the right thing by my kids. If I could afford to own a Cybertruck myself and then send them to school with another vehicle, then great, it would be on me if it got damaged. But I can't have that happen to them in that vehicle. And who knows how far these guys will take it. They could harm my kids physically — and I couldn't live with myself if that happened. To me, it just wasn't worth seeing my daughter live in fear of the vehicle getting vandalized at their school.

I ended up taking it back, and Tesla was really cool about it. I was able to unwind everything.

I think people should have the right to protest — but they should have the right to protest without destruction. That's where the lines have been crossed.

Read more about Baker's story here.

I no longer align with Tesla, but I have no interest in taking down the company or selling my cars

John VonBokel is a 45-year-old Tesla owner living near St. Louis, Missouri. Business Insider has verified his shareholder status.

I have appreciated and admired Tesla for some time. I was under the impression that it aligned with my personal beliefs in terms of environment, which also overlaps with my personal political beliefs.

Now I feel as though I was wrong all along, or something has changed — but I certainly don't feel like I align with the company and the brand anymore. The shift has been uncomfortable and difficult.

As of October last year, I had hundreds of Tesla shares, and I sold all of them in the last few months.

My decision to sell was primarily financial. After the election, the stock just started going up, and I couldn't figure out how Elon Musk and Trump being together was beneficial to Tesla — and certainly not to the degree that warranted its market capitalization to nearly double.

For me, that meant it was overvalued and I needed to cash out. But I'm under no illusion that selling my shares had any impact on Elon's personal wealth or are somehow a repudiation of his actions.

I feel like what Elon Musk is doing politically is negatively impacting the brand and the company. But I'm more interested in protests that are focused on Elon Musk and Donald Trump's specific actions, or politics in general.

The name "Tesla Takedown" itself evokes something negative to me. They're trying to take down a company that I believe is still full of good people who just happen to be led by somebody I don't support anymore.

While I'm not interested in taking down the company, I'm also not interested in supporting it.

I drive a Tesla pretty much daily and haven't experienced vandalism, so I'm not worried about that. But I certainly would struggle to buy a new Tesla now.

Coincidentally, though, they don't have anything that I really want. I have multiple Teslas that I'm happy with. I have test-driven the newer versions, but there aren't any improvements that make me want to get a new loan at current interest rates.

The future is difficult to predict. My decision to purchase another vehicle would depend partly on what they come out with.

I've been laughed at for my Tesla, but I'm not deterred from buying another one

Mitchell Feldman is a Telsa owner living in the UK.

I'm a gadget enthusiast, and I was drawn to buying a Tesla because it had all the things I wanted in a car. It was easy to use and environmentally friendly. I liked the idea of never having to go to a gas station again. The safety features, like assisted driving and situational awareness, also drew me.

I bought my Model Y in 2022, and it's performed over and above my expectations.

In March, I experienced the first negative reaction to my Tesla since I've had the car. I went to a concert in London, and while I was in the parking lot, I saw a guy with his wife and daughter pointing at my car and laughing.

The guy came up to me in a very confrontational way and said, "Do you support Elon Musk, then, driving a Tesla?"

I was quite aghast. I felt quite violated by the question and didn't know what to say.

I've always admired Elon Musk because I think that a lot of the technology he creates is for betterment. I like that his businesses are data-driven, whether it's Neuralink, SpaceX, or Tesla.

I hadn't considered the impact his work at DOGE was having on the US government; as someone based in the UK, I'm somewhat removed from what's happening. I think Trump has brought in someone who will look at the situation through the lens of a CEO.

The incident made me realize how the perception of Musk impacts his brands. It hasn't put me off from buying another Tesla, however. I'm hoping to have the new Model Y in a few months.

Everyone is allowed an opinion, but I'm proud of the fact that I don't conform to the crowd and choose my personal preferences over listening to what everyone else says.

Read more about Feldman's story here.

I don't think people should make assumptions about my politics because I own a Tesla

Michele Pierog, a 57-year-old Tesla owner from New Hampshire.

I got myself a Tesla Model Y in 2023. I wanted something that was convenient, and I didn't think that any competitor brands had charging infrastructure as robust as Tesla's.

I wanted to try out the car, but thought I'd probably sell it in two years. After three months of driving it, I was amazed by how much I enjoyed never having to go to a gas station.

The utility has been great. I often use its self-driving driving capabilities. There's plenty of room, and it has a "frunk" — a trunk and the front where I keep games for my granddaughter when we're traveling. We call it the "frunk of fun."

I'm not a huge news watcher, so I wasn't really aware of the Tesla controversy. I knew Elon Musk had been put in a position of power, and people weren't happy, but I wasn't aware this impacted Tesla drivers until a friend called me a couple of weeks ago. She asked how I felt about driving my Tesla.

My response was that nothing had changed for me. The utility of the car was the same.

I did some research afterward and saw that there were protests at Tesla dealerships and some violent acts around Teslas. Regardless of what people's political views are about my vehicle, I think it's wrong that people are vandalizing Teslas.

Recently, when I was driving my granddaughter, someone in a truck behind me drove up aggressively close to me and sandwiched me between them and the car in front. They started beeping and yelling at me. I don't know if this was because of my Tesla, but I assumed that it was because it coincided with media reporting of Tesla vandalism, and there aren't many other Teslas in my area.

Even though this is speculative, I'm now wondering whether my vehicle choice is putting me in a bad position safety-wise.

I don't yet feel unsafe enough to get rid of my Tesla, but it saddens me that I may have to make a decision about changing my car based on other people's perceptions.

Driving a Tesla doesn't automatically mean I support what Elon is doing or have a particular political view. I don't think people should make assumptions about me because of the car I drive.

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• We all know burnout, but you may have "boreout" — being uninspired and detached from work.
• A Wharton psychologist has said it was on the rise as hybrid work reduced in-person interaction.
• This is what managers and employees can do about it.

Every employee knows what it is to be burned out. But do you know if you have "boreout"?

The term describes feeling purposeless and disengaged because of a lack of meaning at work. It was coined by two Swiss business consultants in a book in the late 2000s, but it may be having its moment.

The Wharton psychologist Adam Grant told CNBC last month that "boreout" was on the rise thanks to remote work. That comes after Gallup warned in January that a combination of a bad job market and rising cost of living meant American workers were "sticking with their current employer while feeling more disconnected than ever."

Kelli Thompson, an executive coach and the author of "Closing the Confidence Gap," didn't know the term boreout when she was feeling "itchy" after 11 years in her banking job.

"I love this company. This is great. All my coworkers are great, but I just feel like I'm going through the motions," Thompson recalled thinking in an interview with Business Insider. "Ultimately, you just start to feel disengaged."

Boreout isn't necessarily anything to do with the company or the people you work with, Thompson added. You may just be "bored because you've mastered whatever it is you're doing," she said.

After her own bout of boreout, Thompson started running her own business and coaches people who are experiencing it.

Boreout can arise when people fear leaving a job in an employers' market.

But Thompson said she encouraged people not to think that quitting a job they were disconnected from was the only solution.

"Actually, it's like 'no, I can be grateful that I have a job and also advocate to my employer that we should be making sure that we are aligned in our work,'" she said.

Kacy Fleming is an organizational psychologist and founder of The Fuchsia Tent, a private membership group for professional midlife women. She told BI that while boreout isn't discussed as much as burnout, she believed it was more common.

Fleming said boreout can happen for various reasons. Sometimes, people tire of their days being the same when they have tasks that impose a rigid routine. Other times, people become more senior and are given responsibilities that don't interest them, she added.

Office v home

Fleming said burnout and boredom can occur when someone's work life is suddenly taken over by tasks that overshadow the reasons they got into a profession in the first place, such as spreadsheets over creative pursuits.

Whether you're working in the office or at home is also a factor.

Fleming said flexibility and autonomy in working arrangements were important for productivity, and removing them could be detrimental, especially if leaders don't clearly explain the reasoning.

"It's a symptom of employees being given what they wanted briefly and then having it taken away," she said, adding that the reasons for RTO mandates should be more than "because I said so."

Incentives to come to the office, like free lunches, aren't enough, Fleming said. "If we're not taking care of the needs that really underpin people's feelings of safety and significance, Taco Tuesday is a slap in the face," she said.

But Lisa Walker, a Chicago-based strategic business executive who leads DHR's global industrial practice, told BI that the kind of communication the office facilitates can help identify boreout.

When five days in the office was more common, workers garnered a lot from informal conversations there, but remote work makes it harder to recognize when someone isn't as responsive or detect shifts in their tone, she said.

Walker said that if someone who is usually open about bringing up any issues suddenly becomes silent, that could be a sign they've checked out. The same applies if those who've been eager to be part of new projects become withdrawn, she added.

Walker said managers of remote or hybrid workers should ask themselves, "Have you created that informal social network? And if so, when was the last time you talked to them? Are we creating those social networking bonds through real, face-to-face interactions, not just text?"

'1% closer'

Thompson said that the people she works with who suffer from boreout are often risk-averse, or those who advocate for other people, but not themselves.

She said she encouraged them to think about what they want their work life to look like a year from now, and how they can move "1% closer" to the big change they want in it. "I think sometimes where they get caught up is they think they have to make this big sweeping change overnight."

When Thompson quit her banking job after 11 years, she took a pay cut to become the HR lead for a tech company. She said the move instantly felt right, even on the hard days.

"It just felt so easy," she said. The challenges were "worth it because I'm actually doing work that I think is fun and enjoyable and exciting."

Thompson added that the opposite of boreout isn't never having a bad day: "It just means that the harder days are more tolerable."

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• Zack Isaacs became an associate product marketing manager at Google UK at age 19.
• He gained experience through mentorships and a Google apprenticeship instead of going to university.
• Isaacs now runs OnSocial, which focuses on performance-driven advertising and is expanding to the UAE.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Zack Isaacs, the 23-year-old founder of a paid media and creative agency and former Google employee in London. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In England, we decide what subjects to pursue during secondary school GCSEs. I've always been entrepreneurial and loved tech, so I studied computer science but hated it because I couldn't code.

I enjoyed self-taught graphic design platforms like Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, so I started designing logos for friends, family, and local businesses during secondary school and built a portfolio.

Brands began to request social media help. I fell into marketing and a successful freelance career at age 17.

I chose not to go to university

I wasn't the most academic person and thrived more by actually doing than sitting in lectures. I decided to skip university and join the ORT Jump mentorship program I heard about during a school assembly. This unpaid program matches students with working professionals for an academic year of mentorship.

They paired me with Andrew Scrase, the head of digital marketing at Meta. I met with him about four times over the year. Spending time with Andrew gave me a real look at how social media worked from a business and advertising perspective.

I learned how media budgets are managed, how ad creative impacts performance, and what it takes to run campaigns at scale. That exposure at a young age helped me figure out what I wanted to do before I turned 18.

It was my dream to work at Google

After the mentorship program ended, I applied to Google's digital marketing apprenticeship and passed the first screening stage. Then, I progressed to Google's internal interview stage.

I designed and submitted a bespoke CV with a QR code linking to my online portfolio to stand out. In December, I got a call from someone at Google. They jumped into an impromptu interview, asking, "What does SEO stand for? What social media campaign have you worked on?" and more.

I must've answered well because I got into the program at 18, making me one of the youngest members and employees at Google in the UK overall.

I started in B2B ads marketing in a 15-month program. My job was to run events and talk about AI product adoption. Later, I worked on the YouTube Social Team to help launch YouTube Shorts with creators across the UK.

I wanted to stay at Google full-time

After the apprenticeship, I applied for the associate product marketing manager program. It's essentially Google's entry-level marketing department program, but it was a pretty senior role.

The process involved a five-stage interview process, including case-based and strategy interviews and behavioral assessments focused on "Googleyness."

Even though I had no degree, I got in. I was hired as an associate product marketing manager at age 19.

Within that role, I was the influencer and talent partnerships lead for the UK marketing team. This was a direct-to-consumer role, working on content for the Google UK social handle. I was given a budget to find and work with the most culturally relevant creators across campaigns for Pixel, Chrome, and Google Lens.

Eventually, my role pivoted to talent-focused, managing influencer relationships and partnerships and building community.

I quit my job at Google in 2023

After almost four years at Google, I left in March 2024, mainly because I felt stuck. My role was fun, but the progression was hard to see.

I wanted to do more on the social side, but there were budget restrictions and layoffs. It got complicated, and social wasn't as much of a priority as it was when I started. If I couldn't work at optimal budgets, I preferred to do my own thing.

I started my own business

I founded OnSocial, a specialist paid social media and creative agency focused on driving measurable growth through performance-driven advertising, in April 2024. I funded it through my savings. Now, just over a year in, we've grown to a team of four.

We combine high-quality creative production and advanced paid media strategies led by ex-Google and Meta specialists.

The most significant change from working at Google is moving from a buzzing office environment to being in a room alone as a founder. I'm currently working from home and coworking spaces in London and am in the process of relocating to the UAE. We've already built a great client base there, and expanding OnSocial in that region is a natural next step.

I don't regret any of my decisions

I've always dreamed of running my own agency, and now I have total freedom. For some people, university is the right path, but I knew early on that I learned better through doing.

Mentorship, apprenticeships, and self-education gave me the skills and clarity I needed faster than any classroom ever could. If anything, I gained more time and experience that helped me build something of my own.

• Goldman Sachs has been deepening its investments in generative artificial intelligence.
• CEO David Solomon has said the bank's AI tools will "scale and transform our engineering abilities."
• Seven Goldman employees, from analyst to partner, told BI how AI is changing their jobs.

A few years ago, what excited one of Wall Street's top tech bosses about artificial intelligence was its potential to serve as an infinite repository of facts. He even likened its advent to the printing press.

Now, Marco Argenti, the chief information officer at Goldman Sachs, is bullish about the tech's growing analytical and reasoning powers, too.

"It is like the ultimate librarian that knows how to find the information," he told Business Insider in a recent interview. He said that AI's reasoning capabilities have reached the point of helping users analyze and synthesize conclusions.

It's not just mundane tasks that can be outsourced to AI anymore, but even intricate problems that Argenti predicted will one day be solved by "teams" of human and digital brains.

That deepening degree of analytical ability has prompted a shift in how Goldman's other leaders have come to think about AI, and spawned a suite of new products. Under Argenti's leadership, the bank has introduced generative AI-powered resources built using the AI platform Goldman launched in mid-2024. That foundation was engineered with access to popular large language models like Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT, but includes a protective layer to insulate the firm's confidential data.

Goldman has since produced a range of tools, from a developer copilot for writing code, to a language translator, to its interactive "GS AI Assistant" — an AI sidekick for employees resembling the kind of chat interface that ChatGPT operates for its own everyday users.

During the bank's April earnings call, CEO David Solomon told shareholders that these tools, including the GS AI Assistant, promised "to scale and transform our engineering capabilities."

It's now available to roughly 10,000 members of the firm's more than 46,000-person-strong workforce, with the goal of expanding it to most others by the end of the year. The rollout comes as financial firms, including other banks, start to see cost and time savings from their AI investments. Case in point: Solomon has said that AI is doing 95% of the work on an IPO prospectus.

With AI's reach in finance only accelerating, some in the industry have openly worried about threats from the tech, like job redundancies and cost savings. Nonetheless, it's won over some devotees — like these seven Goldman employees, ranging from analyst to partner, who shared real-life depictions with BI of how they're making it work for them.

Their vignettes offer a picture of how AI is changing life in finance.

Ashish Shah, partner and chief investment officer of public investing, asset and wealth management

Even though he's a senior leader in the firm's public investing business and among its top executives as a Goldman partner, Shah still welcomes help presenting his thoughts and opinions.

"With more analytical people, generative AI is really helpful as a starting point with some of the more creative aspects of their jobs," Shah told BI. "The GS AI Assistant helps get me to a first draft quickly. Once I have that first draft to react to, I have all sorts of opinions and can iterate easily from there."

It allows him to brainstorm and structure concepts he wants to get across and organize those specific threads "in a pithy manner," he said.

When Shah used AI to help structure a strategic discussion for an upcoming business on-site trip, he said it shortened "what could have taken three to five hours," and boiled "it down into 30 minutes of back and forth with the LLM."

"That kind of time saving," he added, "is incredibly valuable."

Kerry Blum, partner and global head of the equity structuring group, asset and wealth management

Working with some of Goldman's wealthiest clients, like high-net worth individuals, family offices, and founders of companies, Blum's broader team talks with people all over the world.

"We're a global bank. Our clients are global. Our investment ideas are global," Blum said. "So we want to meet our clients where they are, and while our reach is already global, we can enhance the way we engage with our clients by speaking to them in their preferred language."

The bank is now expanding its Translate AI tool, which currently works with nine other languages, into the asset and wealth management division, Blum said.

Historically, Goldman outsourced some of this translation work, and turnaround times could sometimes stretch into days, making time-sensitive updates challenging or impractical at times. With Translate AI, output is seconds or minutes, she added, allowing her teams to share more time-sensitive updates rather than stick to the more evergreen content with a longer shelf life.

Raphaelle Jacquemin, managing director, global banking and markets

Although AI is new to Jacquemin's day-to-day toolkit, the managing director in equity derivatives structuring is already reaping the rewards.

Specifically, Jacquemin uses the tools to help her with software, whether it's doing something complicated in Outlook or maneuvering through coding languages.

"For example, I can say, 'I want to create in Outlook a search folder where I have all the emails which are bigger than 2MB, unread, and older than 5 years old. Give me a tutorial on how to do this,'" she explained.

She's also found it valuable in breaking down programming languages, like Python. The London-based employee has asked AI to make sense of coding commands, like "pd.MultiIndex.from_tuples," or suggest the best way to spin up tables of figures in Python.

Christopher Dixon, vice president, global investment research

Goldman Sachs' Translate AI tool is also available to its investment research teams to translate a wide variety of reports into some languages.

The content-management-group team has been using the LLM-based interface, which translates to and from English, for around nine months, said Dixon, a vice president at the bank. He said the firm has recorded a "high double-digit improvement" in productivity around translations, while also reducing translation outsourcing costs, he said, though the firm declined to offer specific figures.

Samantha Boden, vice president, global banking and markets

As a quantitative strategist focused on risk modeling, Boden spends much of her time developing new ideas.

"While this is exciting, learning entirely new topics can be challenging," she said. So Boden has turned to the GS AI Assistant as her "personal tutor," which has completely changed the way she approaches her daily work and masters technical topics.

For instance, if Boden wanted to learn how to price an American call option, she said she can ask the AI a series of questions about pricing methods or an "unsolved example to practice." If certain features are added, she can query how the model changes using the AI system, as well.

"The power lies not only in the AI's vast knowledge base but also in the speed of iteration," Boden said, adding that she can quickly request more details about a specific response, or personalize the learning experience.

Konstantin Kuchenmeister, associate, engineering

Goldman Sachs' engineering coding assistant and the GS AI Assistant are quickly becoming the primary tools in Kuchenmeister's daily workflow.

"I use it every day for getting a head start on traditionally time-consuming tasks such as code writing and reviewing models, saving me hours every week," said Kuchenmeister, who is also an adjunct math professor at Columbia University.

From routinely asking the tool to review team members' code changes, to running a line-by-line analysis to flag potential vulnerabilities, Kuchenmeister said he has started treating the GS AI Assistant "as both a collaborative tool and colleague."

The AI assistant has also shaved time off the weekly updates, routine project plans, and presentation decks Kuchenmeister has to put together. Recently, he prompted it to prepare the monthly update presentation he gives, while telling it to keep the draft under three pages, bearing in mind notes from the prior week's meeting, and to format everything like a bulleted list.

"It responded with a near-final version in less than a minute," he said.

Samruddhi Somwanshi, analyst, engineering

As one of the firm's newest recruits, Somwanshi, who holds the entry-level role of analyst, turns to AI to save time navigating the bank's vast codebase. She also uses the bank's AI tools to write test cases quickly, explain specific parts of code, and document changes made to the code.

It's a new world for engineering analysts like her — just a few years ago, time-consuming tasks like these would have mostly been done by hand.

"Sometimes I just describe what I want to do, and it helps by pointing me to the right files or functions I should check for," she said. "It might sound like a small thing, but doing this every day really adds up and makes my work as a developer much smoother," Somwanshi continued, adding: "It's been a huge time-saver."

And as an analyst and newbie to Goldman's hard-charging culture, every second on the job can count.

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• Doctronic just raised $5 million from Union Square Ventures for its healthcare AI agents.
• The startup's AI gives personalized advice on users' health questions and access to virtual doctors.
• It's competing in a hot space against startups like Roon and tech giants like OpenAI.

Doctronic is Matt Pavelle's twelfth startup. He's launched and led companies for renters' rewards, wine shopping, and luxury fashion. About two-thirds of them have been direct-to-consumer, while the rest have contracted with businesses to reach consumers.

Doctronic brings Pavelle's longtime consumer focus to a new domain: healthcare AI. And Doctronic has raised $5 million in seed funding, led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Tusk Ventures and startup accelerator HF0.

Google, and now AI models like ChatGPT, receive hundreds of millions, if not billions, of health-related questions from their users every day. Doctronic wants to use AI to improve that system by connecting patients with AI agents that can provide them with fast, anonymous, and personalized healthcare advice and connect them with a doctor when necessary.

Pavelle built Doctronic after seeing numerous friends and family members struggle to get timely and actionable responses from their healthcare providers about their own symptoms.

"If people who have some of the best health insurance possible in the country are having this much difficulty getting answers from their doctors, what happens to everybody else?" he said.

He and cofounder Adam Oskowitz launched New York-based Doctronic in September 2023 as a free service. Doctronic users share their age and sex, input their symptoms, and get four likely explanations and a plan of action, including a standardized note to share with their provider.

As of December, if those users want immediate care, they can book a video visit with a licensed medical professional through Doctronic. Patients can request a visit 24/7 in all 50 states and be connected with a provider, usually within 30 minutes, starting at $39.

Behind the scenes, the system is more than just an AI chatbot. It's a multi-agent framework: different AI "specialists" handle different areas of medicine, debate their findings, and pass their work to a human clinician for validation. The platform is LLM-agnostic — depending on the question, it might route to OpenAI, Anthropic, or multiple models at once and take the consensus.

"We're trying to build a seamless way for someone to come in and ask questions, or look for help navigating the medical system, and for us to figure out what they need and pass them to the right experts," Pavelle said.

Doctronic is competing with other healthcare startups like Roon, a Sequoia-backed company that raised $15 million in November to create a database of videos on health conditions, and tech giants like OpenAI, which has spawned numerous intelligence models used by doctors and patients alike, whether or not they're designed specifically for medical information.

Pavelle said Doctronic may eventually consider partnerships with gig economy marketplaces or employers to bring more users to its platform, but for now, Doctronic is staying firmly consumer-first. That's where most of the demand is coming from anyway — Pavelle said Doctronic gets most of its users from organic search, including from patients looking up their health questions on Google and finding Doctronic's site that way. The startup has also created some specialized landing pages, including for women's health and COVID-19.

"We see around 50,000 people a week — we've built something people really like, with lots of repeat users," Pavelle said. "We just want to keep improving to streamline the health system."

Here's the 11-slide pitch deck Doctronic used to raise its $5 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures.

• Robots that look and move like humans are getting a lot of buzz.
• Companies, including Amazon and GXO, are already testing humanoid robots in their warehouses.
• But humanoids are expensive and complex, and the tech used to power them is still nascent.

Tech companies and investors are pouring billions of dollars into a future in which human-like robots work alongside people in warehouses, hospitals, restaurants, and homes. The goal is that humanoid robots that can carry objects and walk on two feet could help to fill labor shortages across industries and take on tasks that might be harmful to humans.

While the idea of having a robot do chores around the house might sound appealing, humanoids most often start their "careers" in warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

That's because humanoids — and robots in general — tend to work best in structured environments, CB Insights' senior lead analyst Benjamin Lawrence told Business Insider.

"A lot of factories and warehouses are very similar, so you can set up replicating tasks much more easily," he said.

"When you think of a home, for example, you need to make sure that the humanoid is safe with grandma, with the kids, with the pets, that it doesn't step on the dog's tail. You need to make sure that the humanoid is aware that there's a candle burning on that table and doesn't accidentally knock it over and cause a house fire."

Some experts are skeptical about a future filled with humanoid robots. They're expensive and complex to manufacture, and outside a handful of highly publicized tests, they're still largely unproven.

But investor interest is taking off, with companies making humanoid robots raising a collective $1.2 billion in venture funding in 2024, according to CB Insights. The sector is on track to more than double funding to $3 billion this year. Agility Robotics is raising $400 million at a $1.75 billion valuation, The Information reported earlier this month. Apptronik, which makes the Apollo humanoid robot, announced a $350 million Series A funding round in February.

Big Tech companies are also betting big on humanoids — some by supplying their foundational models to robotics manufacturers, like Google DeepMind is doing with Apptronik, and others by making both the models and the hardware themselves, like Tesla is with its Optimus robot. Big Tech views humanoids as the natural next step in AI, as the industry's interest has gone from generative AI to agentic AI and then on to physical AI. Advances in natural language processing have also made training robots simpler.

"The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in January.

'We're not 10 years away, that's for sure'

Many of the early users of humanoids are auto manufacturers. There's already quite a bit of automation in car plants, so moving on to humanoids is a natural progression, Lawrence said.

Ford was Agility's first customer, buying the first two Digit robots in 2020. The two companies had previously partnered on a last-mile delivery project. Elon Musk has said Tesla will have "genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use" this year and available to other companies at a price tag of $20,000 to $30,000 in 2026. BMW piloted humanoid robots made by Figure, using them to insert sheet metal parts into a car's chassis. And, Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics, a leader in humanoid robotics, from Softbank for $1.1 billion in 2021.

Retailers are also testing humanoids in their warehouses. Amazon is testing Digit, the humanoid robot made by Agility, in addition to the robots it manufactures in-house. Logistics giant GXO is also testing Digit and humanoids from Apptronik and Reflex Robotics.

"We are going really broad and aggressive on the category," Adrian Stoch, GXO's chief automation officer Adrian Stoch told BI in a recent interview. "It's because of where we see this going."

Just how close humanoid coworkers are to becoming a reality in warehouses is still uncertain.

There are a few roadblocks. The first is price, with a single humanoid robot costing several tens of thousands of dollars (though several manufacturers in China, including Unitree, have recently revealed models at a significantly lower price point).

The second potential roadblock is the technology itself.

"You need to have humanoids that are highly adaptable to every different warehouse, to a range of language commands, and to be able to infer those commands and work within the existing structure," Lawrence said. "It's just very difficult to do that."

The current tests are relatively small. For example, GXO has more than 1,000 warehouses and employs more than 150,000 people, yet it has just two Digit units moving heavy boxes to a conveyor belt in one facility.

"We're not at wide-scale deployment and commercial viability yet, but we're not 10 years away, that's for sure," Stoch said.

When is the human form right for the job?

There's also the question of whether robots that can walk on two feet and manipulate objects with two hands are ideal for completing tasks.

Robotic arms that can pick up and place items are now common in warehouses. There are also automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, that transport items around warehouses using predefined routes on a line or wire, and autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, that can get around on their own. Boston Dynamics has also made a robotic dog that can do things like read meters and detect leaks.

"There are very few use cases where the best robotic form is something that looks like you," Forrester analyst Paul Miller said.

He added that the work a human does could likely best be replicated with a combination of technologies, not just a robot that happens to have a similar look to a human.

"A human worker in their job does a lot of different tasks. Some of those tasks are best performed by a human being. Some tasks are best performed by software," Miller said. "Some of those tasks are best performed by a physical automation, some kind of robot."

"It's about working out how you break those tasks up."

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• Dara Khosrowshahi said not enough Uber employees know how to use AI constructively.
• Schools and companies should start training people to use AI, he said.
• Tech leaders like Shopify's Tobe Lütke are pushing for AI use in their companies.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said not enough Uber employees know how to use AI.

In an interview last week at his alma mater, Brown University, Khosrowshahi said people have to stop perceiving artificial intelligence as a "tech thing" and see it as a tool for everyone.

"Within Uber, we're a highly technical company — 30,000 employees and not enough of my employees know how to use AI constructively," Khosrowshahi said.

Khosrowshahi said Uber will be implementing training programs and teaching employees how to use the technology. Schools, he said, should be doing the same with their students.

"The active use of AI for better outcomes is what companies are after," he said. "I think it would be quite beneficial for educational institutions to teach that before you get to the company."

He added that learning to use AI agents to code is "going to be an absolute necessity at Uber within a year."

Using AI to write code, dubbed "vibe coding" by the OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy, is a trend that has skyrocketed this year. While some in tech circles say leaning on it heavily is short-sighted, vibe coding has already started changing how much Big Tech and venture capital value people with software engineering expertise.

The Uber chief joins a long list of tech leaders embracing and even mandating the use of AI at work.

Earlier this year, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects the company to have "AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer."

Last week, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke publicly shared a memo he had sent his employees, titled "AI usage is now a baseline expectation." In it, the leader of the e-commerce company said AI usage is "now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify" and that it would be gauged in performance and peer reviews.

He also wrote that "teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI" before they ask for more head count or resources.

On Wednesday, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman touted Lütke's post and said that every leader, whether they are running a small startup or a giant company, should integrate AI into their work and conduct regular check-ins about AI learning.

Top tech leaders, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman, have said they use AI at work daily.

Khosrowshahi graduated from Brown in 1991. He worked in investment banking and led Expedia before joining Uber as its CEO in 2017.

French fries, the staple reward for well-behaved kids and go-to comfort food for overworked grown-ups, may soon become more of a luxury treat.

While the US grows most of its own potatoes — about 44 billion pounds each year — there's another french fry ingredient that we largely don't produce on American soil, cooking oil. To achieve crispy fry perfection, most American chefs prefer canola or soybean oil. And much of our canola oil comes from Canada, which is being threatened by President Donald Trump's tariffs.

The wide-reaching tariffs — at least 10% slapped on nearly every country from China to Sri Lanka — are panicking businesses and consumers as economists warn of rising prices for a laundry list of items: cars, T-shirts, smartphones, and vanilla, to name a few. Given the number of goods that pass over the Canadian border, the tariffs on that country pose an especially big threat, affecting $762 billion in annual trade. There's already a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, including on covered goods such as steel, aluminum, and cars. Trump also implemented a 25% tariff on all USMCA-compliant goods on March 4, but delayed it a few days later. It's still unclear what's going to happen with the additional tariffs. But one potential victim is so near and dear to the heart of Americans that we attempted to change its name to "freedom fries" in the early 2000s after France came out against the Iraq War.

A good french fry is fried twice: first to blanche it, cooking it through most of the way so it becomes soft and creamy on the inside, and a second time, often at a higher heat, to get it crisp on the outside. They are beloved by restaurateurs because they cook quickly and bring in a higher profit margin than meat and other vegetables. The US Canola Association says 69% of the canola oil we use in America is imported — of that, some 96% comes from Canada. We also import about $1.7 billion worth of frozen french fries — like the ones served by most fast-food restaurants — from Canada. For the past five years, the US has imported more frozen fries than it has produced. All this has been free of tariffs, thanks to the USMCA and the North American Free Trade Agreement before it.

"While they may be considered a nonluxury item, they do use what is now pricing itself to be a luxury mechanism to deliver them to the table," Codi Bates says about fries. She spends $32,760 a year on canola oil for her Lawrence, Kansas, restaurant, The Burger Stand. Between fried chicken, fried fish, and french fries, the business uses 630 pounds of cooking oil a week. A price hike would cut deeply into her profit margins. If the tariffs on USMCA-compliant goods hit, she doesn't know what she'll do.

Plenty of other restaurants are also bracing for impact.

Americans eat a lot of fries. One-third of the potatoes grown in the US become frozen fries. In 2023, of the billions of times people visited US restaurants, at least one person at the table or bar ordered fries nearly 14% of the time, the market research group Circana, formerly NPD Group, found.

For decades, restaurants used tallow, or rendered beef fat, to cook fries. It was responsible for the signature, rich taste of McDonald's fries as well as those from other major chains like Arby's, Burger King, and Wendy's. Then, amid the demonization of fats (later discovered to be funded by the sugar industry), we invented an alternative. Canola, short for Canadian oil, low acid, is made from the rapeseed plant, which was originally used to light lamps and lubricate machinery. After World War II, there was less need for machine oil, and Canadian researchers tried to find another use for the crop, which Canada leads the world in producing. They eventually created the edible and shelf-stable product we use today. By the '90s, the fast-food giants swapped their tallow supply for canola, often blended with other oils.

French fries are crucial in how many restaurants balance their budgets. Ingredients for a typical burger might cost a restaurant about 30% of its menu price, but fries are closer to 20%. Even before Trump began implementing tariffs, the food industry was struggling — as food prices rose, people started spending less, eating out less, and buying fewer fries. In October, Lamb Weston, which says it supplies 80% of America's fast-food fries, closed a production plant in Washington, reducing its production by about 5%.

Even as fry consumption has dropped, restaurants have relied on the menu staple to balance out the skyrocketing costs of other ingredients, like beef (up over 40% in the past five years) and eggs (up nearly 100% over the same period). A major increase in the cost of cooking oil, which has already jumped roughly 50% in cost since 2020, is likely to cause a crisis for your side of fries.

"The price of canola will rise, and that price increase will be passed along to all the different participants along the value chain — from the wholesale buyers to the restaurateurs to the final consumer," says Henry An, a professor and the chair of the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology at the University of Alberta.

An believes that both countries will bear some of the burden. "The canola sector in Canada doesn't have many short-term options when it comes to finding new buyers, and crop planting decisions have already been made for the most part. There's going to be some economic pain if these tariffs stay in place for a sustained period of time."

It's hard to say how much the price of fries might increase — importers may choose to absorb some of the cost instead of passing it on to their restaurant customers, and restaurants can choose to absorb costs or pivot their supply network to avoid increasing the price for diners. But some costs will inevitably trickle down: During the five-year period that vegetable oil prices rose by 50%, the average menu price of McDonald's french fries went up 134%, from $1.79 in 2019 to $4.19 in 2024, TheStreet found in an analysis. To be sure, rising labor costs and inflation also played a role.

Restaurateurs have three choices to deal with significant cost increases: eat the cost and make less profit, pass the cost on to customers by raising menu prices, or change ingredients.

A return to animal fats has been embraced by chefs over the past two decades, and more may follow suit. Amid a recent backlash to seed oil, the National Restaurant Association says there's been increased interest in tallow from their members. But it's not a cost-saving solution. A 35-pound bucket can range from $60 to $119, while the same amount of canola or soybean oil averages $40. Some pricier restaurants fry their fries in duck fat, which is even more expensive. Duckfat, a restaurant in Portland, uses duck fat and charges $8 for a small fry.

Shifting to animal fats would transform fries from an everyday indulgence, something added to a child's meal without much thought, into a special treat, from the league of pizza and hot dogs to the ranks of lattes and avocado toast.

Instead of avoiding canola, some restaurants might start to stretch its use. Cooks usually keep an eye on fryer oil, and once it's too cloudy with bits of food or is breaking down from excessive use, they will drain the fryers. Each time oil is used, the smoke point lowers, eventually giving off an unpleasant smell and taste, producing darker food, and emitting more smoke. But there are ways that restaurants can extend the life of their oil without making the food taste bad. Samantha Fore's oil supplier has the fryer at her restaurant Tuk Tuk Snack Shop in Lexington, Kentucky, hooked up to two tanks. One extracts bad oil, and the other pumps in fresh stuff as needed. The used oil is picked up by the supplier and transformed into biofuel.

The majority soybean oil blend she uses costs her about $15,000 a year. Even though her supplier uses domestic oil, she's nervous that the tax on imported oil could drive up the demand and price of domestic oil.

"Between the potential of what could happen to oil and wine, it's enough to put any restaurant owner into a little bit of a tailspin," Fore says. But she can't keep raising prices. "People aren't going to want to pay 15 bucks for a side of french fries," she says. "There's a market sensitivity there that we might not be able to meet."

Instead, she'll have to reconsider her menu or purchasing options. "It's what we've had to do with eggs," she says. "To see this much volatility and not be able to forecast effectively, the little decisions have such a huge domino effect on how we survive in a very uncertain time."

Catherine Mendelsohn, the chief operating officer of Sunnyside Restaurant Group, says her company also uses a machine to help extend the life of cooking oil at the burger and fry shop Good Stuff Eatery. The restaurant's $35,000 three-chamber fryer has a filtering system that cleans the oil during operation and reduces cooking oil costs. Even though Good Stuff spends about $10,000 a year on canola at each location, Mendelsohn isn't worried about tariffs.

"For the fries, it's not a big hit," she says. "Countries have to protect their borders. If that's a reason for the tariffs, temporarily until things get under control, I don't think that's a bad thing." She plans to absorb the cost of any increases.

The Washington, DC-based restaurant group Knead Hospitality + Design operates 10 restaurants, four of which use an estimated 1,200 pounds each of canola oil a month to make fries. Christian Plotczyk, its director of culinary operations, says the company has a contract with a guaranteed price for oil through the end of 2025. But if tariffs are still in place by then, it would have to look at switching oils.

Demetri Tsolakis, the CEO of Xenia Greek Hospitality, also prefers to try a different oil rather than raise prices. He says the company spends $123,760 a year on canola oil for fryers at its seven restaurants around Boston. If the tariffs on canola oil happen, he might switch to sugarcane oil, which costs twice as much as canola but can last up to four times as long in his fryer's advanced filtration system (he calls it "the Cadillac of fryers").

The trouble with trying out alternative oils, though, is that there may not be enough supply for every restaurant making fries in canola to easily swap. Industry experts are already sounding the alarm about the lack of beef tallow supply in the US, and given how much canola is used, it's easy to imagine a similar issue if restaurants all try to switch to soybean, sugarcane, or some other oil. Canola also provides a mouthwatering golden color to fries that other oils fail to achieve, so a change could disappoint diners.

At this stage, it's impossible to know how everything will shake out. "Economists like to predict things," An of the University of Alberta says, "but even we are sensible enough to admit that we don't really have a clue what's going to unfold." For now, Trump's trade war is poised to make freedom fries far from free.

Corey Mintz is a food reporter focusing on the intersection of food, economics, and labor. He is also the author of "The Next Supper: The End Of Restaurants As We Knew Them, And What Comes After."